It's great to see SHIC being discussed again - we developed pilot access systems based on SHIC several years ago, using an extract from the collection of our local social history museum, the Pontypridd Historical and Cultural Centre and had various conversations with Stuart Holms and the SHIC working pary. I remember presenting on the SHIC work at a Museum Documentation Association Workshop on Terminology at Oxford University in September 1996. As I remember, that meeting discussed the differences between SHIC's 'use context perspective' (as Richard mentioned) and the 'object-centred perspective' perhaps more common in museum thesauri.
We published a report of that work in MDA Information 1998 [1] which used to be online but I've failed to find it after a quick search this morning. I haven't even able to locate a hard copy version. However I did manage to locate a slightly later paper published in the ICHIM'95 and still available via Archimuse and Museums and the Web
http://www.archimuse.com/publishing/ichim95_vol1/tudhope.pdf
(bibliographic details athttp://www.museumsandtheweb.com/biblio/taxonomic_distance_classification_and_navigation_doug)
Unfortunateky it's missing the figures that were screen dumps from the system but it discusses how the (SHIC) comceptual system allows the possibility of navigation tools that can assist users unfamiliar with the organisation of the information. I see the paper goes on to discuss the possibility of multiple classifications of information and multiple perspectives and incorporating both folk and 'expert' taxonomies - still relevant topics today!
We went on to work with collections from the Science Museum and National Railway Museum using the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus (with Alice Grant, Ann Borda and Helen Ashby) - the JoDI 2004 paper is open access and discuses how thesaurus web services can be used to build different user interfaces elements, including the use of query expansion for more flexibly matching user queries. http://journals.tdl.org/jodi/article/view/110/109
If anyone is interested in broader issues surrounding terminology registries (of vocabulary content and services), the final report of the Terminology Registry Scoping Study (2008) funded by JISC http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/sharedservices/trss-report-final.pdf
made the case for some exploratory funding of a Terminology Rgistry relevant to the UK HE sector but the suggestion was not taken up. The report's immediate specific recommendations are now dated and probably not relevant today but the report does give background on different types of terminology registry. It makes a distinction between ontologies and thesauri as serving different purposes, which is important to bear in mind, as the terms are often used loosely in semantic web circles. It discusses use cases, governance and references JISC reports on Pedagogical Vocabularies and Terminology Services and Technology Review which give more detailed info on eLearning and services issues for those interested.
Doug
[1] Tudhope D., Taylor C. 1998. Terminology as a search aid: Using SHIC for public access. MDA Information, 3(1), 79-84.
Douglas Tudhope
Professor, Faculty of Advanced Technology
University of Glamorgan
Pontypridd CF37 1DL
Wales, UK
Tel +44 (0) 1443-483609
Fax +44 (0) 1443-482715
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Editor : The New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia
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________________________________________
From: Museums Computer Group [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of WENDY SUDBURY (latest) [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 02 May 2012 17:57
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: SHIC
A network of excellence bid to FP7 programme at the European Commission? It would have to involve several languages, which makes the task more difficult - but ...
Wendy Sudbury
----- Original Message -----
From: Nick Poole
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: 02 May 2012 17:51
Subject: Re: SHIC
Dear Michael,
Many thanks for this. So, the full story is...
SPECTRUM Procedures contain a number of points which essentially say 'go and find a consistent, structured vocabulary and use it'.
For a long time, MDA provided some vocabularies in hard copy because that was the format we had them in. Some time later, after the invention of steam and the diode, we decided to present them in SGML and then as HTML documents.
It became apparent that with the age of connected Collections Management Systems, the ideal would be to provide XML/SKOSified versions of these vocabularies (where available) as a Web Service, so that people running systems could make use of them from within their system. Some systems have done this already of course, making things like the Dutch version of the Art & Architecture thesaurus dynamically available.
The intention was to achieve the benefit of semantic interoperability (or at least to improve semantic consistency) by enabling multiple documentation systems to share a common core set of ontologies.
There we foundered - there are pretty much no funders who are at the stage where they would invest in the collective benefits of shared vocbaularies (and Jon, if you say the Arts Council will, I'll be round your house with a project proposal in a heartbeat).
