Beyond the Standards: Combine Different Metadata Schemas for a Versatile Museum Repository Development

Abstract

As cultural heritage evolves in the digital age, museums face three primary objectives. Firstly, they must revise their collection management philosophy to include the new possibilities that derive from the technological progress[1]. Secondly, they must integrate data infrastructures and schemas that are user-friendly for museum staff and researchers alike [2]. Thirdly, they must start thinking of collaborative ways of managing their data, something that will add informational value to their artefacts, as well as, contribute to saving costs and time. To achieve these goals, a well-defined metadata structure for curating cultural content is essential. Implementing an ontology-based metadata policy is crucial for museums aiming to enhance digital access to their collections strategically[3]. Additionally, it's vital to test the sustainability of proposed metadata schemas in practical applications, ensuring they effectively describe artefacts or collections [4]. Subsequenlty, the need strives towards the selection of multi-functional and flexible repositories platforms providing polysemic documentation of artefacts.

In this paper, we propose and implement a holistic ontology-based metadata grid combining descriptive, reputation, conservation, and indoor navigation fields for a full documentation of artefacts and collections. One step further, the proposed metadata schema is adopted and implemented in Reasonable Graph. A platform capable of enhancing semantic intercorrelation between artefacts and collections using a diversity of thematic entities, such as geographical locations, historical periods, persons, events, and ethnographical labelling. The versatile folklore collections of Museum of Modern Greek Culture in Athens are used as testbed to assess the proposed schema and platform practicability to describe and semantically correlate the available artefacts.

To this end, the paper generally contributes to the understanding of the evolving challenges faced by museums in the digital age by proposing solutions to address these challenges and highlighting how an ontology-based schema gives a dynamic perspective on metadata management.