This document discusses mapping the metadata schema for the CARARE project to the Europeana Data Model (EDM). CARARE aggregates cultural heritage content for archaeology and historic buildings and provides it to Europeana. The mapping identifies correspondences between elements in the two models so CARARE can submit good metadata to Europeana. It examines different scenarios for how CARARE heritage assets and digital resources map to EDM classes like ProvidedCulturalHeritageObject and WebResource. The mapping provides better metadata for 2 million CARARE objects in Europeana and prompted updates to schemas. It confirms EDM is relevant for aggregations and shows metadata mapping requires human supervision.

1. Achieving interoperability between the
CARARE schema for monuments and sites
and the Europeana Data Model
Antoine Isaac, Valentine Charles, Kate Fernie,
Costis Dallas, Dimitris Gavrilis, Stavros Angelis
Dublin Core Conference
4 September 2013

2. Europeana.eu, Europe’s cultural heritage portal
Text
Image
Video
Sound
3D

3. Europeana’s aggregation network
Museums
National
Aggregators
Regional
Aggregators
Archives
Thematic collections
Libraries
29M objects from 2,200 European galleries, museums, archives and libraries
CARARE

4. CARARE: Bringing content for archaeology and
historic buildings to Europeana users
 When: 3 year project (2010-2013)
Who: heritage organisations, archaeological museums, research
institutions and specialist archives
29 partners in 21 countries
What: delivering content to Europeana
What: aggregation services and good practices for content
relating to archaeological monuments and historic sites
• Metadata repository (MORE)
• Metadata schema
http://www.carare.e

5. CARARE Content
 Images, text, videos, 3D models…

6. CARARE Metadata Schema
Heritage asset
Digital
resources
Activities
Collection
4 themes
http://www.carare.eu/eng/Resources/CARARE-Documentation
Acts as an intermediary
between the native metadata
of content providers and
Europeana

7. Heritage Assets
Monuments, landscape areas, artefacts…
 Title, Description
 Characteristics
• Type, Materials, Dimensions, Inscriptions
• Spatial (place, address, map coordinates)
• Temporal (date, time span, period)
 Actors
 Designation, Condition
 References
 Relations
7

8. Digital Resources
Images, texts, videos, audio, 3D models
 Title, Description
 Characteristics
 Publication statement
 Actors
 Link to the object (URL)
 Rights
 Relations
8

9. Europeana Data Model: an example

10. Provided Cultural Heritage Object (CHO)
and descriptive metadata

11. Web Resources – digital representations

12. Aggregations – Bundling it all together

13. Objectives
Mapping: finding correspondences between the elements of both
models so that CARARE can send good metadata to
Europeana
Why is it important to report on this?
 Mapping is rarely an easy issue
 Models are complex, with subtle differences in world views
 Both CARARE and Europeana benefits from “mapping meditation”
One of the hardest (confronting) metadata exercises!
 Sharing concrete experiences benefits to all Europeana partners
And beyond: cf. goals of DC, “a metadata ecosystem”

14. Questions so far?

15. Mapping CARARE data to EDM
A CARARE object becomes one or several EDM Provided
Cultural Heritage Objects with:
 Related web resources
 Aggregations
 Contextual information about place
Some activity and spatial data cannot currently be mapped

16. Creating EDM resources from CARARE data
edm:ProvidedCHO
HA:PamFond/1978155
ore:Aggregation
http://store.carare.eu/uid/iid:1655549
Heritage Asset’s
identifier
PamFond/1978155
CARARE’s Heritage Assets always give raise to one EDM
ProvidedCHOs with its companion Aggregation
The next issue is whether CARARE’s Digital Resources are also EDM
CHOs…
 It depends on the collection!

17. edm:isRepresentationOf
edm:ProvidedCHO 1
edm:ProvidedCHO 5edm:ProvidedCHO 2
Scenario 1: cultural objects representing the CARARE HA
count as CHOs

18. edm:ProvidedCHO 3
edm:ProvidedCHO 1 edm:ProvidedCHO 2
Scenario 2:
Digital Resources are cultural objects qualifying as EDM CHOs
but some are shared among several Heritage Assets

19. edm:ProvidedCHO 1
edm:WebResource 2edm:WebResource 1
Scenario 3:
Digital Resources that are views of lesser cultural importance
are treated as EDM Web Resources

20. Contextual Resources – e.g., Places
CARARE’s geospatial
enrichment represented with
EDM contextual resource
class

21. Conclusions
CARARE provides better metadata to Europeana for 2M objects
In the process
 We identified non-trivial issues
 We documented solutions (this paper!)
 It prompted updates to CARARE’s schema (3D ICONS project)
 It confirms the relevance of a richer model like EDM for Europeana
 Human supervision remains crucial for choosing the right option
Data curators can help here
as with many other quality issues in data aggregation projects!

22. Thank you!
Questions?
aisaac@few.vu.nl
Antoine Isaac, Valentine Charles, Kate Fernie,
Costis Dallas, Dimitris Gavrilis, Stavros Angelis