Incorporate Cultural Artifacts Conservation Documentation to Information Exchange Standards – The DOC-CULTURE Case

AbstractThe cultural heritage artifacts Conservation Documentation format is not universally agreed upon nor has it always been considered an important aspect of the conservation profession. Conservation records present major drawbacks, which are the fragmentary and incomplete description of the contained information and related processes. On the other hand, as strict regulations prohibit invasive testing in the conservation of art works and monuments of great historical value, new type of examination methods such as Non-Destructive Testing and Evaluation (NDT&E) techniques have become essential and are widely used by scientists. In this context, the present paper presents the DOC-CULTURE project approach to standardize the documentation of the NDT methods and their output data through CIDOC-CRM exploitation

Metainformation scenarios in Digital Humanities: Characterization and conceptual modelling strategies

Requirements for the analysis, interpretation and reuse of information are becoming more and more ambitious as we generate larger and more complex datasets. This is leading to the development and widespread use of information about information, often called metainformation (or metadata) in most disciplines. The Digital Humanities are not an exception. We often assume that metainformation helps us in documenting information for future reference by recording who has created it, when and how, among other aspects. We also assume that recording metainformation will facilitate the tasks of interpreting information at later stages. However, some works have identified some issues with existing metadata approaches, related to 1) the proliferation of too many “standards” and difficulties to choose between them; 2) the generalized assumption that metadata and data (or metainformation and information) are essentially different, and the subsequent development of separate sets of languages and tools for each (introducing redundant models); and 3) the combination of conceptual and implementation concerns within most approaches, violating basic engineering principles of modularity and separation of concerns. Some of these problems are especially relevant in Digital Humanities. In addition, we argue here that the lack of characterization of the scenarios in which metainformation plays a relevant role in humanistic projects often results in metainformation being recorded and managed without a specific purpose in mind. In turn, this hinders the process of decision making on issues such as what metainformation must be recorded in a specific project, and how it must be conceptualized, stored and managed. This paper presents a review of the most used metadata approaches in Digital Humanities and, taking a conceptual modelling perspective, analyses their major issues as outlined above. It also describes what the most common scenarios for the use of metainformation in Digital Humanities are, presenting a characterization that can assist in the setting of goals for metainformation recording and management in each case. Based on these two aspects, a new approach is proposed for the conceptualization, recording and management of metainformation in the Digital Humanities, using the ConML conceptual modelling language, and adopting the overall view that metainformation is not essentially different to information. The proposal is validated in Digital Humanities scenarios through case studies employing real-world datasetsThis work was partially supported by Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness under its Competitive Juan de la Cierva Postdoctoral Research Programme (FJCI-2016-28032)S

Harmonizing the Metadata Among Diverse Climate Change Datasets

One of the critical problems in the curation of research data is the harmonization of its internal metadata schemata. The value of harmonizing such data is well illustrated by the Berkeley Earth project, which successfully integrated into one metadata schema the raw climate datasets from a wide variety geographical sources and time periods (250 years). Doing this enabled climate scientists to calculate a more accurate estimate of the recent changes in Earth’s average land surface temperatures and to ascertain the extent to which climate change is anthropogenic. This paper surveys some of the approaches that have been taken to the integration of data schemata in general and examines some of the specific metadata features of the source surface temperature datasets that were harmonized by Berkeley Earth. The conclusion drawn from this analysis is that the original source data and the Berkeley Earth common format provides a promising training set on which to apply machine learning methods for replicating the human data integration process. This paper describes research in progress on a domain-independent approach to the metadata harmonization problem that could be applied to other fields of study and be incorporated into a data portal to enhance the discoverability and reuse of data from a broad range of data sources

Enabling European archaeological research: The ARIADNE E-infrastructure

Research e-infrastructures, digital archives and data services have become important pillars of scientific enterprise that in recent decades has become ever more collaborative, distributed and data-intensive. The archaeological research community has been an early adopter of digital tools for data acquisition, organisation, analysis and presentation of research results of individual projects. However, the provision of einfrastructure and services for data sharing, discovery, access and re-use has lagged behind. This situation is being addressed by ARIADNE: the Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Dataset Networking in Europe. This EUfunded network has developed an einfrastructure that enables data providers to register and provide access to their resources (datasets, collections) through the ARIADNE data portal, facilitating discovery, access and other services across the integrated resources. This article describes the current landscape of data repositories and services for archaeologists in Europe, and the issues that make interoperability between them difficult to realise. The results of the ARIADNE surveys on users' expectations and requirements are also presented. The main section of the article describes the architecture of the einfrastructure, core services (data registration, discovery and access) and various other extant or experimental services. The ongoing evaluation of the data integration and services is also discussed. Finally, the article summarises lessons learned, and outlines the prospects for the wider engagement of the archaeological research community in sharing data through ARIADNE

Semantic Interoperability in Digital Library Systems

This report is a state-of-the-art overview of activities and research being undertaken in areas relating to semantic interoperability in digital library systems. It has been undertaken as part of the cluster activity of WP5: Knowledge Extraction and Semantic Interoperability (KESI). The authors and contributors draw on the research expertise and experience of a number of organisations (UKOLN, ICS-FORTH, NETLAB, TUC-MUSIC, University of Glamorgan) as well as several work-packages (WP5: Knowledge Extraction and Semantic Interoperability; WP3: Audio-Visual and Non-traditional Objects) within the DELOS2 NoE. In addition, a workshop was held [KESI Workshop Sept. 2004] (co-located with ECDL 2004) in order to provide a forum for the discussion of issues relevant to the topic of this report. We are grateful to those who participated in the forum and for their valuable comments, which have helped to shape this report. Definitions of interoperability, syntactic interoperability and semantic interoperability are presented noting that semantic interoperability is very much about matching concepts as a basis. The NSF Post Digital Libraries Futures Workshop: Wave of the Future [NSF Workshop] has identified semantic interoperability as being of primary importance in digital library research

