Transformation of cultural heritage XML metadata in CIDOC CRM ontology
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NTUA
2010
Diploma Thesis
- Contact persons: Christos Papatheodorou , Yannis Stavrakas
Abstract.
Cultural heritage institutions such as files, libraries and museums produce and manage a large amount of metadata in order to describe the material which they manage (books, scientific magazines, files, photographs, museum exhibits) and make this information accessible in the scientific community and to the wide public. In this effort of describing this heterogeneous information that each one maintains, a lot of metadata models have been developed by international organisms, each one covering the needs of documentation of concrete material categories. The management of information from heterogeneous sources constitutes a challenge and it creates the need for incorporating the information which is prompted by the existence of this abundance of models. For this reason another model was also created, CIDOC/CRM, as a model of ontology which is called to play the role of the mediator and to unify these models. Consequently the problem of mapping data from based in the XML models of metadata in ontology CIDOC CRM pops up. A prospective seeker of this information is supposed to be possible to approach the information independently from the model with which this information has been described. Should consequently with some way the information be changed with base certain mapping rules in another form. While the creation of mapping rules constitutes scientific study of experts, should at the same time be developed also a system, which regarding these rules, changes the information from one form into the other. Consequently, the object of this thesis project is the designing and realisation of a system which will carry out this operation. This system should be possible to function autonomously but also carrying out an individual operation of bigger system.