- 1. Data Harmonisation for Ethical Collaborative Research: The
ResearchSpace Project British Museum and Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation Dominic Oldman ResearchSpace Principal Investigator
British Museum [email protected] Twitter:
@researchspace
2. TERMS OF REFERENCE 3. UCL - Hidden Histories Symposium
optimistic dissatisfaction with progress to date, because of an
overwhelming propensity to view computers as the answer to
drudgery. Rather than providing new ways of understanding and
interpreting the past, we have been limited to producing knowledge
jukeboxes. Willard McCarty (Sept, 2011) Not just computers! - we
ignore the history of data and constantly devalue it. Garbage in
Garbage out! 4. Relevancy From poor beginnings and varying quality.
The museum inventory Mindset and quality But harmonised data
Provides more complete information contains different perspectives.
We need to care more about our data! Harmonised data can help renew
the relevancy of museum. 5. Meaning o Gustave Flaubert - A
perfectionist o Finding the right word the right meaning o a fear
of the false o The Web? he was convinced that everything he had
written hitherto consisted solely in a string of the most abysmal
errors and lies, the consequences of which were immeasurable. A
fear founded in the relentless spread of stupidity which he had
observed everywhere, and which he believed had already invaded his
own head. It was as if one was sinking into sand (Max Sebald The
Rings of Saturn) 6. Meaningless 7. History of the EDM Creation and
use of the ESE had been unavoidable as a pre-condition for
launching a first early prototype of Europeana in November 2008 -
but in the meantime its limitations have become visible and
somewhat paradoxically! - prevent from moving into a semantically
rich functional model IFLA Conference Gothenburg 2010. The
Europeana Data Model
http://conference.ifla.org/past/ifla76/149-doerr-en.pdf Gradmann,
Doerr, Hennicke, Issac, Meghini, van de Sompel 8. The power of the
culture industrys ideology is such that conformity has replaced
consciousness Culture Industry Reconsidered, Theodore Adorno (1963)
Order Western Philosophical tradition The investigation of the
essential features of a thing. Universal classification. Chinese
Philosophical tradition The order through the contextualisation of
things with other things. Aldous Huxley 9. DATA HARMONISATION 10.
(16th / 17th ) - Unity of Understanding The Wunderkammer A network
of relationships and meaning based on unity within the chaos of
nature. Not comprehensive but representative across the world. 11.
18th - Collecting & the Enlightenment! More sophisticated
questions. More comprehensive collections. Artificial and natural
still combined. 18th and 19th Specialisms and division. New
Knowledge at the expense of unityEnlightenment Gallery BM
Technology, language, belief. 12. 19th - Specialist Museums &
Disunity Edmund Oldfield Assistant Keeper of Antiquities at the
British Museum in 1857. Q: Is it an accident that the library,
natural history specimens, sculptures and antiquities were part of
the same institution? A: I think it is Antonio Panizzi British
Museums Principal Librarian Asserted a fundamental distinction
between Christian art and heathen antiquities We forget the history
of things 13. 1968 Computers and Their Potential Applications in
Museums Conference Metropolitan Museum of Art & IBM 14. The
potential benefitof all such computerized cataloging systems are
enormous, not only in its long-range savings of space and clerical
man hours, but also in the unification of knowledge available to
archaeologists, anthropologists, art historians, and museum
curators now available only through laboriously assembled private
research files. (Edward F. Fry - Curator Guggenheim ) The Scholars
Vision for Computers in 1968 Inter-Museum Networks Networks
specifically for inter-disciplinary knowledge exchange! 15. There
has been a gradual shift within the "history" of the history of art
from a period of brilliant documentary, archival, and
classificatory research to a recently emerging focus on artistic
and historical theory and on interpretation, and therefore on
education in the largest sense.It is against this background that
one may well seriously consider the educational role of computers
in the museum (Edward F Fry) The Scholars Vision for Computers in
1968 Computers for Interpretation Technology will catch up with
vision Margaret Masterman Computational Linguist 16. Early
Relationships with Computers Museum : 1978 17. 1980s 18. The Museum
Technologist & the Commoditisation of Knowledge Can one hope
for the 'virtual museum'? Yes, if one holds a universalist view of
the world where different contents could be moulded into identical
forms. No, if one thinks that each system of representation should
keep its own characteristics regarding form as well as contents.
