1. ArtSTOR When the Rubber Hits the Road Using the CIDOC CRM in the Real World Tony Gill 27 March 2003

2. ArtSTOR Outline  The problem of cultural information diversity  Data models and ontologies  CIDOC CRM overview  Mapping to the CIDOC CRM  CRM benefits  Real-world & envisioned applications –RLG Cultural Materials  The future?

3. ArtSTOR Cultural infodiversity  Cultural information held by museums, libraries and archives is necessarily heterogeneous –Curatorial approaches –Subject disciplines –Granularity –Level of detail –Data structure –Data content values

4. ArtSTOR Cultural infodiversity  Cultural information held by museums, libraries and archives is necessarily heterogeneous –Curatorial approaches –Subject disciplines –Granularity –Level of detail –Data structure –Data content values  Infodiversity is good!

5. ArtSTOR Example 1: Photograph Type:Image Title: Allied Leaders at Yalta Date: 1945 Publisher:United Press International (UPI) Source:The Bettmann Archive Copyright:Corbis Keywords:Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin

6. ArtSTOR Example 2: Document Type:Text Title: Protocol of Proceedings of Crimea Conference Title.Subtitle: II. Declaration of Liberated Europe Date: February 11, 1945. Creator:Premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Prime Minister of the United Kingdom President of the United States of America Publisher:State Department “The following declaration has been approved: The Premier of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the President of the United States of America have consulted with each other in the common interests of the people of their countries and those of liberated Europe. They jointly declare their mutual agreement to concert… and to ensure that Germany will never again be able to disturb the peace of the world…”

7. ArtSTOR Example 3: Getty TGN record TGN ID:7012124 Names:Yalta (C,V), Jalta (C,V) Types:inhabited place(C), city (C) Position:Lat: 44 30 N, Long: 034 10 E Hierarchy:Europe (continent) <– Ukrayina (nation) <– Krym (autonomous republic) Note:…Site of conference between Allied powers in WWII in 1945… Source:TGN, Thesaurus of Geographic Names

8. ArtSTOR Example problem  Heterogeneous descriptions clearly linked by a common event  Only matching data value is “1945”!

9. ArtSTOR Cultural infodiversity  No single (meta)data schema fits all  Significant conceptual overlaps –e.g. People, places, events, objects, relationships  Traditional “compromise” approach –Generic simple descriptions for initial discovery e.g. Dublin Core –Rich domain-specific descriptions for depth e.g. EAD, MARC  Access by lowest common denominator  Crosswalk proliferation  mapping madness!

10. ArtSTOR Data models  Data models are structures for information  Good data models “mirror” the reality the data are attempting to describe  Different data modeling methodologies –Entity-Relation (Relational, SQL, RDBMS) –Object-Oriented (O-O, OODBMS) –Semantic Networks (RDF, DAML+OIL)  Few cultural information standards are based on good data models!

11. ArtSTOR Ontology  “A branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being” –Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary  “Ontology” co-opted by knowledge representation & computer science communities  “A specification of a conceptualization” –Tom Gruber, “A translation approach to portable ontologies” Knowledge Acquisition, 1993  Thesauri & classification schemes are ontologies!

12. ArtSTOR CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model  Object-oriented “domain ontology” –Formalizes the semantics required to describe objects and relationships in the cultural heritage context –NOT a metadata standard! But can be used to express metadata standards  Represents over a decade of development –Based on ICOM/CIDOC “International Guidelines for Museum Object Information: The CIDOC Information Categories” –Scope covers rich information exchange between museums, libraries and archives

13. ArtSTOR “The primary role of the CRM is to serve as a basis for mediation of cultural heritage information and thereby provide the semantic 'glue' needed to transform today's disparate, localised information sources into a coherent and valuable global resource.” Martin Doerr & Nick Crofts http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/

14. ArtSTOR CRM overview  CRM v3.4 comprises 84 Classes interlinked by 139 Properties  Classes inherit properties from their parents, or Superclasses  Event-centric and empirical; observations about the world  Short-cuts, for typically incomplete knowledge  Highly extensible through Sub-typing of classes and properties  Ideally suited to RDF implementation

15. ArtSTOR Scope of the CRM  Intended scope: Exchange and integration of scientific documentation about museum collections –“Scientific” means sufficient depth & precision for research –“Museum” defined by ICOM –Includes contextual information –Includes exchange between museums, libraries & archives –Excludes administrative information, e.g. visitor statistics  Practical scope: The set of extant data sets and structures used in museum documentation  “The curated knowledge of museums”

