europeana 1914-1918, user-generated content and linked open data
TRANSCRIPT
Europeana 1914-1918, User-Generated Content and Linked Open Data
Valentine Charles
July 1st 2015, Sydney, Digital Humanities
Europeana, a platform for cultural heritage
Aggregates metadata from the cultural heritage sector in Europe
• Libraries, museums, archives and audio-visual archives
• Metadata in 33 languages
Provides a portal for users to access data and objects
• Metadata under Creative Commons Zero - public domain
• Previews and links to source
Connecting Europe in the First World War
Connecting Europe in the First World War
http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu/
European 1914-1918
Austria- Greece -The Netherlands – France –Slovakia – Romania- Italy- Belgium – Cyprus - Denmark Ireland –UK- Slovenia – Luxembourg - Germany, Portugal- Croatia – Poland- Bosnia - Serbia
A European scope brings lot of challenges
Resources of different natures
• Films, pictures, postcards, shells, bibles
• Testimony, transcriptions
From many countries and in many different languages
Record different viewpoints
• National perspective
• Official vs uncensored
• Institutional vs user-generated content
Linked Data to solve the problem of data integration (1)
A rich data framework: the Europeana Data Model (EDM)
• Re-uses several existing Semantic Web-based models: Dublin Core, OAI-ORE, SKOS, CIDOC-CRM…
• Allows the description of more granular metadata
• Creates a “semantic layer” on top of connected cultural heritage objects (place, concept, people, timespan)
Linked Data to solve the problem of data integration (2)
Relying on Linked Open Data vocabularies to bridge the semantic and multilingual gap
Europeana 1914-1918 developed its own vocabulary based on a subset of LCSH
• Terms translated in 10 languages and linked to id.loc.gov
Links also created to Dbpedia
Published in SKOS via the OpenSkos vocabulary service
http://data.europeana.eu/concept/loc/sh85148236
http://www.europeana.eu/portal/record/9200140/BibliographicResource_3000022622702.html
http://www.seco.tkk.fi/projects/core/
Core Contextual Reader
Integrate with other Linked Datasets
Conclusion
Encourage the re-use of the vocabulary and the data by WW1 communities
Alignment with other vocabularies to make our collections more interoperable
Linking to other datasets to cover all the aspects of WW1
Questions
Should we define standards on how cultural heritage institutions should describe WW1 materials so that it is easily findable by researchers? (ex: First World War vs Great War)
What researchers would need in terms of linking that cultural heritage institutions could work on?
WW1 materials across Europe and probably the world are similar but are studied in a different way and often from a national view point. Should the WW1 study practices converge so that we can get a cross border and cross discipline view on the conflict?
