1. Opening Linking Sharing Data
Digital Cultural Heritage, China
30 September – 2 October 2015
China Centre
Dominic Oldman
ResearchSpace
1st October 2015
5. CLAROS
• Pioneering System created in
2011.
• Demonstrated contextual data
harmonisation in a user
friendly platform.
• Provided inspiration for other
projects like ResearchSpace.
• Collaboration a natural
consequence.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13. How can we meaningfully publish and integrate
Cultural Heritage resources?
1. How do you publish internal data so external
audiences can understand it, use it, enjoy it…
2. Cultural heritage data isn’t static – how to you
keep open data up to date? What happens when
something changes?
3. How do you integrate data (enrich) while
maintaining local meaning and context?
4. How do we derive new knowledge and preserve
it?
5. How can you fulfil the requirements of a wide
range of audiences?
6. How do you provide stable and sustainable
platforms for creating robust user applications?
CH
OPAC
Public
Engagement
Research Education
14.
15. Problem 1
The Problem with Raw Data
People (Experts)
Fill in the gaps
User Interface
Business Rules
Database
16. “The majority are seeking a known object, and utilise discipline
specific search terms, showing goal-driven intent and a detailed
prior knowledge of the museum.”
[Scholarly Information Seeking Behaviour in the British Museum Online Collection, (2011), Terras, Ross]
Language
17. “…browsing in a museum
environment is somewhat
problematic as users have to be
fairly linear in their search
strategies with little satisfaction
when searching broadly or
browsing.”
[Scholarly Information Seeking Behaviour in the British Museum Online Collection,
(2011), Terras, Ross]
Linear Search
18. Representing Culture
• Takes a long time to prepare an exhibition.
• Things are arranged in very deliberate
ways to illustrate concepts.
• Often need objects from other institutions
to complete the narratives.
• Builds an understanding of the subject
using context.
• Its asks question about relevance and
significance.
19. “…the information explosion, far
from serving the needs of the
burgeoning knowledge economy,
intensifies the need for quality
information and expertise that
libraries and librarians provide”.
Beyond the Book - Schnapp & Battles
We need to stop seeing data
as a second class citizen
20. The Problem of Uninteresting Universals
Adjectives & Substantives
• “a pot”
• “embossed”
Verbs and Proposition
• ‘carried’ out by
• ‘motivated’ by
• “Forms part of”
21. We need to get subject experts to represent
their knowledge
24. Object type: tanto; short sword-sheath; menuki; kozuka; hilt; fuchi-kashira; blade
Museum number: 1992,0523.2
Description: Sword blade (tanto); with mounting (short sword-sheath; kozuka; hilt; menuki; fuchi-kashira). Blade: made of steel; signed. Sheath: made of black lacquered
wood. Hilt: with gold mekugi; made of wood and skin (ray). Kozuka: crane in high-relief coloured metal inlay on silver ground; inscribed. Menuki: in shape of corn?; made of
gilded metal. Fuchi-kashira: made of black lacquered metal. Soshu school blade and Goto school metal fittings.
Producer name: Made by: Goto Ichijo (metal fittings); Made by: Shintogo Kunimitsu (blade)
Culture/period: Meiji Era (metal fittings); Kamakura Period (blade)
Date: 14thC (early; blade); 19thC (late; metal fittings)
Production place: Made in: Japan (Asia,Japan)
Materials: wood; steel; silver; ray skin; metal; lacquer; gold
Technique: lacquered; inlaid ; high relief; gilded; colour
Inscriptions:
Inscription Type: signature
Inscription Script: Japanese
Inscription Position: blade, tang, obverse
Inscription Content: 国光; Inscription Transliteration; Kunimitsu, etc
Curator's comments: Harris 2005 - 'Hira zukuri' tanto blade with the slight 'uchizori' curve of the late Kamakura period. The blade has 'itame' with 'mokume' grain with 'jifu
utsuri' and much 'chikei'. The 'suguha hamon' is of fine 'nie' with 'kinsuji'. The maker, Shintogo Kunimitsu, is feted as the founder of the Soshu tradition at Kamakura in the
late Kamakura period.