Enabling European Archaeological Research: The ARIADNE E-Infrastructure

In the last 20 years, e-infrastructures have become ever more important for the conduct and progress of research in all branches of scientific enterprise. Increasingly collaborative, distributed and data-intensive research requires the sharing of resources (data, tools, computing facilities) via e-infrastructure as well as support for effective co-operation among research groups (ESF 2011; ESFRI 2016). Moreover there is the expectation that with large datasets ('big data'), e-infrastructure and advanced computing techniques, new scientific questions can be tackled. The archaeological research community has been an early adopter of various digital methods and tools for data acquisition, organisation, analysis and presentation of research results of individual projects. The provision of e-infrastructure and services for data sharing, discovery, access and re-use for the heritage sector is, however, lagging behind other research fields, such as the natural and life sciences. The consequence is a high level of fragmentation of archaeological data and limited capability for collaborative research across institutional and national as well as disciplinary boundaries (Aspöck and Geser 2014). This situation is being addressed by ARIADNE: the Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Dataset Networking in Europe. This e-infrastructure initiative is being promoted by a consortium of archaeological institutes, data archives and technology developers, and funded under the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme (ARIADNE 2014a; Niccolucci and Richards 2013). ARIADNE enables archaeological data providers, large and small, to register and connect their resources (datasets, collections) to the e-infrastructure, and a data portal provides search, access and other services across the integrated resources. The portal puts into operation a proof of concept exemplar first developed under the ARENA (Archaeological Records of Europe Networked Access) project (Kenny and Richards 2005; Kilbride 2004), itself inspired by a proposal made by Hansen (1993). ARIADNE integrates resource discovery metadata using various controlled vocabularies, e.g. the W3C Data Catalogue Vocabulary (adapted for describing archaeological datasets), subject thesauri, gazetteers, chronologies, and the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM). Based on this integration the data portal offers several ways to search and access resources made available by data providers located in different countries. ARIADNE thus acts as a broker between data providers and users and offers additional web services for products such as high-resolution images, Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), 3D objects and landscapes. Employing such services in research projects or for content deposited in digital archives will greatly enhance the ability of researchers to publish, access and study archaeological content online. ARIADNE therefore represents a substantial advance for archaeology; in particular it provides a common platform where dispersed data resources can be uniformly described, discovered and accessed. It is also an essential step towards the even more ambitious goal of offering archaeologists integrated data, tools and computing resources for web-based research that creates new knowledge (e-archaeology). The next section describes the current landscape of data repositories and services for archaeologists in Europe, and the issues that make interoperability between them difficult to realise. The results of the ARIADNE user surveys undertaken to match expectations and requirements for the e-infrastructure and data portal services are then presented. The main part of the article describes ARIADNE's overall architecture, core services (data registration, discovery and access) and other extant or experimental services. A further section presents the on-going evaluation of the data integration and set of services. Finally, the article summarises some lessons already learned in the integration of data resources and services, and considers the prospects for the wider engagement of the archaeological research community in sharing data through the ARIADNE e-infrastructure and portal

ARIADNE: A Research Infrastructure for Archaeology

Research e-infrastructures, digital archives, and data services have become important pillars of scientific enterprise that in recent decades have become ever more collaborative, distributed, and data intensive. The archaeological research community has been an early adopter of digital tools for data acquisition, organization, analysis, and presentation of research results of individual projects. However, the provision of e-infrastructure and services for data sharing, discovery, access, and (re)use have lagged behind. This situation is being addressed by ARIADNE, the Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Dataset Networking in Europe. This EU-funded network has developed an e-infrastructure that enables data providers to register and provide access to their resources (datasets, collections) through the ARIADNE data portal, facilitating discovery, access, and other services across the integrated resources. This article describes the current landscape of data repositories and services for archaeologists in Europe, and the issues that make interoperability between them difficult to realize. The results of the ARIADNE surveys on users’ expectations and requirements are also presented. The main section of the article describes the architecture of the e-infrastructure, core services (data registration, discovery, and access), and various other extant or experimental services. The ongoing evaluation of the data integration and services is also discussed. Finally, the article summarizes lessons learned and outlines the prospects for the wider engagement of the archaeological research community in the sharing of data through ARIADNE

DCC Digital Curation Manual: Instalment on Ontologies

Instalment on the role of ontologies within the digital curation life-cycle. Describes the increasingly important role of ontologies for digital curation, some practical applications, the topic’s place within the OAIS reference model, and advice on developing institution-specific selection frameworks

Science & Technology Digital Library

This document contains information on the activities carried out within the project Science & Technology Digital Library and in particular, it describes the Metadata Core Reference Model. Metadata are strategic for semantic interoperability to and, from the repository. Metadata are essential for available and safe management of digital objects, and for their sustainability and preservation. For these reasons, the project needs to define a specific metadata model. The purpose of this document is to define and share a Metadata CoreScheme called STDLPMetadataCore. STDLPMetadataCore consists of a set of hierarchically structured metadata with variable granularity, mapped through metadata crosswalks with Dublin Core and other common international standards. The scheme is a flexible and extensible set of interoperable metadata, useful to support the research, the communication and the transmission of cultural and scientific content