In the cultural heritage domain information systems are increasingly deployed, digital representations of physical objects are produced in immense numbers and there is a strong political pressure on memory institutions to make their holdings accessible to the public in digital form. The sector splits into a set of disciplines with highly specialized fields. Due to the resulting diversity, one can hardly speak about a “domain” in the sense of “domain ontologies” [33]. On the other side, study and research of the past is highly interdisciplinary. Characteristically, archaeology employs a series of “auxiliary” disciplines, such as archaeometry, archaeomedicine, archaeobotany, archaeometallurgy, archaeoastronomy, etc., but also historical sources and social theories.

Ontologies for Cultural Heritage

XML is expected to become the next generation standard language for exchanging data over the Internet. In general, the contents of XML documents may change as time goes by, and then, it is important to capture entire histories of those documents. In this paper, we propose a logical data model for representing histories of XML documents. The proposed model extends the XPath data model, and is capable of representing change histories of XML documents. Various alternative approaches to the physical implementation of the model are also presented.

A data model for temporal XML documents

The Europeana Data Model (EDM) is a new approach towards structuring and representing data delivered to Europeana by the various contributing cultural heritage institutions. The model aims at greater expressivity and flexibility in comparison to the current Europeana Semantic Elements (ESE), which it is destined to replace. The design principles underlying the EDM are based on the core principles and best practices of the Semantic Web and Linked Data efforts to which Europeana wants to contribute. The model itself builds upon established standards like RDF(S), OAI-ORE, SKOS, and Dublin Core. It acts as a common top-level ontology which retains original data models and information perspectives while at

The Europeana Data Model (EDM)

Preservation of intangible cultural heritage, such as music and dance, requires encoding of background knowledge together with digitized records of the performances. We present an ontology-based approach for designing a cultural heritage repository for that purpose. Since dance and music are recorded in multimedia format, we use Multimedia Web Ontology Language (MOWL) to encode the domain knowledge. We propose an architectural framework that includes a method to construct the ontology with a labeled set of training data and use of the ontology to automatically annotate new instances of digital heritage artifacts. The annotations enable creation of a semantic navigation environment in a cultural heritage repository. We have demonstrated the efficacy of our approach by constructing an ontology for the cultural heritage domain of Indian classical dance, and have developed a browsing application for semantic access to the heritage collection of Indian dance videos.

Nrityakosha: Preserving the intangible heritage of Indian classical dance

There is an increasing demand for sharing learning resources between existing learning resource systems to support reusability, exchangeability, and adaptability. The learning resources need to be annotated with ontologies into learning objects that use different metadata standards. These ontologies have introduced the problems of semantic and structural heterogeneity. This research proposes a Semantic Ontology Mapping for Interoperability of Learning Resource Systems. To enable semantic ontology mapping, this research proposes conflict detection and resolution techniques for both semantic and structural conflicts. The Semantic Bridge Ontology has been proposed as a core component for generating mapping rules to reconcile terms defined in local ontologies into terms defined in the target common ontology. This work defines the reasoning rules to classify related learning objects to enhance the powerful deductive reasoning capabilities of the system. As a consequence, ontology-based learning object metadata are generated and used by the semantic query engine to facilitate user queries of learning objects across heterogeneous learning resource systems.

Semantic Ontology Mapping for Interoperability of Learning Resource Systems using a rule-based reasoning approach

Metadata interoperability is an active research area, especially for cultural heritage collections, which consist of heterogeneous objects described by a variety of metadata schemas. In this paper we propose an ontology-based metadata interoperability approach, which exploits, in an optimal way, the semantics of metadata schemas. In particular, we propose the use of CIDOC/CRM ontology as a mediating schema and present a methodology for mapping DC Type Vocabulary to CIDOC/CRM, demonstrating a real-world effort for ontology-based metadata integration.

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Integrating Dublin Core metadata for cultural heritage collections using ontologies

In this paper, we propose an ontology-based metadata integration methodology for the cultural heritage domain. The proposed real - world approach considers an integration architecture in which CIDOC/CRM ontology acts as a mediating scheme. In this context, we present a mapping methodology from Encoded Archival Description (EAD) and Dublin Core (DC) metadata to CIDOC/CRM, and discuss the faced difficulties.

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Ontology-based metadata integration in the cultural heritage domain

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Semantic Integration of Collection Description: Combining CIDOC/CRM and Dublin Core Collections Application Profile

Digital folklore collections are valuable sources for studying the cultural and oral tradition of a country. The main difficulty in managing such collections is material heterogeneity (handwritten texts, photographs, 3D objects, sound recordings etc.) that imposes different digitization, description and maintenance practices. A multi-layer metadata model for the description of a digital folklore collection is presented. The proposed meta-data policy considers a collection as a hierarchy of entities and combines different metadata schemas for the management of each entity. The metadata model integrates elements from different metadata schemas ensuring efficient information recovery from all structural levels. Furthermore, interoperability between the used metadata schemas is discussed and a Topic Maps model is presented as an approach for developing mappings.

/pdf/a-multi-layer-metadata-schema-for-digital-folklore-3s9dgi3xh2.pdf

A multi-layer metadata schema for digital folklore collections

Athens University recently initiated a digital collection development project to provide enhanced educational capabilities Collections vary in terms of the material included and the requirements imposed by potential users In order to simplify collection management and promote collection interoperability, a common Digital Library platform should be employed to support all collections In order to deal with the extended requirements imposed, Athens University has decided to support an integrated Digital Library framework for multiple heterogeneous digital collections development The most important requirements imposed by the University’s collections are discussed in this paper, along with the characteristics of the Folklore Collection, one of the most complex and diverse ones In order to evaluate available Digital Library systems, the Folklore Collection has been chosen as a guide for the development of two prototype implementations using Fedora and DSpace Conclusions drawn from their comparison and the proposed integrated Digital Library architecture based on Fedora are also presented

https://galaxy.hua.gr/~mara/publications/ecdl04.pdf

Irene Lourdi

Papers

Integrating Dublin Core metadata for cultural heritage collections using ontologies

Ontology-based metadata integration in the cultural heritage domain

Semantic Integration of Collection Description: Combining CIDOC/CRM and Dublin Core Collections Application Profile

A multi-layer metadata schema for digital folklore collections

Designing an Integrated Digital Library Framework to Support Multiple Heterogeneous Collections