linking collections

Marieke van Erp, Department of Computer Science, VU University; Johan Oomen, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision; Roxane Segers, Department of Computer Science, VU University; Chiel van den Akker, Department of History, VU University; Lora Aroyo, Department of Computer Science, VU University; Geertje Jacobs, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam; Susan Legêne, Department of History, VU University; Lourens van der Meij, Jacco van Ossenbruggen; and Guus Schreiber, Department of Computer Science, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

http://agora.cs.vu.nl

Abstract

Metadata enrichment of cultural heritage collections by means of structured vocabularies has been shown to improve the work of professionals and to increase accessibility of the collections for end-users. Still, collection metadata lack rich context information, such as references to events, which can be valuable for a more effective navigation in cultural heritage collections. In this paper, we present an approach that extends existing metadata enrichment processes with a method to discover historical events. The events are structured in a historical event thesaurus to enrich object metadata. As such, the event thesaurus is used as a bridge between objects in different collections. The results of this work allow for topic-based and event-centered browsing, searching and navigating in integrated collections.

Keywords: collection metadata enrichment, collection access, historical events, thesauri, linking collections, liniking objects, search and browse