16. participate in Actors Conceptual Objects Physical Entities Temporal Entities affect Types refine Appellations identify/name location occur at within Time-Spans Places

19. ArtSTOR Mapping to the CRM  Mappings entail “deconstruction” of original records –Artifact-centric nature of descriptions discarded –Implicit entities (especially events) made explicit  Mappings to existing standards –EAD –IFLA FRBR –SPECTRUM –AMICO –And others

20. ArtSTOR Making implicit concepts explicit  The element DC.Creator implies: –An Actor, who created something –An Actor Appellation by which to identify the creator –An Event, the act of creation –Some Man-Made Stuff, the physical or conceptual thing that was created and is being described by the DC record  E24 Physical Man-Made Stuff p108 was produced by E12 Production Event p14 carried out by E39 Actor p131 is identified by E82 Actor Appellation  E28 Conceptual Object p94 was created by E65 Creation Event p14 carried out by E39 Actor p131 is identified by E82 Actor Appellation

21. E31 Document “Yalta Agreement” E7 Activity Crimea Conference E65 Conc. Creation * E52 Time-Span February 1945 E39 Actor E52 Time-Span 1945-02-11 E39 Actor E53 Place 7012124 E38 Image carried out participated in falls within took place at within refers to has created

22. ArtSTOR Benefits of the CRM  Elegant and simple compared to comparable Entity- Relation model  Coherently integrates information at varying degrees of detail  Readily extensible through object-oriented class ‘typing’ and ‘specializations’  Richer semantic content; allows (some) inferences to be made from ‘fuzzy’ data  Designed for semantically lossless mediation of heterogeneous cultural heritage information

23. ArtSTOR CRM learning curve  Model necessarily complex in order to model the broad domain of cultural heritage information  Object-oriented modeling paradigm unfamiliar compared to entity-relation modeling –Just similar enough to be confusing! –Object-oriented models can be implemented using relational DBMS  Notation problems –Difficult to express mappings textually

24. ArtSTOR Real-world applications  Conceptual reference –Disambiguating dialogue (especially between domain & technology experts) –Validation of schema (c.f. Patrick LeBouef, FRBR)  Information exchange –Canonical “master” mappings –Expression in XML or RDFS

25. ArtSTOR Real-world applications  System & schema design –RLG Cultural Materials (U.S., more next slide…) –Finnish National Gallery Database (Finland) –City of Geneva MusInfo Project (Switzerland) –Germanische Nationalmuseum Nuremberg (Germany) –Monument Inventory Data Standard (U.K.) –Heritage Data Dictionary (U.K.) –CLIO Cultural Documentation System, ICS-FORTH & Benaki Museum (Greece)

26. ArtSTOR RLG Cultural Materials  Online multimedia resource  Cultural content aggregated from diverse international alliance of RLG member institutions  “Where Museums, Libraries & Archives Intersect”

27. ArtSTOR RLG Cultural Materials Data Model  Wildly heterogeneous data  Support “who, what, when, where” access  Access paths for searching reviewed by Description Advisory Group  Resulted in “event-based” data model, influenced by: –CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model – Metadata Framework –ABC/Harmony Logical Model  Specialization by Type

28. ArtSTOR Object production information Man made object ProductionActivityActors performed (carried out by)had specific purpose (was purpose of)had general purpose (was purpose of)used object (was used for)produced (was produced by)was generally used Type

29. ArtSTOR Object production information Man made object Event Actors performed (carried out by)had specific purpose (was purpose of)had general purpose (was purpose of)used object (was used for)produced (was produced by)was generally used Type

30. Cultural Materials Logical Data Model Version: 2001-05-04 ‘T’ signifies a link to the Type entity (not displayed for clarity) “Show me photographs of New York from the 1940’s…” PlaceName = “New York”EventType = “creation” EventBeginDate = “1940” EventEndDate = “1949” WorkType = “Photograph”surrogateURL = “http://…”

31. ArtSTOR

32. Envisioned applications  Mediation systems & agents –Meaningful queries and results across distributed heterogeneous data sources  Semantic web for culture?

33. ArtSTOR The future  Recognition of the benefits of adherence to cultural descriptive standards  Extension standards for data syntax & values  “Entity Identity” problem  Shared interdisciplinary authority files –E.g. Getty ULAN, LC NAF, Encoded Archival Context Initiative  Semantic web for culture –Gradual transition from record-centric documentation to knowledge networks –How to navigate potentially unbounded networks? –How to maintain links within potentially unbounded networks?