NFDI4Culture Metadata API

This online forum event is aimed at all those with questions and experiences in developing, establishing, and mapping vocabularies. The event will be used for exchange, networking, discussion, presentation of use cases and evaluation of the NFDI4Culture task of cross-linking expert vocabularies with reference vocabularies. The focus is therefore on the mapping of vocabularies.

Today, cross-linking is one of the basic requirements of well-developed research data services. Integrated thesauri serve this purpose, but they are often developed locally, mainly due to the thematic specificity of the projects or research questions as well as to the software and methodological conditions. New potentials and connections only arise through mapping with reference vocabularies and providing LOD. This approach has been tested in the NFDI4Culture task. The Material Culture Thesaurus (MCT), an expert vocabulary for architecture and art based on the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus, which has been jointly created and maintained by the German Documentation Center for Art History – Bildarchiv Foto Marburg and the Herder Institute Marburg, served as a "laboratory". The requirements and priorities of a number of projects funded by third parties are also taken into account here.

In particular, the forum will present current practices of vocabulary development, the organization of work with one or more vocabularies, editing rules, methods of vocabulary control in ongoing collection indexing, and guidelines for mapping and matching projects. Questions are: Where are the limits of heterogeneity? What difficulties can arise? What aspects need special attention?

In addition, the forum will highlight other related projects:

The Dehio East Central Europe project (https://ome.dehio.org/) uses federated thesauri in the context of its cataloguing strategy and reports on the role of (application) thesauri in building a knowledge infrastructure, including standardization, information retrieval and data mining. The challenges of managing multilingualism are another topic.

The GND for Cultural Data (GND4C) project and the GND pilot agency Buildings show how, in the context of adding authority records on buildings, new object-type related subject terms are introduced into the GND.

Sub portal Collections from Colonial Contexts of the German Digital Library: The updated data field catalogue takes into account the documentation requirements of provenance research in colonial contexts and provides for the integration of national and internationally controlled vocabularies in LIDO (Lightweight Information Describing Objects). The presentation discusses the possibilities and limits of linking LOD vocabularies in the specific CCC application profile of the German Digital Library.

The forum also offers the opportunity to contact vocabulary specialists of NFDI4Culture.

The online event will be chaired by Ksenia Stanicka-Brzezicka (Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe – Institute of the Leibniz Association).

Registration is open to 28th November: https://events.nfdi4culture.de/e/fachvokabulare

You are welcome to submit questions to the organisers in advance, which may be of a general nature, but can also be specific and practice-related. You will find the contact details in the registration form linked above.

Programme (all talks will be held in German):

9:00 a.m.–9:15 a.m. Welcome: Dietmar Popp, Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe

9:15 a.m.–10:30 a.m. Talks:

Talk 1: Ksenia Stanicka-Brzezicka, Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe: The key role of vocabularies: Towards a LOD-based integration of heterogeneous information collections

Talk 2: Sławomir Brzezicki, Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe: Use case: DEHIO OME knowledge infrastructure. Art monuments in East Central Europe

Talk 3: Hanna-Lena Meiners, German Documentation Center for Art History – Bildarchiv Foto Marburg: GND4C: Integration of authority data for buildings and new subject heading terms in the GND – challenges and particularities 

10:30 a.m.–11:00 a.m. Break

11:00 a.m.–11:30 a.m.

Talk 4: Romy Köhler and Lisa Quade, German Digital Library/Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation Berlin: Possibilities and limitations of linking LIDO terminology and other controlled vocabularies in the subportal Collections from Colonial Contexts of the German Digital Library.

11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. Discussion

Materials: Slides of the presentations and minutes of the event