Event-based Access to Historical Italian War Memoirs

The progressive digitization of historical archives provides new, often domain specific, textual resources that report on facts and events which have happened in the past; among these, memoirs are a very common type of primary source. In this paper, we present an approach for extracting information from Italian historical war memoirs and turning it into structured knowledge. This is based on the semantic notions of events, participants and roles. We evaluate quantitatively each of the key-steps of our approach and provide a graph-based representation of the extracted knowledge, which allows to move between a Close and a Distant Reading of the collection.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figure

Access to recorded interviews: A research agenda

Recorded interviews form a rich basis for scholarly inquiry. Examples include oral histories, community memory projects, and interviews conducted for broadcast media. Emerging technologies offer the potential to radically transform the way in which recorded interviews are made accessible, but this vision will demand substantial investments from a broad range of research communities. This article reviews the present state of practice for making recorded interviews available and the state-of-the-art for key component technologies. A large number of important research issues are identified, and from that set of issues, a coherent research agenda is proposed

Confluence between Library and Information Science and Digital Humanities in Spain. Methodologies, standards, and collections

https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-02-2020-0030The purpose of this paper is to study the relevance of heritage collections and the convergence of methodologies and standards traditionally linked to Library and Information Science (LIS) in the development of digital humanities (DH) research in Spain. This paper is based on a systematic review of scientific publications that are representative of DH in Spain and were published between 2013 and 2018. The analysis considered doctoral theses, journal articles and conference papers. The results highlight the synergies between documentary heritage, Library and Information Science and digital humanities. However, it appears that there is a scarcity of scientific literature to support the confluence of LIS and DH and a limited formal connection between heritage institutions and the areas of academia that reuse and enrich these source collections. The review of representative scholarly DH publications was mainly based on the metadata that describe the content of articles, thesis, and conference papers. This work relies on the thematic indexing (descriptors and keywords) of the analysed documents but their level of quality and consistency is very diverse. The topic of the study has not been explored before and this work could contribute to the international debate on the interrelation and complementarity between Library and Information Science and digital humanities. In addition, this paper shows the contribution that standards and documentary methodologies make to projects in which technology is applied to humanities disciplines. We propose that there is an urgent need to strengthen the “scientific relationships” between heritage institutions, as well as enhancing links between the academic field of DH and LIS in order to improve teaching and research strategies in conjunction

Access to Digital Cultural Heritage: Innovative Applications of Automated Metadata Generation

Access to Digital Cultural Heritage: Innovative Applications of Automated Metadata Generation Edited by: Krassimira Ivanova, Milena Dobreva, Peter Stanchev, George Totkov Authors (in order of appearance): Krassimira Ivanova, Peter Stanchev, George Totkov, Kalina Sotirova, Juliana Peneva, Stanislav Ivanov, Rositza Doneva, Emil Hadjikolev, George Vragov, Elena Somova, Evgenia Velikova, Iliya Mitov, Koen Vanhoof, Benoit Depaire, Dimitar Blagoev Reviewer: Prof., Dr. Avram Eskenazi Published by: Plovdiv University Publishing House "Paisii Hilendarski" ISBN: 978-954-423-722-6 2012, Plovdiv, Bulgaria First EditionThe main purpose of this book is to provide an overview of the current trends in the field of digitization of cultural heritage as well as to present recent research done within the framework of the project D002-308 funded by Bulgarian National Science Fund. The main contributions of the work presented are in organizing digital content, metadata generation, and methods for enhancing resource discovery. The parts of the book can be downloaded here

Semantic enrichment for enhancing LAM data and supporting digital humanities. Review article

With the rapid development of the digital humanities (DH) field, demands for historical and cultural heritage data have generated deep interest in the data provided by libraries, archives, and museums (LAMs). In order to enhance LAM data’s quality and discoverability while enabling a self-sustaining ecosystem, “semantic enrichment” becomes a strategy increasingly used by LAMs during recent years. This article introduces a number of semantic enrichment methods and efforts that can be applied to LAM data at various levels, aiming to support deeper and wider exploration and use of LAM data in DH research. The real cases, research projects, experiments, and pilot studies shared in this article demonstrate endless potential for LAM data, whether they are structured, semi-structured, or unstructured, regardless of what types of original artifacts carry the data. Following their roadmaps would encourage more effective initiatives and strengthen this effort to maximize LAM data’s discoverability, use- and reuse-ability, and their value in the mainstream of DH and Semantic Web

Bridging communities of practice: Emerging technologies for content-centered linking

The project fosters convergence between two communities by addressing complementary aspects of a shared opportunity. Digital humanists are at the forefront of developing ways to render cultural heritage metadata increasingly interoperable as linked open data in tandem with information professionals working in libraries, archives, and museums. Computer scientists are developing automated techniques for extracting linkable data from the content itself. Bringing these communities together offers transformational potential for the application of a critical infrastructure in humanities scholarship. Two workshops will be organized to seize this unique opportunity. The first will bring together humanities scholars and computer scientists to explore applications of new content linking technologies to dispersed and disparate material. In the second, a larger group of humanities scholars will identify specific content to which techniques described in the previous workshop will be applied

