Abstract
Over the last years, many projects and institutions have worked on transforming object documentation from several existing cataloguing systems into a CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC CRM) compliant graph representation, as expressed in RDF. There were also various attempts to provide a generally valid path for the transfer of data from Lightweight Information Describing Objects (LIDO), CIDOC’s recommended XML Schema for metadata harvesting, into representations that are suitable for the Semantic Web. They all face the challenge that a detailed mapping, which fully exploits the CRM’s expressiveness and requires semantic assumptions that may not always turn out to be valid. Broad mappings, on the other hand, fail to leverage the potential of Semantic Web technologies. In this paper, we propose a method for using LIDO combined with an associated terminology as a means of evolving existing object documentation into CRM-based RDF representations. By clearly distinguishing between controlled vocabulary and ontology, it is possible to transform object data relatively easily into a minimized, though efficient structure using the CIDOC CRM ontology. This structure will open up the whole world of Semantic Web technologies to be used for further semantic refinement and data quality analysis through exploiting the underlying controlled vocabularies
Highlights
Many projects and institutions have worked on transforming object documentation from existing cataloguing systems into a CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC CRM) [1] compliant graph representation expressed in RDF, including e.g., work at FORTH on the X3ML Toolkit [2], the ResearchSpace project [3], or the Linked Art initiative [4], which all address a wider group of museums or research organizations
We presented a method for using Lightweight Information Describing Objects (LIDO) combined with an associated terminology as a means to evolve existing object documentation into CRM-based RDF representations
The approach has been validated in our local environment and the full implementation is subject to future work. This includes, in particular, the definition of rules that are based on the LIDO Terminology and e.g., the AAT, the evaluation and selection of a Semantic Web technologies-enabled toolset, and the provision of a mechanism for identifier handling, as a graph-based representation requires URIs for each entity addressed, which are not necessarily available from the source data
Summary
There were various attempts to provide a generally valid path for the transfer of data from Lightweight Information Describing Objects (LIDO) [5] into representations that were suitable for the Semantic Web, e.g., in the context of the German Digital Library [6] (http://www.ddb.de), the Europeana-related project AthenaPlus [7], or Foto Marburg’s infrastructure for art historical photo collections [8]. It turns out that establishing a workflow from a file- or record-based system to a semantic graph is a major challenge for many institutions. This appears to be true for many museums, they are willing to share their museum collection data and to contribute to current efforts of releasing it as linked open data (LOD) [9] on the semantic web.
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