Towards a representation of temporal data in archival records: Use cases and requirements

Archival records are essential sources of information for historians and digital humanists to understand history. For modern information systems they are often analysed and integrated into Knowledge Graphs for better access, interoperability and re-use. However, due to restrictions of the representation of RDF predicates temporal data within archival records is a challenge to model. This position paper explains requirements for modeling temporal data in archival records based on running research projects in which archival records are analysed and integrated in Knowledge Graphs for research and exploration

Modelling Archival Hierarchies in Practice: Key Aspects and Lessons Learned

An increasing number of archival institutions aim to provide public access to historical documents. Ontologies have been designed, developed and utilised to model the archival description of historical documents and to enable interoperability between different information sources. However, due to the heterogeneous nature of archives and archival systems, current ontologies for the representation of archival content do not always cover all existing structural organisation forms equallywell. After briefly contextualising the heterogeneity in the hierarchical structure of German archives, this paper describes and evaluates differences between two archival ontologies, ArDO and RiC-O, and their approaches to modelling hierarchy levels and archive dynamics

Modelling Archival Hierarchies in Practice: Key Aspects and Lessons Learned

An increasing number of archival institutions aim to provide public access to historical documents. Ontologies have been designed, developed and utilised to model the archival description of historical documents and to enable interoperability between different information sources. However, due to the heterogeneous nature of archives and archival systems, current ontologies for the representation of archival content do not always cover all existing structural organisation forms equally well. After briefly contextualising the heterogeneity in the hierarchical structure of German archives, this paper describes and evaluates differences between two archival ontologies, ArDO and RiC-O, and their approaches to modelling hierarchy levels and archive dynamics

Towards a representation of temporal data in archival records: Use cases and requirements

Archival records are essential sources of information for historians and digital humanists to understand history. For modern information systems they are often analysed and integrated into Knowledge Graphs for better access, interoperability and re-use. However, due to restrictions of the representation of RDF predicates temporal data within archival records is a challenge to model. This position paper explains requirements for modeling temporal data in archival records based on running research projects in which archival records are analysed and integrated in Knowledge Graphs for research and exploration

Knowledge graph enabled curation and exploration of Nuremberg’s city heritage

An important part in European cultural identity relies on European cities and in particular on their histories and cultural heritage. Nuremberg, the home of important artists such as Albrecht Dürer and Hans Sachs developed into the epitome of German and European culture already during the Middle Ages. Throughout history, the city experienced a number of transformations, especially with its almost complete destruction during World War 2. This position paper presents TRANSRAZ, a project with the goal to recreate Nuremberg by means of an interactive 3D tool to explore the city’s architecture and culture ranging from the 17th to the 21st century. The goal of this position paper is to discuss the ongoing work of connecting heterogeneous historical data from various sources previously hidden in archives to the 3D model using knowledge graphs for a scientifically accurate interactive exploration on the Web

Knowledge Extraction for Art History: the Case of Vasari’s The Lives of The Artists (1568)

Knowledge Extraction (KE) techniques are used to convert unstructured information present in texts to Knowledge Graphs (KGs) which can be queried and explored. Despite their potential for cultural heritage domains, such as Art History, these techniques often encounter limitations if applied to domain-specific data. In this paper we present the main challenges that KE has to face on art-historical texts, by using as case study Giorgio Vasari’s The Lives of The Artists. This paper discusses the following NLP tasks for art-historical texts, namely entity recognition and linking, coreference resolution, time extraction, motif extraction and artwork extraction. Several strategies to annotate art-historical data for these tasks and evaluate NLP models are also proposed

Knowledge Extraction for Art History: the Case of Vasari’s The Lives of The Artists (1568)

Knowledge Extraction (KE) techniques are used to convert unstructured information present in texts to Knowledge Graphs (KGs) which can be queried and explored. Despite their potential for cultural heritage domains, such as Art History, these techniques often encounter limitations if applied to domain-specific data. In this paper we present the main challenges that KE has to face on art-historical texts, by using as case study Giorgio Vasari's The Lives of The Artists. This paper discusses the following NLP tasks for art-historical texts, namely entity recognition and linking, coreference resolution, time extraction, motif extraction and artwork extraction. Several strategies to annotate art-historical data for these tasks and evaluate NLP models are also proposed

Multimodal Search on Iconclass using Vision-Language Pre-Trained Models

Terminology sources, such as controlled vocabularies, thesauri and classification systems, play a key role in digitizing cultural heritage. However, Information Retrieval (IR) systems that allow to query and explore these lexical resources often lack an adequate representation of the semantics behind the user's search, which can be conveyed through multiple expression modalities (e.g., images, keywords or textual descriptions). This paper presents the implementation of a new search engine for one of the most widely used iconography classification system, Iconclass. The novelty of this system is the use of a pre-trained vision-language model, namely CLIP, to retrieve and explore Iconclass concepts using visual or textual queries

DDB-EDM to FaBiO: The Case of the German Digital Library

Cultural heritage portals have the goal of providing users with seamless access to all their resources. This paper introduces initial efforts for a user-oriented restructuring of the German Digital Library (DDB). At present, cultural heritage objects (CHOs) in the DDB are modeled using an extended version of the Europeana Data Model (DDBEDM), which negatively impacts usability and exploration. These challenges can be addressed by leveraging ontologies, and building a knowledge graph from the DDB's voluminous collection. Towards this goal, an alignment of bibliographic metadata from DDB-EDM to FRBR-Aligned Bibliographic Ontology (FaBiO) is presented

The Nuremberg Address Knowledge Graph

The research of European history across various time layers gives insights about the development of the European cultural identity. Nuremberg as one of the great European metropolises during the Middle Ages experienced a number of transformations throughout the centuries. Within the TRANSRAZ research project, Nuremberg and the development of its architecture and culture is recreated from the 17th to the 21st century. It will be available for researchers and the public by means of an interactive 3D environment. Goal of this poster paper is to discuss the ongoing work of connecting heterogeneous historical data from sources previously hidden in archives to the 3D model using knowledge graphs for a scientifically accurate exploration of Nuremberg. The contribution of this paper is the Nuremberg Address Knowledge Graph (NA-KG) which contains information of people and organizations in Nuremberg from unstructured data of Nuremberg address books