Cultural Heritage Metadata Research Articles

Adapting Machine Translation Engines to the Needs of Cultural Heritage Metadata

The Europeana digital library features cultural heritage collections from over 3,000 European institutions described in 37 languages. However, most textual metadata describe the records in a single language, the data providers’ language. Improving Europeana’s multilingual accessibility presents challenges due to the unique characteristics of cultural heritage metadata, often expressed in short phrases and using in-domain terminology. This work presents the EuropeanaTranslate project’s approach and results, aimed at translating Europeana metadata records from 23 EU languages into English. Machine Translation engines were trained on a cleaned selection of bilingual and synthetic data from Europeana, including multilingual vocabularies and relevant cultural heritage repositories. Automatic translations were evaluated through standard metrics and human assessments by linguists and domain cultural heritage experts. The results showed significant improvements when compared to the generic engines used before the in-domain training as well as the eTranslation service for most languages. The EuropeanaTranslate engines have translated over 29 million metadata records on Europeana.eu. Additionally, the MT engines and training datasets are publicly available via the European Language Grid Catalogue and the ELRC-SHARE repository.

CrowdHeritage: Crowdsourcing for Improving the Quality of Cultural Heritage Metadata

The lack of granular and rich descriptive metadata highly affects the discoverability and usability of cultural heritage collections aggregated and served through digital platforms, such as Europeana, thus compromising the user experience. In this context, metadata enrichment services through automated analysis and feature extraction along with crowdsourcing annotation services can offer a great opportunity for improving the metadata quality of digital cultural content in a scalable way, while at the same time engaging different user communities and raising awareness about cultural heritage assets. To address this need, we propose the CrowdHeritage open end-to-end enrichment and crowdsourcing ecosystem, which supports an end-to-end workflow for the improvement of cultural heritage metadata by employing crowdsourcing and by combining machine and human intelligence to serve the particular requirements of the cultural heritage domain. The proposed solution repurposes, extends, and combines in an innovative way general-purpose state-of-the-art AI tools, semantic technologies, and aggregation mechanisms with a novel crowdsourcing platform, so as to support seamless enrichment workflows for improving the quality of CH metadata in a scalable, cost-effective, and amusing way.

EUROPEANA DATA MODEL: PERSPECTIVE APPROACHES TO DIGITAL HUMANITIES PROJECTS

The purpose of the article is to study and analyze the experience of the development and data structure of digital Europeana cultural objects, a generalization of the main characteristics of metadata, the definition of significant criteria for their design. The methodology consists of the application of general scientific and special methods, in particular a systematic approach, as well as analysis, synthesis, generalization to thestudy of experience and the basic principles of developing Europeana Data Model. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the analysis and generalization of approaches to the development of data models of historical and cultural heritage digital objects in the framework of the Europeana project. The fundamental principles of developing such models that will be useful to developers of digital humanities projects in Ukraine areclarified. Conclusions: it is determined that the essential, in the process of developing a model of cultural objects is to ensure: completeness (the ability to describe any cultural objects), interoperability (compatibility with international standards for the data description and exchange), manufacturability (support for modern web technologies), relatedness (implementation of semantic relationships data), contextualization (mappingthe context of cultural objects: personalities, institutions, organizations, geography, chronology, subject, etc.), integration (connection with external information sources), scalability (the entry into the world of open linked data system).Key words: Europeana, Europeana Data Model, digital cultural objects, cultural heritage metadata, semantic data models.

Collaborating communities revisited

Purpose: This article follows up “Collaborating communities: the RDA experience and its implications for common information environments”, published in 2007 in the proceedings of the 11th seminar on Archives, Libraries, Museums held in Poreč, Croatia. That paper was written before the publication of RDA: Resource Description and Access, the successor to the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR). The article outlines what has happened since, with a focus on the development of RDA in collaboration with related standards groups.Methodology/approach: This is a chronological review of the development of documents, which lead to the publication of RDA. Cooperation and harmonization of description of information objects among different concerned communities is also presented.Research limitations: The thorough review of RDA and related documents covers the period from 2008 to 2018.Originality/Practical implications: The strategic development of RDA is dependent on continuing collaboration with international communities, cultural heritage communities, and linked data communities. All of these communities have a strong interest in linked open data and the Semantic Web, and RDA has played a significant role in initiating and stimulating collaborative development of library and cultural heritage metadata in RDF format.

Aggregation of Linked Data in the Cultural Heritage Domain: A Case Study in the Europeana Network

Online cultural heritage resources are widely available through digital libraries maintained by numerous organizations. In order to improve discoverability in cultural heritage, the typical approach is metadata aggregation, a method where centralized efforts such as Europeana improve the discoverability by collecting resource metadata. The redefinition of the traditional data models for cultural heritage resources into data models based on semantic technology has been a major activity of the cultural heritage community. Yet, linked data may bring new innovation opportunities for cultural heritage metadata aggregation. We present the outcomes of a case study that we conducted within the Europeana cultural heritage network. In this study, the National Library of The Netherlands contributed by providing the role of data provider, while the Dutch Digital Heritage Network contributed as an intermediary aggregator that aggregates datasets and provides them to Europeana, the central aggregator. We identified and analyzed the requirements for an aggregation solution for the linked data, guided by current aggregation practices of the Europeana network. These requirements guided the definition of a workflow that fulfils the same functional requirements as the existing one. The workflow was put into practice within this study and has led to the development of software applications for administrating datasets, crawling the web of data, harvesting linked data, data analysis and data integration. We present our analysis of the study outcomes and analyze the effort necessary, in terms of technology adoption, to establish a linked data approach, from the point of view of both data providers and aggregators. We also present the expertise requirements we identified for cultural heritage data analysts, as well as determining which supporting tools were required to be designed specifically for semantic data.

