Daguerreobase

Work Packages - WP3: Best practice and standards description

WP3: Best practice and standards description

Objectives

WP 3 include best practice consensus building tasks and aims to:

• Establish a best practice with a shared vision on the proposed digital resources and conceptual models and to reach a consensus on the large scale implementation activities and achieve a successful project result in general;
• Ensure that all participants‟ expertise will be improved to a same level of knowledge and understanding;
• Identify the most appropriate metadata model for Europeana, agree on the outlining process to establish and integrate the chosen model into Europeana, and adopt the model for the general descriptive metadata;
• Establish an appropriate set of community metadata standards for the description of daguerreotype objects;
• Establish an appropriate community standard for the digitization process of daguerreotype objects including imaging and preservation modalities;
• Implement a set of existing/modified or newly developed multilingual thesauri or entries lists for the description of daguerreotype objects.

Description of work

WP3 is responsible for the best practice and consensus building activities on agreeing the adoption of standard description and digitization of daguerreotype objects and the implementation of thesauri or entries lists.

Best practice

The first two tasks will be realised by organising at least two best practise workshops during the first half year of the project runtime. In this workshop that should be attended by all partners, the participants will be informed about the global project strategy in terms of best practise and the specific tasks to realise the project outcomes. The WP leader will develop, in cooperation with the other WP leaders, a Best Practise program and content. This Best Practice program will be presented at the first BP Workshop (Month 3). This BP Workshop will be part of the Daguerreotype Workshop, programmed in Paris.

Image content description

To identify the most appropriate metadata model, the consortium participants will:

• Explore existing metadata models and schemes applied locally by the participants, and their interoperability across archives, libraries and museums (thumbnails, low res scans, video leaders, etc.), including the production of surrogates+
• Evaluate the potential value of the models to benefit a richer metadata delivery to Europeana;
• Identify the appropriate model in terms of interoperability and transformation to other models and with EDM;
• Evaluate the ability to support complex and rich metadata sets; o Outline the process establishment, integration and validation.

This has to result in the adoption of an existing technical descriptive standard for the general description of the daguerreotype content. As mentioned before, while the LIDO model developed by the ATHENA project is a clear candidate, there are several other options. (Month 8)

Object description

To describe the very complex structure of a daguerreotype object (plate and housing), we will use the same approach as described for the image content description. Instead of exploring an existing standard, we will fall back on the current Daguerreobase structure wherein all aspects of this complex housing is already defined. Most probably, the underlying technical metadata model for the image content description can be applied.
The result of this task is the adoption and use of a set of community metadata standards for the appropriate description and conservation of daguerreotype objects. (Month 8)

Object digital reproduction

In order to deliver the proper digital surrogates, including their technical metadata, the consortium partners has to develop a logical workflow for the realisation of them. This workflow does include a description of the digitization actions (reproducing) and parameters, the documentation of the digitization and the conservation of the generated metadata. The results will be made available as a standard for the digitization of daguerreotype objects. (Month 8).

Multilingual set(s) of entries list or thesaurus.

To facilitate the uniform description of the many aspects of the daguerreotype objects, WP3 will also provide a multilingual reference terminology and for daguerreotypes and an environment to create and evolve that terminology in permanent compliancy with Europeana in fifteen different languages. (Month 8) The Daguerreobase (set of) entries lists or thesaurus will be a key output from the best practice work in this work-package. Several approaches are possible, including the construction of a terminology “from scratch” and the use or adaptation of an existing (free) terminology.

This work will be done in the context of the European Metadata Registry ISO/IEC 11179, Information Technology -- Metadata registries (MDR) http://metadata-stds.org/11179/ . (Framework, Classification, Registry metamodel and basic attributes, Formulation of data definition, Naming and identification principles, Registration.)
Along with the management and publication of controlled vocabularies, the Terminology Registry will allow for terminologies encoded in different formats to be imported, namely coded in SKOS and OWL.

The issue of language will also be addressed in this WP - consensus is required regarding the use of a reference language. The technological partner PIM will pay attention to the technical aspects towards multilingualism and give feedback about this into this WP.

All the outcomes of these activities will be used to be integrated in the structure of the renewed Daguerreobase platform (WP4) and to ensure optimal harmonization and full interoperability with the Europeana portal. All standards and guidelines will be available online on the Daguerreobase platform.

The WP leader will produce and present a draft version of all standards and thesauri/entries lists at the 2nd BP Workshop (Month 6, third BMP meeting).

Deliverables

• D3.1 Best Practice program. (Month 3)
• D3.2 A technical standard for the general description of daguerreotypes content, draft and final version. (Month 6 and 8)
• D3.3 A community standard for the description of daguerreotype objects, draft and final version. (Month 6 and 8)
• D3.4 A community standard for the digitisation of daguerreotype objects. Draft and final version (Month 6 and 8)
• D3.5 A multilingual set of thesauri or entries list for the description of daguerreotype objects. Draft and final version (Month 6 and 8)