Bibliography: Harris 2005 fig. 11, col. pl. 11, 12 bibliographic details
Location: G93/case10
Exhibition history
Exhibited: 2006 Oct 13-, BM Japanese Galleries, 'Japan from prehistory to the present'
Subjects: arms/armour term details;
Acquisition name: Purchased through: Eskenazi Ltd biography; Purchased from: Christie's biography; Previous owner/ex-collection: Dr Walter A Compton biography
Acquisition date: 1992
Acquisition notes: Bought at Christie's (lot 226) by Eskanazi Ltd at the BM's request. Former collection of Walter A Compton.
Department: Asia
Registration number: 1992,0523.2
Production
(Event)
Inscription
(Event)
Authoring
(Event)
Exhibition
(Event)
Things
Types
Information
Objects
Expressions
Works
Places
Existence
(Event)
Destruction
(Event)
Appellation
Acquisition
(Event)
Actors
Visual Items
This context is easy for subject experts to add!
31. Digital Argument Requires Context
• Digital representation – Should not be a
poor surrogate of reality.
• Rather a platform for the externalisation
of argument.
Observation
Belief
Proposition Belief Value
Concluded that
that Hold to be
Belief Adoption
adopted
Inference
Making
Used as a Premise
This isn’t a belief of
the original
organisations
32. Dominic Oldman
Head of ResearchSpace
British Museum
doldman@thebritishmuseum.ac.uk
Contextual
Editor's Notes
This is simply running through some of the question. How can, for example, the library OPAC evolve into a system that not only allows searching and exploration across different resources but can integrate those resources so that these other systems are not simply lumped together but one search system can find related things regardless of the source classification systems without loss of data.
The call for raw data does however create problems for highly variable and heterogeneous cultural heritage data. It is different from a train time table or the location of road works. Although even these datasets may require context for them to be useful.
This is the big problem. Raw data can be highly ambiguous and is only useful within a cultural heritage organisation because its language and context is already understood implicitly. Some is contained in the other layers of the application (Rules, User interface) and some in the minds of the subject experts themselves.
These things are not communicated when we simply publish data from a traditional database. Implicit meaning is simply not there.
When we present our data on the Web we find that it has limited usefulness for people who not familiar with our internal conventions. It’s not as useful for wider and different audiences who live and work outside our institutional worlds.
A survey by University College London in 2013 found that people using the BM’s collection online system were more able to find the object record that they wanted if they already had an understanding of the data and the and terminology used. The implication is that the system is less accessible and therefore less used by other groups who are interested in the information but who are not well served by the way the data is represented.
Additionally, because it generally provides what amounts to an electronic reference card it doesn’t readily provide a means for non-linear exploration. That wasn’t the objective of the design of the original catalogue systems that have simple been transplanted onto the Web.
Again the UCL survey makes the point that other groups interested in broader exploration of the dataset, like academic researchers, find the system doesn’t comply with normal research methods. The model is one designed by museum documentation not for external audiences. Just because we publish openly to the Web doesn’t necessarily make the data open in this other sense.
At the very top level of the CRM Animal, Vegetable and Mineral is put into a event based context with people, places and temporal entities such as events. A framework under which all things can be given a universal semantic framework so that we can start to harmonise information across the classification divisions.
It uses the same semantic framework to record prints, medals, ethnographic materials, art, and classical antiquities
But equally monument information, in this case differentiating between the original thing and reproductions of it including photographic and digital media.
It can record bibliographic information and text and refer to translations. But can then also relate to the objects which relate to the people and places named in the text.
If you don’t represent data correctly then how can you use it for serious research or education – or for that matter engagement.
The information that knowledge institutions publish is a proposition of the organisation often based on observation of the objects they describe.
Adoption of this information by Aggregators is only true belief adoption if the information is represented faithfully. Otherwise it is simply a independent proposition of the aggregator open to challenge.