User‐Centered evaluation of metadata schema for nonmovable cultural heritage: Murals and stone cave temples

Digitization provides a solution for documentation and preservation of nonmovable cultural heritages. Despite efforts for the preservation of cultural heritages around the world, no well‐accepted metadata schema has been developed for murals and stone cave temples, which are often high‐value heritages built in ancient times. In addition, the literature is scarce on the user‐centered evaluation of metadata schemas of this kind. This study therefore aims to offer insights on developing and evaluating a metadata schema for organizing information of these historic and complex cultural heritages. In‐depth interviews were conducted with a total of 30 users, including 18 professional and 12 public users, and interview transcripts were coded through a qualitative content analysis approach. Findings reveal the importance of specific metadata elements as perceived by the two groups of end users, which correlated with their cultural heritage information‐seeking behaviors. In addition, the issues of standardization of cataloging of cultural heritage information and interoperability among metadata schemas have been raised by users for enhancing the user experience with digital platforms of cultural heritage information. The coding schema developed in this study can serve as a framework for follow‐up evaluations of metadata schemas, contributing to the ongoing development of cultural heritage metadata.

Metadata Schema to Facilitate Linked Data for 3D Digital Models of Cultural Heritage Collections: A University of South Florida Libraries Case Study

ABSTRACTThe University of South Florida Libraries house and provide access to a collection of cultural heritage and 3D digital models. In an effort to provide greater access to these collections, a linked data project has been implemented. A metadata schema for the 3D cultural heritage objects which uses linked data is an excellent way to share these collections with other repositories, thus gaining global exposure and access to these valuable resources. This article will share the process of building the 3D cultural heritage metadata model as well as an assessment of the model and recommendations for future linked data projects.

Evaluating metadata schema for murals and stone cave temples: Towards digitizing cultural heritage

ABSTRACTDespite efforts and attempts on preserving cultural heritages around the world, few studies have been conducted on metadata schema of murals and stone cave temples which are often high value heritages dating from ancient times. The literature is also scarce in user‐centered evaluation of metadata schema of this kind. This study therefore aims to offer insights on developing and evaluating a drafted metadata schema for digitizing and preserving historic murals and stone cave temples. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 15 scholars and professionals whose work was related to murals and stone cave temples. A coding framework was designed to analyze the interview transcripts. Initial findings show that users' seeking behaviors for cultural heritage information corroborated with their perceived importance of specific metadata elements. The coding schema developed in this study can serve as a framework for follow‐up evaluations of metadata schemas of this kind, contributing to the ongoing development of cultural heritage metadata.

Metadata management, interoperability and Linked Data publishing support for Natural History Museums

Natural history museums (NHMs) form a rich source of knowledge about Earth's biodiversity and natural history. However, an impressive abundance of high-quality scientific content available in NHMs around Europe remains largely unexploited due to a number of barriers, such as the lack of interconnection and interoperability between the management systems used by museums, the lack of centralized access through a European point of reference such as Europeana and the inadequacy of the current metadata and content organization. The Natural Europe project offers a coordinated solution at European level that aims to overcome those barriers. In this article, we present the architecture, deployment and evaluation of the Natural Europe infrastructure allowing the curators to publish, semantically describe and manage the museums' cultural heritage objects, as well as disseminate them to Europeana.eu and BioCASE/GBIF. Additionally, we discuss the methodology followed for the transition of the infrastructure to the Semantic Web and the publishing of NHMs' cultural heritage metadata as Linked Data, supporting the Europeana Data Model.

Europeana Creative. EDM Endpoint. Custom Views

The paper discusses the Europeana Creative project which aims to facilitate re-use of cultural heritage metadata and content by the creative industries. The paper focuses on the contribution of Ontotext to the project activities. The Europeana Data Model (EDM) is further discussed as a new proposal for structuring the data that Europeana will ingest, manage and publish. The advantages of using EDM instead of the current ESE metadata set are highlighted. Finally, Ontotext’s EDM Endpoint is presented, based on OWLIM semantic r epository and SPARQL query language. A user-friendly RDF view is presented in order to illustrate the possibilities of Forest - an extensible modular user interface framework for creating linked data and semantic web applications.

