Enhancing Semantic Expressivity in the Cultural Heritage Domain

Abstract

Describing cultural heritage objects from the perspective of Linked Open Data (LOD) is not a trivial task. The process often requires not only choosing pertinent ontologies, but also developing new models that preserve the most information and express the semantic power of cultural heritage data. Indeed, data managed in archives, libraries and museums are complex objects themselves, which require a deep reflection on even non-conventional conceptual models. Starting from these considerations, this paper describes a research project: to expose the vastness of one of the most important collections of European cultural heritage, the Zeri Photo Archive, as Linked Open Data. We describe here the steps we undertook to this end: firstly, we developed two ad hoc ontologies for describing all the issues not completely covered by existent models (the F Entry and the OA Entry Ontology); then we mapped into RDF the descriptive elements used in the current Zeri Photo Archive catalog, converting into CIDOC-CRM and into the two new aforementioned models the source data based on the Italian content standards Scheda F (Photography Entry, in English) and Scheda OA (Work of Art Entry, in English); and finally, we created an RDF dataset of the output of the mapping that could show a result capable of demonstrating the complexity of our scenario.

ArCo: The Italian Cultural Heritage Knowledge Graph

“…Semantic technologies, in particular ontologies and LOD, are widely adopted within the CH domain for facilitating researchers, practitioners and generic users to study and consume cultural objects. Notable examples include: the EDM and its datasets, the CIDOC-CRM, the Rijksmuseum collection [9], the Zeri Photo Archive [8], the Getty Vocabularies, the IBC-ER, the Smithsonian Art Museum, the LODLAM, the OpenGLAM, the Google Arts & Culture. ArCo substantially enriches the existing LOD CH cloud with invaluable data on the Italian CH and a network of ontologies addressing overlooked modelling issues.…”

An Ontological Approach to the Description of Visual and Iconographical Representations

“…Probably the most comprehensive solution is the one developed by the Fototeca Zeri in Bologna [5][6][7] for the PHAROS (International Consortium of Photo Archives) project [8]. While exposing the Zeri Photo, the authors developed two ontologies (F Entry Ontology and OA ontology) to map data coming from the two Italian standards developed by the ICCD (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione, or Central Institute for the Cataloguing and Documentation), the Scheda F (Scheda di Fotografia, or Photography Entry in English) and Scheda OA (Scheda Opera d'Arte, or Work of Art Entry in English).…”

Recommendation of Heterogeneous Cultural Heritage Objects for the Promotion of Tourism

“…However, the export process to Wikipedia is entirely manual and the texts originally written by experts were rewritten for the purpose of presenting the scientific information to the general public. Focusing on open data and cultural heritage data, some recent work aims to link cultural heritage data with linked open data (LOD) [13,14]. These projects' main purpose is cultural heritage corpora enrichment via LOD content and vice versa.…”