Survey over Existing Query and Transformation Languages

A widely acknowledged obstacle for realizing the vision of the Semantic Web is the inability of many current Semantic Web approaches to cope with data available in such diverging representation formalisms as XML, RDF, or Topic Maps. A common query language is the first step to allow transparent access to data in any of these formats. To further the understanding of the requirements and approaches proposed for query languages in the conventional as well as the Semantic Web, this report surveys a large number of query languages for accessing XML, RDF, or Topic Maps. This is the first systematic survey to consider query languages from all these areas. From the detailed survey of these query languages, a common classification scheme is derived that is useful for understanding and differentiating languages within and among all three areas

Semantic Technologies for Manuscript Descriptions — Concepts and Visions

The contribution at hand relates recent developments in the area of the World Wide Web to codicological research. In the last number of years, an informational extension of the internet has been discussed and extensively researched: the Semantic Web. It has already been applied in many areas, including digital information processing of cultural heritage data. The Semantic Web facilitates the organisation and linking of data across websites, according to a given semantic structure. Software can then process this structural and semantic information to extract further knowledge. In the area of codicological research, many institutions are making efforts to improve the online availability of handwritten codices. If these resources could also employ Semantic Web techniques, considerable research potential could be unleashed. However, data acquisition from less structured data sources will be problematic. In particular, data stemming from unstructured sources needs to be made accessible to SemanticWeb tools through information extraction techniques. In the area of museum research, the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) has been widely examined and is being adopted successfully. The CRM translates well to Semantic Web research, and its concentration on contextualization of objects could support approaches in codicological research. Further concepts for the creation and management of bibliographic coherences and structured vocabularies related to the CRM will be considered in this chapter. Finally, a user scenario showing all processing steps in their context will be elaborated on

BIM semantic-enrichment for built heritage representation

In the built heritage context, BIM has shown difficulties in representing and managing the large and complex knowledge related to non-geometrical aspects of the heritage. Within this scope, this paper focuses on a domain-specific semantic-enrichment of BIM methodology, aimed at fulfilling semantic representation requirements of built heritage through Semantic Web technologies. To develop this semantic-enriched BIM approach, this research relies on the integration of a BIM environment with a knowledge base created through information ontologies. The result is knowledge base system - and a prototypal platform - that enhances semantic representation capabilities of BIM application to architectural heritage processes. It solves the issue of knowledge formalization in cultural heritage informative models, favouring a deeper comprehension and interpretation of all the building aspects. Its open structure allows future research to customize, scale and adapt the knowledge base different typologies of artefacts and heritage activities

TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE POLISH-GERMAN-CZECH BORDER AREA IN 1938-1945 IN THE LOCAL COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND SOCIAL AWARENESS OF THE INHABITANTS OF BIELAWA AND THE OWL MOUNTAINS AREA

Th e local community of Bielawa and the areas in the region of the Owl Mountains is an interesting object for studies of sites of memory represented in local consciousness. Like most of similar communities on the so-called Recovered Territories, it started to form aft er 1945 on “raw roots” aft er the German inhabitants of the area were removed. Th ey were replaced with people moved from the former eastern provinces of the Second Republic, among others from Kołomyja, but also from regions of central Poland. Also Poles returning from Germany, France and Romania sett led there. Th e area taken over by new sett lers had not been a cultural desert. The remains of material culture, mainly German, and the traditions of weaving and textile industry, reaching back to the Middle Ages, formed a huge potential for creating a vision of local cultural heritage for the newly forming community. Th ey also brought, however, their own notions of cultural heritage to the new area and, in addition, became subject to political pressure of recognising its “Piast” character as the “Recovered Territories”. Th e present research is an att empt to fi nd out to what extent that potential was utilised by new sett lers, who were carriers of various regional (or even national) cultures, for their creation of visions of the future, as well as how the dynamics of those transformations evolved

Knowledge Representation with Ontologies: The Present and Future

Recently, we have seen an explosion of interest in ontologies as artifacts to represent human knowledge and as critical components in knowledge management, the semantic Web, business-to-business applications, and several other application areas. Various research communities commonly assume that ontologies are the appropriate modeling structure for representing knowledge. However, little discussion has occurred regarding the actual range of knowledge an ontology can successfully represent