At this point Knowledge Integration stepped up and, being the knowledgeable and helpful people they are, offered us the use of their Lexaurus Bank tool (and if anyone on list is looking for a best-of-breed Vocab Management System, I can't recommend it highly enough).
The Social History Curators Group then provided funding to develop an electronic version of SHIC. This is essentially what is up on the Culture Grid Vocab Bank.
So, to answer your question, if you want your Collections Management System to integrate SHIC, I suggest you approach your SPECTRUM Partner and ask them. It's unlikely to be proportionate for one client, but it might be a worthwhile development for many. Similarly, while you're talking to them, it might be useful to talk about what other vocabularies are available for your use. There's a meeting at the OpenCulture conference to discuss the roadmap for these systems, so it would be great if people attending that could raise the question of Terminology.
The vision is that when you power up your CMS, you will use a combination of locally-derived and common ontologies to describe your objects, records or images. These ontologies will have been pulled in from one or more web services (we're not the only ones in this game!) with the concomitant benefits for semantic interoperability, co-referencing and other linked data goodness.
Revising SHIC is not in our gift - it depends on the original Committee giving SHCG the green light to do it. Given that we're almost a year into this discussion, I imagine it might take another year for the revisions.
Part of the problem is that there is no money in Terminology, even though everyone depends on it. If anyone has any smart ideas about how we can resource it, I'd be happy to accelerate the work!
Hope this is useful by way of context!
All best,
Nick
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Comiskey <[log in to unmask]>
Sender: Museums Computer Group <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 2 May 2012 15:57:36
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: Museums Computer Group <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: SHIC
Hi Nick
This brings up the main question for those of us running Collections Management Systems; where do we get a machine readable version that we can load?
Do we go to you, the SHCG, or back to our CMS vendor, sorry, Spectrum Partner?
Also, do you have any timeline for revising SHIC?
Michael
Michael Comiskey
Systems Manager
National Museums Northern Ireland
Cultra, Holywood, Co. Down, BT18 0EU
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M - 07917 544277
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-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nick Poole
Sent: 01 May 2012 17:52
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: SHIC
Hi Richard,
Thanks for the prompt! Yes, Collections Trust and the Social History Curators Group have been working to develop an electronic version of SHIC that can be used both as a reference tool but also as a machine-readable vocabulary.
In fact (whispers) our partners Knowledge Integration have already integrated the current version of SHIC into the Culture Grid Vocab Bank
- go to http://culturegrid.lexaurus.net/culturegrid/browse and scroll down. You can browse the structure, and also download the vocabulary as an XML document. The longer-term aim of the Vocab Bank is to provide web-service access to a range of SKOSified vocabularies, but the interest in this from museums has been pretty muted - I'd love to know whether there is an appetite for this stuff before we go ahead and invest in developing it!
SHCG's aim is to use this current version to develop an updated version.
The original SHIC Working Party do retain an interest in its development, and we are currently negotiating how best to take the development of SHIC forward.
I hope this helps, and I'd welcome views on the next steps with the Vocab Bank!
Nick
-----Original Message-----
From: Museums Computer Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Richard Light
Sent: 01 May 2012 17:42
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: SHIC
Robin,
Yes, I have a version of SHIC which I have lovingly reconstructed from various sources (with considerable help from Stuart, who I am sure /is /still out there), and which now lives happily in a Modes data file as a set of XML records. That's the good news.
However, I am not sure what the status of this version is, and whether I would be free to let you have a copy. Collections Trust and the SHCG have been expressing an interest in SHIC of late, and of course the original SHIC Working Party might still want to have a say. There is the idea of SKOS-ifying SHIC. Would anyone care to comment?
At a practical level, would a dump of SHIC as an XML document be of use to you?
Richard
On 01/05/2012 17:26, Robin Patel wrote:
> Hello All
>
> Second time poster, long time lurker.
>
> Very quick question: Does anyone have a digital version of SHIC they
> could identify and (potentially) lead us to? We are in the midst of a
> retrospective documentation project and, apart from developing our own
> in-house classification, we feel that SHIC fits the bill for the types
> of collections we are dealing with. I have a hardcopy 2nd ed. here,
> but I would rather have something searchable without resorting to the
> pitfalls of OCR.
>
> I have contacted Stuart via his website, but I fear that email is
> longer active...
>
> Many Thanks :-)
>
> Robin
>
>
--
*Richard Light*
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