1. The Future of Open Cultural Heritage?
LIS 670 Cultural Heritage Description and Access
Dr. Cristina Pattuelli
Spring 2014
Laura Brown, Ellie Horowitz, Emory Johnson, Meredith Powers, Sarah Quick

2. agenda
➔ Introduction
Mission and scope of Europeana, DPLA, and Bibframe
➔ Knowledge Structure + Organization
➔ Intended User Communities + Outreach
Who is served by these initiatives? How?
➔ Challenges
➔ Looking Ahead

3. Mission: DPLA & Europeana
Launched in 2008, Europeana
aims to “create new ways
for people to engage with
their cultural history,
whether it's for work,
learning or pleasure.”
European Commission
Officially established in 2013,
the Digital Public Library of
America “...strives to contain
the full breadth of human
expression, from the written
word, to works of art and
culture, to records of
America’s heritage, to the
efforts and data of
science…”
dp.la

4. Bibframe Objectives
➔Differentiate between conceptual concepts
and physical manifestations
➔Unambiguously identify information entities
(authorities)
➔Leverage and expose relations between
entities

5. European Data Model (EDM)
A few requirements:
➔ Distinguish “provided objects” (painting, book, movie, etc.) from their
digital representations
➔ Distinguish object from its metadata record
➔ Support for contextual resources, including concepts from controlled
vocabularies

6. Core Classes
EDM has three core classes that represent the data:
➔ edm:ProvidedCHO - The provided cultural heritage object, such as a painting or sculpture
➔ edm:WebResource - Digital representation of the object
➔ ore:Aggregation - Demonstrates that the CHO and web resource can be represented as a whole
source: http://pro.europeana.eu/documents/900548/
770bdb58-c60e-4beb-a687-874639312ba5

7. Europeana Contextual Classes
➔ edm:Agent
➔ edm:Event
➔ edm:Place
➔ edm:TimeSpan
➔ skos:Concept
source: http://pro.europeana.eu/documents/900548/770bdb58-c60e-4beb-a687-874639312ba5

8. Source: http://dp.la/about/map
Metadata Models: DPLA Domain Model v.3

9. How is Europeana Using Linked Open Data?
September 2012:
Europeana opened up a
dataset of over 20
million cultural objects
for free re-use under a
Creative Commons CC0
Public Domain
Dedication
Goals:
➔ Economic: to provide
“a new boost to the
digital economy”
➔ Cultural:
demonstrating a
“move away from the
world of closed and
controlled data”
source:http://vimeo.com/36752317

10. How is DPLA Using Linked Open Data?
January 2013:
DPLA decides to apply the Creative
Commons CC0 Public Domain
policy
Goals:
➔ Interoperability
➔ Collaboration: creating a
linked web of cultural
heritage, not data silos
Source: http://exhibitions.europeana.eu/exhibits/show/europe-america-en

11. BIBFRAME LOD Models
Source: http://www.loc.gov/bibframe/pdf/marcld-report-11-21-2012.pdf

12. BIFRAME: Authority XML
ID: http://example.org/b208aa59-e767-b54d-e0d2-
c40b024d1dcb
Type(s)
http://bibframe.org/vocab/Person
bf:hasAuthority
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79034525
bf:authorizedAccessPoint
Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519
bf:authoritySource
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names

13. Outreach: Europeana
Goals of Europeana Awareness:
➔ Increase publicity (to users, policy makers, politicians and cultural heritage institutions)
➔ Encourage use for hobbies, research, learning, genealogy and tourism.
➔ Encourage cultural institutions to provide content

14. Project Examples
➔ Denmark - Europeana awareness
in the secondary education system
➔ United Kingdom - Family history
roadshow working with schools
➔ Poland - Collection days to
generate new content and digitize
private archives relating to the
regime change in 1989

15. Outreach: DPLA
➔ DPLA Fest:
- annual event open to the public
➔ Community Reps Program:
- enlists enthusiastic volunteers
nationwide to disseminate
information about DPLA in various
cultural heritage and LIS
environments
➔ Event-based outreach:
- wikipedia edit-a-thons using DPLA
as a source
- classroom activities with students
and teachers using DPLA materials
- workshops integrating DPLA into
existing school projects
- hackathons

16. ➔ Open API
➔ Appfests and hackathons
Created for DPLA Appfest 2012, DPLAMap displays DPLA
content related to user location. (http://inkdroid.org/dpla-map/)
Openness: DPLA

17. http://dp.la/
appsExamples of DPLA Apps

18. Openness: Europeana
How is Europeana’s open API being
used?
➔ Hispana
➔ Polish Digital Library Federation
➔ Casual Curator app
➔ ATHENA
➔ Digital Humanities Observatory
Source: http://labs.europeana.eu/

19. Example
source: http://labs.europeana.eu/apps/hispana/

20. Challenges
BIBFRAME
➔ Expensive to implement/use
➔ Software companies have no incentive to create
specialized software
➔ Small libraries with smaller budgets often cannot use
DPLA & Europeana
➔ Balancing access and copyright
➔ Reaching intended user community

21. The Future of Open Cultural
Heritage?
The utility of DPLA and
Europeana will only
increase as more people
use and engage with its
materials.
BIBFRAME provides a
new, rich vocabulary for
LOD resource description
— its data has the
capacity to link to other
vocabularies, building
new relationships and
new knowledge.

22. References
Abbott, F. (2014, April 28). Community reps: A handy guide to who they
are and what they are doing. Retrieved from http://goo.gl/I5zoRj
Action Group (n.d.) Action promotes campaigns across Europe to
digitise historic memorabilia for future generations. Retrieved May 13,
2014 from http://www.actionprgroup.com/1268.html
DPLA. (2013 February 8). Metadata application profile, version 3.
Retrieved from http://dp.la/about/map
DPLA. (n.d.). About. Retrieved April 9, 2014 from http://dp.la/info/
DPLA. (n.d.). API codex: philosophy. Retrieved April 9, 2014 from DPLA
Policies: http://dp.la/info/developers/codex/policies/philosophy/
DPLA. (n.d.) Apps. Retrieved April 18, 2014 from http://dp.la/apps
Europeana. (n.d.) EDM. Retrieved April 25, 2014 from
http://goo.gl/wZvqQQ
Europeana. (n.d.) EDM. Retrieved April 25, 2014 from
http://goo.gl/M3827E
Europeana. (n.d.) Labs. Retrieved May 13, 2014 from
http://labs.europeana.eu/apps/hispana/
Library of Congress. (2012). Bibliographic framework as a web of data:
linked data model and supporting services. Library of Congress. 1-41.
http://www.loc.gov/bibframe/pdf/marcld-report-11-21-2012.pdf.