Personalization in cultural heritage: the road travelled and the one ahead

Over the last 20 years, cultural heritage has been a favored domain for personalization research. For years, researchers have experimented with the cutting edge technology of the day; now, with the convergence of internet and wireless technology, and the increasing adoption of the Web as a platform for the publication of information, the visitor is able to exploit cultural heritage material before, during and after the visit, having different goals and requirements in each phase. However, cultural heritage sites have a huge amount of information to present, which must be filtered and personalized in order to enable the individual user to easily access it. Personalization of cultural heritage information requires a system that is able to model the user (e.g., interest, knowledge and other personal characteristics), as well as contextual aspects, select the most appropriate content, and deliver it in the most suitable way. It should be noted that achieving this result is extremely challenging in the case of first-time users, such as tourists who visit a cultural heritage site for the first time (and maybe the only time in their life). In addition, as tourism is a social activity, adapting to the individual is not enough because groups and communities have to be modeled and supported as well, taking into account their mutual interests, previous mutual experience, and requirements. How to model and represent the user(s) and the context of the visit and how to reason with regard to the information that is available are the challenges faced by researchers in personalization of cultural heritage. Notwithstanding the effort invested so far, a definite solution is far from being reached, mainly because new technology and new aspects of personalization are constantly being introduced. This article surveys the research in this area. Starting from the earlier systems, which presented cultural heritage information in kiosks, it summarizes the evolution of personalization techniques in museum web sites, virtual collections and mobile guides, until recent extension of cultural heritage toward the semantic and social web. The paper concludes with current challenges and points out areas where future research is needed

Ontologijos ir technologiniai sprendimai skaitmeninio kultūros paveldo integravimui ir prieigai: Lietuvos patirtis

 Web technologies are the key for the implementing and ensuring the full range of user needs in the digital age. On the other hand, the issue of unified representation of digital content from diverse memory institutions in order to ensure semantic integrity still remains a matter of urgency. Semantic interoperability of information and data is essential in an integrated system. In this paper, we analyze and describe an ontology-based metadata interoperability approach and how this approach could be applied for memory institution data from diverse sources which do not support ontologies. In particular, we describe the use of the CIDOC CRM ontology as a mediating schema within Lithuania’s Information System of the Virtual Electronic Heritage (hereinafter ”VEPIS”) The paper introduces the role of the CIDOC CRM based Thesaurus of Personal Names, Geographical Names and Historical Chronology (hereinafter “BAVIC”), which operates as a core ontology within VEPIS by allowing to understand things and relationships between things as well as identify the time and space of things. The paper also focuses on trust of the cultural information on the Web. Users make trust judgments based on provenance that may or may not be explicitly offered to them. In particular, we describe how provenance is managed within digital preservation and access processes within VEPIS and define whether this management meets the W3C Provenance Incubator Group’s Requirements for Provenance on the Web. The paper is based on the results of the research initiated in 2018–2019 at the Faculty of Communication and the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of Vilnius University by authors of this paper.Saityno technologijos sudaro galimybę tenkinti įvairiapusiškas informacines skaitmeninės eros vartotojų reikmes. Kita vertus, iki šiol aktuali problema išlieka atminties institucijų į saityną teikiamo skaitmeninto turinio semantinis integralumas. Informacijos ir duomenų turinio semantinis suderinamumas ypač aktualus integruotoms sistemoms. Straipsnyje apibūdinama ontologijomis grindžiamų metaduomenų koncepcija. Straipsnyje aprašomas CIDOC/CRM ontologijos kaip tarpininkavimo schemos vaidmuo VEPIS sistemoje. Straipsnis taip pat supažindina su Asmenvardžių, vietovardžių ir istorinės chronologijos tezauru (BAVIC), VEPIS atliekančiu pamatinės ontologijos vaidmenį (leidžia suprasti esybes ir jų santykius, jų santykį su laiku ir erdve). Kita straipsnyje analizuojama problema yra susijusi su kultūros informacijos turinio patikimumu saityne. Vartotojai apie informacijos ir duomenų patikimumą sprendžia remdamiesi proveniencija, kuri gali arba negali būti jiems tiesiogiai pateikiama. Straipsnyje analizuojama, kaip proveniencija yra valdoma VEPIS skaitmeninto turinio ilgalaikio išsaugojimo ir jos sklaidos procesų metu, ir kartu nustatoma, ar šie procesai atitinka proveniencijos saityne W3C Provenance Incubator Group reikalavimus. Straipsnyje remiamasi Vilniaus universiteto Komunikacijos fakulteto ir Matematikos fakulteto 2018–2019 m. straipsnio autorių inicijuoto tyrimo rezultatais