Dublin Core and the Cultural Heritage

1
Dublin Core and the Cultural Heritage

• Paul Miller
• UK Interoperability Focus
• P.Miller_at_ukoln.ac.uk
• ltURL http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/interopfocus/gt

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Introducing Interoperability Focus

• Funded by British Library Research Innovation
  Centre (BLRIC) and Joint Information Systems
  Committee (JISC)
• Based at UK Office for Library Information
  Networking (UKOLN)
• Began work January 1999
• Funded for three years initially.

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Introducing Interoperability Focus

• Focus upon enabling interoperability between
  resources in

libraries
archives
the cultural heritage sector
etc.
4
Introducing Interoperability Focus

• By
• disseminating best practice
• participating in relevant standards development
  initiatives
• encouraging/ facilitating crosswalks and
  crossproject communication
• representing UK interests internationally
• raising awareness of interoperabilitys benefits
  to users, creators holders.

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Introducing Interoperability Focus

• Email P.Miller_at_ukoln.ac.uk
• Web http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/interopfocus/

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CIMI

• Consortium for the Computer Interchange of Museum
  Information lthttp//www.cimi.org/gt
• members drawn from cultural heritage
  organisations (not only museums) and system
  suppliers all over the world
• aims to increase use of computerbased solutions
  through consensusbuilding work with member
  organisations
• To bring cultural heritage information to the
  widest possible audience, through the use of
  standards
• e.g. Z39.50 Profile for the Cultural Heritage
  (CIMI Profile).

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CIMI Dublin Core Testbed

• 17 members in Phase 1 (1998)
• including
• Arts Humanities Data Service (UK)
• Blue Angel Technologies (USA)
• CHIN (Canada)
• DSTC (Australia)
• Databasix (Netherlands)
• Finsiel (Italy)
• Guggenheim (USA)
• Joanneum (Austria)
• Museum Computer Network (USA)
• National Museum of Denmark (Denmark)
• Natural History Museum (UK).

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CIMI DCT Phase 1 Aims

• Evaluate the feasibility of using DC for the
  museum community
• Test implicit assumptions behind DC
• Promote international consensus on DC practices
  for the museum community
• Provide a forum for understanding and resolving
  the various issues
• Create a pool of DC records in XML for retrieval
  experiments.

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CIMI DCT Phase 1 Methods

• Four major meetings, working groups, mailing
  list, web-site, activity log
• Test database created by Blue Angel Technologies
• Work with the DC user guide draft
• Liaison with the main DC community, Z39.50
  Testbed and others (eg ZIG).

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CIMI DCT Phase 1 Results

• TYPE element is the key to interpretation of the
  rest of record
• item/collection
• original/surrogate
• event
• Close adherence to 11 model
• CREATOR and the God Problem
• RIGHTS important
• Need for Physical Description.

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CIMI DCT Phase 1 Results

• Over 200,000 DC Simple records in the database
  pool, in XML format
• Analysis reveals degree of consistency /
  conformance
• Creation of records from scratch v. mapping onto
  an existing database
• Production of Cultural Heritage Annex to DC User
  Guide
• due for public release by Easter.

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CIMI DCT Phase 2

• Commencing March 1999
• Add new project participants
• Extend sample record base
• introduce qualifiers and subelements
• open up for public testing and comment
• Investigate use of fully parsed RDF, rather than
  CIMIdeveloped XML syntax.

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CIMI DCT Phase 2

• Amalgamation of 3 main projects
• develop applications that can make use of the
  returned data to provide a museum-like experience
• map CIMI Access Points to DC
• Z39.50 Profile group
• Dublin Core Test bed
• IIM group.
• fin.