This article presents the methodology that has been successfully used over the past seven years by an interdisciplinary team to create the International Committee for Documentation of the International Council of Museums (CIDOC) CONCEPTUAL REFERENCE MODEL (CRM), a high-level ontology to enable information integration for cultural heritage data and their correlation with library and archive information. The CIDOC CRM is now in the process to become an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard. This article justifies in detail the methodology and design by functional requirements and gives examples of its contents. The CIDOC CRM analyzes the common conceptualizations behind data and metadata structures to support data transformation, mediation, and merging. It is argued that such ontologies are property-centric, in contrast to terminological systems, and should be built with different methodologies. It is demonstrated that ontological and epistemological arguments are equally important for an effective design, in particular when dealing with knowledge from the past in any domain. It is assumed that the presented methodology and the upper level of the ontology are applicable in a far wider domain.

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The CIDOC conceptual reference module: an ontological approach to semantic interoperability of metadata

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Erik DuvalErik.Duval@cs.kuleuven.ac.beStrategic FuturistAutodesk Wayne Hodginswayne.hodgins@autodesk.comAssociate Professor, The Information SchoolUniversity of Washington Stuart Suttonsasutton@u.washington.eduExecutive DirectorDublin Core Metadata Initiative Stuart L. WeibelWeibel@oclc.org

Metadata Principles and Practicalities

Classical assumptions about the nature and ethical entailments of authorship (the standard model) are being challenged by developments in scientific collaboration and multiple authorship. In the biomedical research community, multiple authorship has increased to such an extent that the trustworthiness of the scientific communication system has been called into question. Documented abuses, such as honorific authorship, have serious implications in terms of the acknowledgment of authority, allocation of credit, and assigning of accountability. Within the biomedical world it has been proposed that authors be replaced by lists of contributors (the radical model), whose specific inputs to a given study would be recorded unambiguously. The wider implications of the ‘hyperauthorship’ phenomenon for scholarly publication are considered.

Hyperauthorship: A postmodern perversion or evidence of a structural shift in scholarly communication practices?

User studies focusing upon real-life music information needs, uses and seeking behaviours are still very scarce in the music information retrieval (MIR) and music digital library (MDL) fields. We are conducting a multigroup survey in an attempt to acquire information that can help eradicate false assumptions in designing MIR systems. Our goal is to provide an empirical basis for MIR/MDL system development. In this paper, we present our preliminary findings and analyses based on the 427 user responses we have received to date. Two major themes have been uncovered thus far that could have a significant influence the future development of successful MIR/MDL systems. First, people display “public information-seeking” behaviours by making use of collective knowledge and/or opinions of others about music such as reviews, ratings, recommendations, etc. in their music information-seeking. Second, respondents expressed needs for contextual metadata in addition to traditional bibliographic metadata.

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Survey of music information needs, uses, and seeking behaviours: preliminary findings

Achieving uniform access to media objects in heterogeneous media repositories requires dealing with the problem of metadata interoperability. Currently there exist many interoperability techniques, with quite varying potential for resolving the structural and semantic heterogeneities that can exist between metadata stored in distinct repositories. Besides giving a general overview of the field of metadata interoperability, we provide a categorization of existing interoperability techniques, describe their characteristics, and compare their quality by analyzing their potential for resolving various types of heterogeneities. Based on our work, domain experts and technicians get an overview and categorization of existing metadata interoperability techniques and can select the appropriate approach for their specific metadata integration scenarios. Our analysis explicitly shows that metadata mapping is the appropriate technique in integration scenarios where an agreement on a certain metadata standard is not possible.

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A survey of techniques for achieving metadata interoperability

From the Publisher:
As the World Wide Web has emerged as a major research tool across all fields of study, the concept of metadata has become a crucial topic. Metadata, which can be broadly defined as "data about data", refers to the searchable definitions used to Locate information. This issue is particularly relevant to searches on the Web, where metatags may determine the ease with which a particular Web site is located by searchers. This book defines this little-understood concept, explains its importance and potential uses in the networked environment, and describes existing metadata standards in the field of cultural heritage information.

Introduction to Metadata: Pathways to Digital Information

These 'Categories for the description of works of art' (CDWA) were created by the Art Information Task Force (AITF), a group of art historians, museum curators and registrars, visual resource professionals, art librarians, information managers and technical specialists brought together in the early 1990s by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the College Art Association. The aim of the guidelines is to develop a "conceptual framework for describing and accessing information about objects and images" by identifying practices and vocabularies for use in describing works of art, architecture, objects and visual or textual surrogates. The CDWA website provides the full-text of the guidelines, including definitions of each category, cataloguing examples and a bibliography.

Categories for the description of works of art

For the first time, under the leadership of the Visual Resources Association, a cross section of five visual and cultural heritage experts, along with scores of reviewers from varied institutions, have created a new data content standard focused on cultural materials. This cutting-edge reference offers practical resources for cataloging and flexibility to meet the needs of a wide range of institutions - from libraries to museums to archives to visual collections. Consistently following these guidelines for selecting, ordering, and formatting data used to populate metadata elements in cultural materials' catalog records: promotes good descriptive cataloging and reduces redundancy; builds a foundation of shared documentation; creates data sharing opportunities; and, complements existing standards (AACR).

Cataloging Cultural Objects: A Guide to Describing Cultural Works and Their Images

Metadata, literally 'data about data,' provides a means of indexing, accessing, preserving, and discovering digital resources. The sheer quantity of digital information available over electronic networks has created a pressing need for standards that assist in locating, retrieving, and managing this vast and complex universe of information."Introduction to Metadata" provides readers with an overview of metadata, its types, roles, and characteristics; a discussion of metadata as it relates to resources on the Web; and a description of methods, tools, and standards, and protocols used to publish and disseminate digital collections.Also included in this fully revised and updated edition is an essay on the importance of standards-based rights metadata to the activities of cultural institutions, and an exploration of metadata harvesting and the role of Google and other commercial search engines in the rapidly evolving world of digital libraries.

Introduction to metadata

With the proliferation of information on the World Wide Web and in other networked environments, there are many users that search for images of works of art and architecture. End-users generally try to search for images by subject, a process that often proves unsatisfactory and frustrating. Cataloging images of works of art has always been challenging, but now that end-users need only have access to the Internet, the challenge is more daunting than ever. This illustrated book on using metadata standards and controlled vocabularies to catalog and provide end-user access to images of works of art also focuses on decisions that must be made about the arrangement of visual records, descriptive principles and methodologies, and requirements for access. Introduction to Art Image Access addresses the issues that underlie the intellectual process of documenting a visual collection to make it accessible in an electronic environment. A glossary, selected bibliography, and an annotated list of tools are included.

Murtha Baca

Papers

Introduction to Metadata: Pathways to Digital Information

Categories for the description of works of art

Cataloging Cultural Objects: A Guide to Describing Cultural Works and Their Images

Introduction to metadata

Introduction to art image access : issues, tools, standards, strategies