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Cultural heritage metadata aggregation using web technologies: IIIF, Sitemaps and Schema.org

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Abstract

In the World Wide Web, a very large number of resources are made available through digital libraries. We (Europeana and data providers) report on case studies that tested the application of some of the most promising Web technologies, exploring several solutions based on the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) and Sitemaps. We also describe an analysis of the Schema.org vocabulary for application in the context of cultural heritage and metadata aggregation. The solutions were tested successfully and leveraged on existing technology and knowledge in cultural heritage, with low implementation barriers. The future challenges lie in choosing among the several possibilities and standardizing solution(s). Europeana will proceed with recommendations for its network and is actively working within the IIIF community to achieve this goal.

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Notes

  1. The Europeana Network is a community of experts working in the field of digital heritage, united by a shared mission to expand and improve access to Europe’s digital cultural heritage. It has over 1700 members who work for other organizations and share an interest in digital cultural heritage. Their contribution to improve Europeana sits within their work in their own organizations, and their experience and expertise help shape Europeana’s work and services.

  2. International Image Interoperability Framework—http://iiif.io/#international-image-interoperability-framework.

  3. Sitemaps XML format: https://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html.

  4. Schema.org website: http://schema.org/docs/about.html.

  5. https://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1/.

  6. https://developers.google.com/webmasters/videosearch/sitemaps.

  7. https://www.w3.org/TR/2015/NOTE-rdfa-primer-20150317/.

  8. https://www.w3.org/TR/microdata/.

  9. https://www.w3.org/TR/json-ld/.

  10. http://schema.org/docs/about.html.

  11. https://github.com/nfreire/IIIF-Manifest-Metadata-Harvesting.

  12. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1apQKFkfBV89BvycaBPN6v-LjeaKaVVMaMUsY6L4KRJo/edit#gid=0.

  13. https://github.com/ryanfb/iiif-universe.

  14. http://iiif.io/api/presentation/2.1/#manifest.

  15. http://iiif.io/api/presentation/2.1/#seealso.

  16. http://iiif.io/api/presentation/2.1/#collection.

  17. Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS) is a schema for a bibliographic element set: http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/.

  18. http://iiif.io/community/groups/discovery/.

  19. IIIF Presentation Ontology: http://iiif.io/api/presentation/2.

  20. https://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1/.

  21. https://developers.google.com/webmasters/videosearch/sitemaps.

  22. http://publish.illinois.edu/linkedspcollections/.

  23. https://www.lib.ncsu.edu/.

  24. http://www.worldcat.org/.

  25. http://data.bnf.fr/.

  26. https://bbcarchdev.github.io/res/.

  27. http://schema.org/CreativeWork.

  28. http://bib.0.3-2f.schemaorgae.appspot.com/.

  29. Europeana Strategy 2015–2020 available at http://strategy2020.europeana.eu/.

References

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Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the supporting work by Valentine Charles, from the Europeana Foundation, in the analysis of metadata samples collected during the case studies, and of the Schema.org vocabulary. We also would like to express our gratitude for the IIIF community in general for the criticism and discussions of our work.

Our work was partially supported by Portuguese national funds through Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) with reference UID/CEC/50021/2013 and by the European Commission under the Connecting Europe Facility, telecommunications sector, grant agreement number CEF-TC-2015-1-01.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. INESC-ID, Lisbon, Portugal

    Nuno Freire

  2. IIIF Consortium, Oxford, UK

    Glen Robson

  3. University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    John B. Howard

  4. Europeana Foundation, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Hugo Manguinhas & Antoine Isaac

Authors
  1. Nuno Freire
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  2. Glen Robson
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  3. John B. Howard
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  4. Hugo Manguinhas
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  5. Antoine Isaac
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Correspondence to Nuno Freire.

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Freire, N., Robson, G., Howard, J.B. et al. Cultural heritage metadata aggregation using web technologies: IIIF, Sitemaps and Schema.org. Int J Digit Libr 21, 19–30 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00799-018-0259-5

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