This document summarizes a presentation about sharing cultural heritage data using linked open data. It discusses initiatives by the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision to digitize and share cultural heritage resources openly online to promote reuse. This includes the Images for the Future digitization project and advocacy work through Open Cultural Data. It also describes the Agora project linking museum objects to historical events. Benefits mentioned are increased participation, visibility, and opportunities for third-party applications. Examples highlighted are datasets shared via Europeana and new metrics needed to measure outcomes of open sharing.

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Johan Oomen, Lotte Belice Baltusen (Netherlands Institute for Sound andVision)
Marieke van Erp (VU University Amsterdam)
ell brown / CC BY
http://agora.cs.vu.nl
Sharing cultural heritage the linked open data way
@johanoomen, @lottebelice, @merpeltje

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Sharing data: why?
• Promote sharability of cultural heritage
resources (data and metadata) to:
• Support end-user participation
• Maximise visibility
• Stimulate business innovation (higher
quality and diversity)

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The context of this talk
1. Digitisation: Images for the Future
2. Advocacy: Open Cultural Data
3. Computer Science:Agora project

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Link to the full paper
• http://www.museumsandtheweb.com/
mw2012/papers/
sharing_cultural_heritage_the_linked_open_
data

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1. Images for the Future
• a 7 year digitisation project in 90 seconds
• VIMEO http://vimeo.com/21965366
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2. Open Cultural Data
• ...a network of cultural professionals,
developers, designers, copyright specialists
and open data experts
• ...support open cultural data and encourages
the development of valuable cultural
applications.
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http://www.opencultuurdata.nl/about/

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Open Cultural Data
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Workshops
Masterclasses
Hackatons
Datablogs

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Rijksmuseum Dataset

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3.The Agora Project
• 2009-2013
• VU Amsterdam (CS + History Departments),
Netherlands Institute for Sound andVision, Rijksmuseum
Amsterdam
• Linking museum objects by extracting information on
historic events.
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is part of…

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• Historical context is missing
• What happened before/after
• ‘Grand narratives’
• Based on keyword search
• Exact matches
• ...and manual annotation is costly
why enrichment?

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Simple Event Model

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New Links

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...highlighting two examples
• Open Images (openimages.eu)
• emphasis: sharing content and data
• Europeana (europeana.eu)
• example of linked open data

25. Open, open, open!
•Open source (MMBase, FFmpeg, LAMP)
•Open media formats (Ogg Theora, WebM)
•Open standards (HTML5)
•Open API (OAI-PMH)
•Open content!

26. Open content
•Creative Commons – BY-SA as recommended
license
•3000 items from the Sound and Vision collection
•Work with other providers too
•Low resolution vs. high resolution

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1. Reuse and audience
participation

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2. Increase impact and
visibility

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37. Syndicate to external platforms
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41. • 1.569 items items Wikimedia Commons
• Used within 437 Dutch-language articles
• Also: 570 articles in 54 (!) non-Dutch languages
• 3 million pageviews every month
• Most traffic from the English-language Wikipedia
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3. New applications by 3rd
parties

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• http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=MXt4ExebHsA

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Europeana Foundation
• http://vimeo.com/36752317

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Learn more
• See paper for more detailed information

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Europeana ~ over 20 million items

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Seman&c
browsing
http://eculture.cs.vu.nl/europeana
(enriched by AAT,
ULAN, WordNet,
IconClass

49. Conclusions
• Time to embrace openness: innovation, impact, reuse
• New success metrics needed:
• Income: measured in money (low/high res)
• Public Outreach: to measure the number of (online) visitors
• Reuse: to measure the use of data and content by heritage
institutions themselves and by others
• Public Participation: to measure the added metadata and
content
• Collaboration (Open Culture Data) helps to built momentum and
raise awareness
• Linked Open Data gaining momentum in the CH domain

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credits
• Publications etc. http://agora.cs.vu.nl
• Merci Web & Media Group atVU University
for inspiration & images!!
@johanoomen, @lottebelice, @merpeltje