Representation patterns for cultural heritage resources

AbstractThe universe of available cultural heritage metadata schemas grows more complex every day. Existing schemas are optimized for use in the library, archive, or museum domains and to fit the needs of shared services and applications. Emerging Linked Data approaches introduce additional challenges for metadata designers and creators responsible for implementing these standards. In other domains, design patterns are used to clearly articulate problems, their contexts, and available solutions. This poster introduces preliminary research to identify such patterns in cultural heritage metadata standards using content analysis and a participatory design methodology.

Tooling the aggregator's workbench: Metadata visualization through statistical text analysis

AbstractDigital library interoperability efforts have succeeded in making large‐scale aggregation of digital collections technically feasible, to the extent that aggregations have become critical organizational tools in the data universe. As diverse digital collections are increasingly unified into aggregations data heterogeneity presents burgeoning challenges to aggregators. Comprehension of massive aggregates and efficient metadata quality analysis are aggregator imperatives that rely on scalable evaluation techniques. This paper describes novel applications of visualization techniques, based on statistical text analysis, to the evaluation and maintenance of a large‐scale aggregation of descriptive, cultural heritage metadata. These techniques, and their implementation as part of an aggregator's workbench, provide new, administrator‐oriented perspectives on metadata aggregations, in order to improve aggregators' capacity to evaluate metadata quality and topical coverage in a scalable way.

Defining a semantic mapping of VRA Core 4.0 to the CIDOC conceptual reference model

In the recent decades, we have witnessed a tremendous proliferation of metadata schemas, particularly in the cultural heritage domain. As a consequence, cultural heritage communities face a growing need to integrate these schemas as they encounter a number of problems, mainly concerning interoperability issues and loss of implicit knowledge. In this paper, we present a semantic mapping of VRA Core 4.0, a cultural heritage metadata schema describing visual resources, to CIDOC CRM. The mapping rules are expressed formally using a path-based mapping language called Mapping Description Language MDL. More specifically, each element of the schema along with its subelements and attributes is mapped to the equivalent CRM path represented as a sequence of classes and properties. In case an attribute is assigned to an element/subelement, this is also mapped to equivalent CRM paths, expanding the semantic correspondences between the two schemas. This work is part of a semantic integration scenario, where CIDOC CRM acts as a mediation schema.

FRBR-ML: A FRBR-based framework for semantic interoperability

Metadata related to cultural items such as literature, music and movies is a valuable resource that is currently exploited in many applications and services based on semantic web technologies. A vast amount of such information has been created by memory institutions in the last decades using different standard or ad hoc schemas, and a main challenge is to make this legacy data accessible as reusable semantic data. On one hand, this is a syntactic problem that can be solved by translbrming to formats that are compatible with the tools and services used for semantic aware services. On the other hand, this is a semantic problem. Simply transforming from one format to another does not automatically enable semantic interoperability and legacy data often needs to be reinterpreted as well as transformed. The conceptual model in the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, initially developed as a conceptual framework for library standards and systems, is a major step towards a shared semantic model of the products of artistic and intellectual endeavor of mankind. The model is generally accepted as sufficiently generic to serve as a conceptual framework for a broad range of cultural heritage metadata. Unfortunately, the existing large body of legacy data makes a transition to this model difficult. For instance, most bibliographic data is still only available in various MARC-based formats which is hard to render into reusable and meaningful semantic data. Making legacy bibliographic data accessible as semantic data is a complex problem that includes interpreting and transforming the information. In this article, we present our work on transforming and enhancing legacy bibliographic information into a representation where the structure and semantics of the FRBR model is explicit.

On cultural heritage metadata

The management of cultural heritage metadata is a multifaceted process depending on the diversity and heterogeneity of the cultural objects, the structure of their collections and the information needs of the communities that generate, access and study them. This paper reports the results derived from the special track on metadata and semantics for cultural collections and applications, which was a part of the 5th International Conference on Metadata and Semantic Research (MTSR 2011), held in Yasar University, Izmir, Turkey, 12-14 October 2011.

The Semantic Mapping of Archival Metadata to the CIDOC CRM Ontology

In this article we analyze the main semantics of archival description, expressed through Encoded Archival Description (EAD). Our main target is to map the semantics of EAD to the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC CRM) ontology as part of a wider integration architecture of cultural heritage metadata. Through this analysis, it is concluded that an EAD document is a hierarchy of documentation elements and attributes and that through this documentation the archive is semantically expressed via 3 hierarchies: hierarchy of physical objects, hierarchy of information objects, and hierarchy of linguistic objects. These semantic views of the archive and its description (e.g., finding aid) as well as their interrelationships are mapped to CIDOC CRM.

Does EAD Play Well with Other Metadata Standards?

The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting has been suggested as a simple method by which cultural heritage metadata might be exchanged and searched. However, much of the archival description encoded in Encoded Archival Description (EAD) files may not be optimally accessible. By analyzing EAD encoding patterns found in a sample of finding aids, this article explores some of the challenges which arise in attempting to make EAD files interoperable and searchable. The analysis shows that many EAD files lack key metadata elements or use non-standard encoding patterns. The findings suggest that institutions using EAD could benefit from the application of tighter best practice recommendations. Application of the OAI protocols on top of EAD may help harmonize and eliminate encoding differences, providing for better search and retrieval mechanisms.