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The CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC CRM), is a semantically rich ontology that delivers data harmonisation based on empirically analysed contextual relationships rather than relying on a traditional fixed field/value approach, overly generalised relationships or an artificial set of core metadata. It recognises that cultural data is a living growing resource and cannot be commoditised or squeezed into artificial pre-conceived boxes. Rather, it is diverse and variable containing perspectives that incorporate different institutional histories, disciplines and objectives. The CIDOC CRM retains these perspectives yet provides the opportunity for computational reasoning across large numbers of heterogeneous sources from different organisations, and creates an environment for engaging and thought-provoking exploration through its network of relationships. The core ontology supports the whole cultural heritage community including museums, libraries and archives and provides a growing set of specialist extensions. The increased use of aggregation services and the growing use of the CIDOC CRM has necessitated a new initiative to develop a data provisioning reference model targeted at solving fundamental infrastructure problems ignored by data integration initiatives to date. If data provisioning and aggregation are designed to support the reuse of data in research as well as general end user activities then any weaknesses in the model that aggregators implement will have profound effects on the future of data centred digital humanities work. While the CIDOC CRM solves the problem of quality and delivering semantically rich data integration, this achievement can still be undermined by a lack of properly managed processes and working relationships between data providers and aggregators. These relationships hold the key to sustainability and longevity because done properly they encourage the provider to align their systems, knowing that the effort will provide long lasting benefits and value. Equally, end user projects will be encouraged to cease perpetuating the patchwork of short-life digital resources that can never be aligned and which condemn the digital humanities to a pseudo and predominantly lower quality discipline. |
