The eCHASE project is using semantic web technologies to demonstrate sustainable business models based on access and exploitation of digital cultural heritage content at a European level. In this paper we describe the eCHASE project and outline the system architecture

Addis, Matthew

Lewis, Paul

Martinez, Kirk

Pillinger, Adrian

Prideaux, Daniel

Sinclair, Patrick

English

Southampton (e-Prints Soton)

Europe’s  digital  cultural  heritage  content  has  tremendous  exploitation  potential  in applications such as Education, Publishing, e-Commerce, Public Access and Tourism. Value is hugely ampliﬁed if the content can be aggregated, repurposed and distributed at a European level. The  eCHASE  project  is  using  semantic  web  technologies  to  enable  sustainable business models based on access and exploitation of digital cultural heritage content. eCHASE: Exploiting Cultural Heritageusing the Semantic Webelectronic Cultural Heritage made Accessible for Sustainable ExploitationFurther information at: http://www.echase.orgP. Sinclair, P. Lewis and K. Martinez Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom pass,phl,km@ecs.soton.ac.ukM. Addis, A. Pillinger and D. Prideaux IT Innovation Centre, Southampton, SO16 7NP, United Kingdom mja,agp,djp@it-innovation.soton.ac.uk E41 Appellationsrefer to/identifyE39 ActorsE28 Conceptual ObjectsE55 Typesrefer to/refineE2 Temporal Entitiesparticipate in affect/refer towithin atE53 PlacesCIDOC CRMThe  CIDOC  Conceptual  Reference  Model (CIDOC CRM) is a reference model for the interchange  of  information  in  the  cultural heritage domain. The  eCHASE  project  is  using  the  CIDOC CRM as the common metadata schema to cover  the  different  metadata  repositories from our partners' collections.http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/TavernaWe  are  employing  the  Taverna Workbench, a service oriented workﬂow system,  to  perform  the  mapping  from different metadata schemas.http://taverna.sourceforge.net/repository, and the portal exposes the content-based searching facilities provided by the media engine system.    Figure 3: mSpace interface.  Browsing  is  provided  by  an  mSpace  interface  [3],  an interaction model designed to allow the navigation of multi-dimensional spaces. A screen shot of the mSpace interface is shown in Figure 3. The mSpace interface uses a multi-panel display, where slices are presented as columns arranged from left to right. Selection in a slice will update the display so that the values displayed in the next slice (i.e. to the right of the current slice) are related to that value. For example, if there is a slice of artists and the next slice is painting titles, selecting an artist will display only that artist’s paintings in the titles slice. Values in each slice are filtered, so that there are always results to view in the next column when a selection is made. When an item is chosen in a slice, details about that item are displayed in a detail panel; if no details are available for that item, examples of related objects  are  shown. Slices can be freely interchanged, removed and new slices can be added to the mSpace. Users are  able to record column arrangements that they find interesting, including selected items, for quick access.  Thesauri navigation is provided by presenting a thesaurus tree structure to the user, such as concept hierarchies or gazetteer place  names,  as  shown  in  Figure  4.  Users  will  use  the thesaurus  navigation  and  visualization  to  select  controlled terms that are then used to perform searches on the metadata in the repository. For example, a user may want to search for items  that  were  created  in  London,  England.  By  simply performing  a  metadata  free  text  search  the  user  may  find items in Londonderry, Northern Ireland as well as London, England. The thesauri browser provides a way of presenting the structure of countries, cities and so on in a way that allows users  to  constrain  queries  just  on  particular  cities  within  a certain country  Figure 4: Gazetteer browser.   Figure 5: Item details including place visualisation  Gazetteer  latitude  and  longitude  data  is  also  used  for visualizing place information for each object. Figure 5 shows the details page for an object, and displays a map of the place it was created. The map visualization interface is provided by the  Google  Maps  API  [5].  Therefore,  even  if  the  place associated with a search result is obscure (e.g. the name of a small village in a remote part of Poland), then it is still very easy for the user to get a visual impression of where that place is  in  the  context  of  Eastern  Europe.  The  Google  Maps interface  through  eCHASE  is  fully  navigable,  e.g.  the  user SKOSSKOS  provides  a  model  for expressing  the  basic  structure and  content  of  concept schemes, such as thesauri.http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/ The  framework  supports  a search  and  retrieval  protocol based on the SRW speciﬁcation developed  by  the  z39.50 community,  providing  a  “search” operation  to  handle  common query  language  (CQL)  queries. The  SRW  supports  queries based on each collection's legacy metadata  schema  and  on  the uniﬁed  database  schema  based on the CRM.Having  transformed the legacy data into a consistent,  well-structured  schema,  it is converted into RDF. The  RDF  model  is used  by  the  mSpace browser component of the webapp.Textual  queries can be run on the data in the uniﬁed metadata  through a  form  based search.A media engine service hosts the  media  and  provides content-based  querying facilities,  including  searches based on colour or texture.Textual  and  content  based queries can be combined: for example  one  can  search  for red chairs.Thesauri navigation is provided by presenting  a  thesaurus  tree structure  to  the  user,  such  as concept  hierarchies  or  gazetteer place names.Gazetteer  latitude  and  longitude data  is  also  used  for  visualizing creation place information for each object.The  map  visualization interface is provided by the Google Maps API.Browsing is provided by an mSpace interface, an interaction model designed to allow the navigation of multi-dimensional spaces. http://www.mspace.fmUser content is managed by a personal light box tool, which gives authors and experts a mechanism to collect, organize and annotate information for later use. Items found through the search engine with the web interface can be added to one of the users light box collections to either be used for future searches or to be exported as an item in the content package the user is building. Content Product CreationLegacy Data Selection<?xml v  <ref:    <grXMLOnce  a  collection  has  been completed  it  can  be  exported  as  a complete  package  for  further  use  in the  content  creation  process.  These bundles  will  contain  the  media  and associated metadata in XML format.Content  product  producers  (publishers,  education product  providers)  load  the  exported  material  into content authoring packages where high quality, editorial product  can  be  developed. This  could  include  books, DVDs or web sites.For example, an e-Learning module developer creates a  virtual  exhibition  of  renaissance  art,  which  itself contains  links  back  to  the  original  sources  of information  as  well  as  a  structured  series  of  learning tasks to accompany the book and DVD.  Content product producers provide  feedback  to  content holders  about  what  content they want to access and use.Material  is  sourced  from  cultural  heritage  and content  holding  organisations  across  Europe, including museums, libraries and archives. The  metadata  is  provided  in  various  formats, ranging  from  database  dumps  and  XML  to Microsoft  Excel  spreadsheets  and  CSV  ﬁles. Metadata  can  also  be  provided  embedded  in  the media  itself.  Many  media  formats  are  accepted, including images, video and sound ﬁles.Data TransformationKnowledge Base CreationSearch, Retrieval and NavigationContent Selection and AnnotationExportSemantic MappingeCHASE is a 3.5 MEURO eContent project that started in January 2005 and runs for 2 years.  eCHASE is co-funded by the European Commission, DG Information Society, under the contract EDC 11262, within the "European digital content for the global networks" programme. The eCHASE consortium includes Istituto Geograﬁco De Agostini S.p.A., IT Innovation and IAM within Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, Fratelli Alinari, Giunti Interactive Lab S.r.l., Hewlett Packard, Österreichischer Rundfunk, System Simulation Ltd and Getty Images. 

eCHASE: Exploiting Cultural Heritage using the Semantic Web

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