> CIDOC isn't that hard

Really? You think? I'd say it's not only hard conceptually but technically difficult too, and the benefits aren't readily available because there just aren't any really good demonstrators. But: I am a bear of very small brain, and readily admit I have a huge mental block about the reality of making this linked stuff happen in big enough chunks that it'll make a difference.

What say you, small / medium sized museums? You're all being very quiet about this…! :-)

tt

me


_____________________________


Mike Ellis 

Thirty8 Digital: a small but perfectly formed digital agency: http://thirty8.co.uk  

* My book: http://heritageweb.co.uk *




On 5 Apr 2013, at 11:41, Mia <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Ahem, young man, don't start putting words in my mouth! As Joe and others
> have said, CIDOC isn't that hard, it's just under-documented.
> 
> I think we gravitate to questions about museum collections because a)
> collecting and sharing knowledge about objects is what museums do, b)
> objects randomly end up in different museums and being able to look across
> everything that collected museums have for particular types of material
> culture is useful for many reasons, and c) it's more specific to museums
> than events listings, as important as they are.
> 
> To address Nick's point, the demand for OAI was a classic 'who'll blink
> first' moment - museums were told they needed OAI to contribute to the
> People's Network Discovery Service, and it seemed to generally help with
> the goal of getting collections online, so off we all went...
> 
> The CultureGrid search widget is nice, but search puts the onus back onto
> the user and leaves them at the mercy of the metadata within the repository
> - I'd rather make use of the knowledge within museums to suggest related
> objects. Which brings us back to Stephen's question, which seems to be an
> eternal MCG question - how do you get a critical mass for linked open data
> publication and use?
> 
> --------------------------------------------
> http://openobjects.org.uk/
> http://twitter.com/mia_out
> 
> 
> On 5 April 2013 09:28, Mike Ellis <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
>> Hi all
>> 
>> <braindump>
>> 
>> It's interesting to me (and I think partly misses the real need) that this
>> conversation has turned its focus to collections and how you'd repurpose
>> those, rather than - for instance - media files, promotional material,
>> exhibition dates, etc. Although the collections sharing side of stuff is
>> obviously of interest I think it's this latter stuff which is more of a
>> daily problem to the vast majority of museums. Inputting event information
>> once and then being able to multi-surface this throughout your web presence
>> - thus providing some "interested in X? have a look at Y" cross-linking:
>> this is the kind of real world battle that teams with limited resources are
>> dealing with, and where IMO the concept of COPE seems to make most sense.
>> 
>> In this world I think it's much more likely that the gnarly "which CMS to
>> procure" question comes into play - and echoing Mia's question - this is
>> realistically going to be an internal concern rather than an external one.
>> It'd be nice if museums did something externally consumable with their
>> event data but in reality this is much more likely to be schema.org style
>> markup or iCal-y than an API - and certainly not (IMO) anything as heavy as
>> Linked Data.
>> 
>> In a similar way (and echoing previous threads) - museums displaying their
>> collections online using the common vendor solution of "pop it on this
>> separate site, we'll make it look like the main one" method means COPE is
>> instantly dead in the water. If you're a website editor and have this kind
>> of collections site, and want to use one of your object images in your next
>> blog post, what are you forced to do? Yup - upload it again and re-key any
>> caption/metadata you want to use. Instant duplication and waste.
>> 
>> With this particular example it'd be nice if the vendors all supplied a
>> simple way of embedding individual objects or object lists into any web
>> page. Under the hood this could be an API, or LD, or CIDOC or whatever -
>> but for gawds sake don't ask anyone to do anything more than copy and paste
>> a snippet of html...
>> 
>> I know that the next reply will likely say "hey, CIDOC / LD can do all
>> this!" - honestly, I don't know if this is the case, and having met with
>> the CIDOC team in 2001 I came away totally baffled and have remained
>> baffled / totally unconvinced about hardcore Linked Data ever since. I'm
>> quite gratified to hear that Mia didn't understand CIDOC either, to be
>> honest :-)
>> 
>> BUT - I do think we should start with the question: "what are the REAL
>> WORLD issues we're having to deal with here - how could COPE help improve
>> access to our content and at the same time reduce workloads? " and then
>> approach them with whatever solution fits. If we want our events displaying
>> in Google (we should) then we should mark up with schema.org micro
>> formatting. If we want events to be easier to use then we should add iCal
>> markup. Mia's idea of x-collections linking: that's nice, and would
>> probably work best using Culture Grid or some central store of information
>> (Nick, can you embed a javascripty search for terms easily from CG?).
>> 
>> </braindump>
>> 
>> Mike
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _____________________________
>> 
>> 
>> Mike Ellis
>> 
>> Thirty8 Digital: a small but perfectly formed digital agency:
>> http://thirty8.co.uk
>> 
>> * My book: http://heritageweb.co.uk *
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 5 Apr 2013, at 07:54, Stephen McConnachie <
>> [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi everyone,
>>> 
>>> It probable that one way to reach a critical mass with LOD uptake is to
>> embed the key bits of functionality in the systems, making the operations
>> reasonably straightforward for the user, as Richard is aiming to do, and
>> Adlib and others are also planning.
>>> 
>>> I wonder if there's any scope for a joined up approach from the main
>> system suppliers, in dialogue with user groups and maybe workshops at LOD
>> events such as Nick is suggesting?
>>> 
>>> Is it feasible to convene a joint workshop (with Modes, Adlib, Axiell
>> Calm, Selago, System Simulation, etc) at such an event, to discuss a
>> strategy? Is it possible to share ideas without threatening business models?
>>> 
>>> Maybe that discussion is already happening offline?
>>> 
>>> Stephen
>>> 
>>> On 4 Apr 2013, at 16:25, Richard Light <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On 04/04/2013 16:09, Mia wrote:
>>>>> In terms of practicalities, are there any use cases for other
>> organisations
>>>>> testing out the BM's model?  One potential use might be using it as a
>> basis
>>>>> for linking to collections across various museum sites e.g. Wellcome
>> links
>>>>> to similar objects on the Science Museum site which links to others on
>> the
>>>>> British Museum site which in turn links out.  To a large extent those
>>>>> object-specific links wouldn't be automagically machine-discoverable,
>> so it
>>>>> would require both a willingness to link to other collections sites and
>>>>> some curatorial input - is that at all realistic given current
>> resources?
>>>> I'm actively planning to adopt the BM model in as wholesale a manner as
>> possible, once I get my hands on it, for use in the Linked Data publication
>> framework for Modes data.  This adoption will take the form of an XSLT
>> transform to convert Modes Object data to RDF.  In principle this will
>> allow any Modes user to publish their collection as BM-compatible Linked
>> Data.  However ...
>>>> 
>>>> * at present only a few Modes users are in a position to adopt this
>>>> framework (though I can guarantee that there will be at least one!)
>>>> * the compatibility will be at the structural level, i.e. the CRM
>>>> predicates will match.  However, the subjects and objects will
>>>> probably not match up.  To use my wall metaphor, the mortar will be
>>>> compatible but the bricks won't
>>>> * Modes doesn't do SPARQL end-points, so querying the data will have
>>>> to be done differently
>>>> 
>>>> Still, that would be a start. I'm looking at providing some sort of
>> VoID description to facilitate crawling of the whole resource, so it should
>> be possible for an aggregator to build a central database with all this RDF
>> in it.  At which point we could start doing the "similar object" type
>> searches.
>>>> 
>>>> Richard
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> *Richard Light*
>>>> 
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