Post on 18-Jun-2015
Integrating Information fromMuseums, Libraries & Archives
RLG Cultural Materials Initiative
July 2001
“…stuff really is important. Scholars use it to separate fact from fiction and
to interpret the human record.”
John W. HaegerRLG Vice President Emeritus
RLG News Issue 49, Fall 1999
3RLG Cultural Materials
The problem space…
Providing access to collections is central to the mission of most “memory institutions”
• Access to physical collections constrained by physical factors (space, location, resources, preservation etc.)
Increasing demand for access to digital collections for:
• Research & learning
• Teaching
• Personal use
• Commercial use
4RLG Cultural Materials
Digital collection characteristics
Heterogeneous structured textual descriptions
Digital representations or “surrogates” of materials, e.g.:
• Images
• Audio files
• Video clips
• Animations
• 3-D models
• “Complex Digital Objects” Supporting/contextual materials & external
links
“We need a new vision of opening up historically inaccessible special
collections and linking them to both the existing and developing base of
scholarly publication.”
Clifford LynchSelecting Library and Archive Collections for Digital Reformatting
RLG symposium
August 1996
6RLG Cultural Materials
Challenges to be met
Complex issues in delivering integrated access to digital collections:
• Diverse descriptive practices
• Meaningful integration across collections
• Digital representation of physical materials (“surrogates”)
• Multiple audiences and applications
• Institutional rights and responsibilities
7RLG Cultural Materials
Different (descriptive) strokes...
Different curatorial approaches
• Museums
• Libraries
• Archives
• Visual Resources
• Historical Societies Different subject disciplines
• Arts & humanities
• Natural sciences
• Social sciences etc...
8RLG Cultural Materials
Different (descriptive) strokes...
Different levels of granularity
• Collection level
• Group level
• Item level Different levels of detail
• Simple inventory
• Collections management documentation
• Authority reference files
• Associated contextual & research materials
9RLG Cultural Materials
Different (descriptive) strokes...
Different data structures
• Flatfile
• Hierarchical
• Tagged text
• Relational
• Object-oriented Different data value standards
• AAT, ULAN, TGN
• LCSH, NAF, DDC, UDC
• MeSH, SHIC etc...
10RLG Cultural Materials
Some descriptive standards
AMICO Data Dictionary
CDWA CIDOC RM & CRM CIMI DTD & Profile Dublin Core EAD
MARC MESL Object ID SPECTRUM VRA Core Categories Other, superceded
descriptive standards…
+1,001 home cooked flavours...
11RLG Cultural Materials
Relationships are important
12RLG Cultural Materials
CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model Based on ICOM/CIDOC “International
Guidelines for Museum Object Information: The CIDOC Information Categories”
Object-oriented “domain ontology”
• Formalises the semantics needed to describe objects and relationships in the cultural heritage context
Mappings to existing standards ISO standardization process begun
13RLG Cultural Materials
Benefits of CRM
Elegant and simple compared to comparable Entity-Relation model
Coherently integrates information at varying degrees of detail
Readily extensible through O-O class ‘typing’ and ‘specializations’
Richer semantic content; allows inferences to be made from ‘fuzzy’ data
Designed for mediation of heterogeneous cultural heritage information...
14RLG Cultural Materials
“The primary role of the CRM is to serve as a basis for mediation of cultural
heritage information and thereby provide the semantic 'glue' needed to transform today's disparate, localised
information sources into a coherent and valuable global resource.”
Nick Crofts & Martin Dörrhttp://www.ville-ge.ch/musinfo/cidoc/oomodel/
15RLG Cultural Materials
CRM learning curve
Model necessarily complex in order to model the broad domain of cultural heritage information
O-O modeling paradigm may be unfamiliar compared to entity-relation modeling
• Just similar enough to be confusing! Notation problems
• Difficult to express mappings textually
• UML: Universal Modeling Language
16RLG Cultural Materials
RLG active participants in:
June 2000 CRM stakeholders meeting in Aghios Pavlos, Crete
ISO TC46 SC4 CRM Working Group
• CRM submitted to ISO as a “Community Draft” standard
CIDOC CRM Special Interest Group EU-funded CHIOS (“Cultural Heritage
Interchange Ontology Standardization”) Project
• RLG is a non-funded partner
17RLG Cultural Materials
CRM Prospects
CRM needs further refinement, particularly to enhance support for research access and bibliographic material
Needs more introductory “outreach” material
RLG enthusiastic about:
• Raising awareness of the model
• Soliciting feedback from the community
• Testing and validating with real data and real users to help finalize the model
Next meetings: Barcelona, July 2001
18RLG Cultural Materials
RLG Cultural Materials
An Alliance of RLG members that will:
• Develop the Cultural Materials Service, a collective digital information resource
• Identify and promote standards of best practice for digital surrogates and descriptive information
• Establish appropriate rights management framework
• Develop powerful, user-friendly web-based discovery and retrieval tools
• Develop a sustainable business model that will support long-term development of the service
19RLG Cultural Materials
Vision for RLG Cultural Materials
Provide integrated access to aggregated heterogeneous cultural content
• Rich toolset for discovery, examination, comparison, and use
Provide reliable, distributed, user-friendly access to multiple user groups
Enhance the usefulness of individual collections through rich cross-collection links
Transform research and learning in the digital environment
20RLG Cultural Materials
RLG Cultural Materials - Data Model Must support wildly heterogeneous
data! Support “who, what, when, where”
access Resulted in “event-based” entity-
relation data model, influenced by:
• CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model
• InDecs Metadata Framework
• ABC/Harmony Logical Model
21RLG Cultural Materials
Cultural Materials Logical Data Model
Version: 2001-05-04‘T’ signifies a link to the Type entity (not displayed for clarity)
“Show me photographs of New York from the 1940’s…”
PlaceName = “New York”EventType =
“creation”EventBeginDate = “1940”EventEndDate = “1949”
WorkType = “Photograph”
surrogateURL = “http://…”
22RLG Cultural Materials
CMI Descriptive Data Loading
Convert contributor descriptive data to XML form
• Draft description guidelines to be published shortly
Create mappings using XSLT Stylesheet to convert data to XML form compliant with CMI XML DTD
• XSLT transformations re-usable for standards-compliant data!
Load program loads data into the IBM DB2 database…
23RLG Cultural Materials
CMI Descriptive Data Loading
SGMLEAD
MARC
DCto CMI
XSL
MARCto CMI
XSL
EADto CMI
XSLSGML
TOXML
EADXML
EAD XML DTD
MARCTO
XML
MARCXML
MARC XML DTD
OtherXML
Other XML DTD
CMIDB2
LOADXML
CMI XML DTD
DCXML
DC XML DTD
Otherto CMI
XSL
XSLT
24RLG Cultural Materials
The Future
Tangible benefits of adherence to descriptive standards
Powerful, object-oriented data models, e.g.
• CIDOC CRM
• IFLA FRBR Availability of mapping tools and
resources Shared vocabulary resources & authority
files
• Encoded Archival Context Initiative