(Dominique Delouis, 1993 - RAMA) WRONG The value is in difference!
19. In the past we have focussed on conformity in naming the
objects of these associations, the things (people, places,
buildings, ships, etc.), with which the objects were associated.
Increasingly it seems that we should have concerned ourselves with
the relationships (creating, selling, designing, using, critiquing)
between the objects and the proper nouns on which we lavished so
much attention (David Bearman, 1995) The Museum Technologist &
Commoditisation of Knowledge RIGHT Standard based on context not a
common set of fields 20. Web Freedom? [The Web has removed the
shackles of] fixed standards, terminology control and disciplined
automation. multiple epistemologies were able (if not encouraged)
to sit upon the collections [and bring them] to the fore (Ross
Parry, 2007, p.55). Has the Web imposed its own shackles ? 21. The
web halts the progress of a contextual standard. These [knowledge
jukeboxes] are clever to be sure; they are of immense value to
scholarship, as well-made reference works always are. I am
dissatisfied, however, because I see us working almost exclusively
for scholarship that happens elsewhere by other means. (McCarty,
2011) The Web becomes simply a publishing medium in which silos are
created on a network The Wall of the Web 22. The Illusionary Web At
present, few museums make the effort to tap into their information
systems and still fewer to integrate their information with that
from other institutions. Today's web sites are still predominantly
hand-coded productions. The results can be very attractive, but the
effort involved in producing and managing a hand-made web site
imposes severe restrictions on the level of complexity that can be
sustained. (Martin Doerr and Nick Crofts, 1998) With the current
Web you effectively hit a wall because the Web deals in publishing
pages not data. 23. The Web & the Decline of Museum Computing
Capacity Instead of talking about bits and pipes, museum
technologists in the field today are expected to possess a variety
of skill sets. Increasingly those skills are less and less
technical and more about fulfilling the content and mission
objectives of the museum. The commoditization of technology has
diversified the field and led to museum technologists making
significant contributions outside of the purely technical mandate
of their titles. (Stein and Cherry, 2013 A Museums and the Web
Conference questionnaire) Happy to use generic tool to describe
unique collections and perspectives. What about computing skills
for Web of Data? 24. The Reasons for a Web of Data About: Dealing
with Fundamental Limitations with the Web of Pages Search
redundancy of information Database support, Interoperability
applications, Automated reasoning across data (facts and concepts)
Attribution Etc, etc 25. The CIDOC CRM & Real World Scholarly
Constructs 26. Vocabularies 27. Too Specialist!! 28. Best of Both
Worlds 29. Acquired From Pattern true in any organisation 30.
Typing by Vocabulary 31. Reification Construct 32. Production
Authority 33. Unity of Understanding is Restored with CIDOC CRM
Operates internally and externally You dont need a one size fits
all system You can embrace specialisms 34. The Digital Wunderkammer
A network of relationships and meaning 35. PRACTICALITIES 36.
Contextual Co-referencing o Terminology Concepts, Names and Places
o Is my John Smith your John Smith. o Associated People o Subjects
o Types of production o Objects Types o Artistic Schools or group o
Inscriptions o Etc o The more information the more inferences we
can make. 37. You cant do this stuff with EDM! EDM Properties 38.
Context and Research Questions Searching by Context is much closer
to the way we think about research questions 39. Computer
Interpretation How can computers help with interpreting art and
cultural objects? How to we create meaningful systems You need
meaningful data! 40. Concepts 41. Enrichment 42. Enrichment 43.
Thanks Dominic Oldman ResearchSpace Principal Investigator British
Museum [email protected] Twitter: @researchspace 44.
Computing at the British Museum Antony Hall (Principal Scientist
1973 1980) Computer Section s first projects A simple keyword-based
online search system for the publication Art and Archaeology
Technical Abstracts. Cataloguing: typically it was some much
smaller, more focussed, application. For Coins and Medals, for
example, we were able to help with an annual publication of coin
finds One Keeper Amazed that it could sort things in alphabetical
order. What questions can we ask?
