A presentation of two aspects of the linked open data work ongoing at the Swedish National Heritage Board (Riksantikvarieämbetet): Swedish Open Cultural Heritage (SOCH/K-samsök) and the Digital Archaeological Process (DAP). Delivered at the Smithsonian, Washington, DC, 2014-11-10

1. Linked Open Data
and
The Digital Archaeological Workflow
at the
Swedish National Heritage Board
Marcus Smith
marcus.smith@raa.se

2. A little background
• Marcus Smith,
Operations Officer at the
Swedish National Heritage
Board on Gotland, Sweden
• Government agency for
heritage and the historic
environment
• Preservation, use/re-use,
development
• Works with linked open data,
and digitising the workflow of
archaeological practice

3. SOCH
Swedish Open Cultural Heritage

4. SOCH
Swedish Open Cultural Heritage
• K-samsök –
‘Cultural Cross-Search’
http://www.ksamsok.se/

5. SOCH
Swedish Open Cultural Heritage
• K-samsök –
‘Cultural Cross-Search’
http://www.ksamsok.se/
• Metadata aggregator &
web service for cultural
heritage institutions
• Monuments, buildings,
museum collections…

6. SOCH
Swedish Open Cultural Heritage
• K-samsök –
‘Cultural Cross-Search’
http://www.ksamsok.se/
• Metadata aggregator &
web service for cultural
heritage institutions
• Monuments, buildings,
museum collections…
• ≈40 institutions

7. SOCH
Swedish Open Cultural Heritage
• 2.1 million artefacts
• 880 thousand photographs
• 830 thousand monuments
• 440 thousand documents
• 110 thousand historic buildings
• 40 thousand personages
• 2000 historical events
• 1500 historic maps
(≈25–30 million triples)
• K-samsök –
‘Cultural Cross-Search’
http://www.ksamsok.se/
• Metadata aggregator &
web service for cultural
heritage institutions
• Monuments, buildings,
museum collections…
• ≈40 institutions
• ≈5 million database
objects

8. Harvesting, Linking &
Dissemination
• Object metadata
harvested from the
content provider using
OAI-PMH
Cultural Heritage
Institution’s
Database
SOCH
Local SOCH
adapter
OAI-PMH

9. Harvesting, Linking &
Dissemination
• Object metadata
harvested from the
content provider using
OAI-PMH
• The metadata is then
enriched with additional
semantic links to
related objects
Burial
mound
Photo
depicted by
Vendel
Period
dated to
described by found at
Document Artefact

10. Harvesting, Linking &
Dissemination
• Object metadata
harvested from the
content provider using
OAI-PMH
• The metadata is then
enriched with additional
semantic links to
related objects
• Links can be manually
added (UGC)
Wikipedia
Article
describes
Burial
mound
has topic
Book

11. Harvesting, Linking &
Dissemination
• Object metadata
harvested from the
content provider using
OAI-PMH
• The metadata is then
enriched with additional
semantic links to
related objects
• Links can be manually
added (UGC)
• Available as RDF,
queryable via an API
SOCH
RDF/XML
JSON-LD
REST +
CQL
HTTP
Application

12. Benefits of Linking
• Linking facilitates cross-search

13. Benefits of Linking
• Linking facilitates cross-search
• Linking simplifies
discovery, and clarifies
context
Object metadata
Images
Related external
objects
Related SOCH objects

14. Benefits of Linking
The old gallows (Galgberget), Visby – Riksantikvarieämbetet
• Linking facilitates cross-search
• Linking simplifies
discovery, and clarifies
context
• Linking allows
unanticipated
connections appear!

15. Benefits of Linking
The old gallows (Galgberget), Visby – Riksantikvarieämbetet
• Linking facilitates cross-search
• Linking simplifies
discovery, and clarifies
context
• Linking allows
unanticipated
connections appear!
’Galgberget: Memories of Wisby’ – Västergötlands Museum

16. SOCH as a Platform
• SOCH as a platform for
development

17. SOCH as a Platform
• SOCH as a platform for
development
• Kringla: a web interface
http://kringla.nu/

18. SOCH as a Platform
• SOCH as a platform for
development
• Kringla: a web interface
http://kringla.nu/
• Mobile apps
• Mashups

19. SOCH as a Platform
• SOCH as a platform for
development
• Kringla: a web interface
http://kringla.nu/
• Mobile apps
• Mashups
• Museum portals
• Over 225 million API
requests since launch
in 2010

20. Licensing & Reuse
• Only metadata is indexed
– all objects link back to a
permanent URI at the
source institution with
their full record

21. Licensing & Reuse
• Only metadata is indexed
– all objects link back to a
permanent URI at the
source institution with
their full record
• All metadata is CC0
• Metadata includes
licensing information for
the main record

22. Licensing & Reuse
• Only metadata is indexed
– all objects link back to a
permanent URI at the
source institution with
their full record
• All metadata is CC0
• Metadata includes
licensing information for
the main record
• Of 1.8 million ‘rich’
objects, 1.2 million are
CC or PD

23. Licensing & Reuse
• Only metadata is indexed
– all objects link back to a
permanent URI at the
source institution with
their full record
• All metadata is CC0
• Metadata includes
licensing information for
the main record
• Of 1.8 million ‘rich’
objects, 1.2 million are
CC or PD
• SOCH is the Swedish
national aggregator for
Europeana

24. The Future of SOCH
• More institutions delivering
data
• Triplestore, SPARQL
endpoint
• Ultimately, we’d like it if
SOCH in its current form
wasn’t needed – if each
institution made their own
data available as SPARQL-queryable
RDF on the
semantic web.
SOCH
API

25. The Future of SOCH
• More institutions delivering
data
• Triplestore, SPARQL
endpoint
• Ultimately, we’d like it if
SOCH in its current form
wasn’t needed – if each
institution made their own
data available as SPARQL-queryable
RDF on the
semantic web.

26. DAP
The Digital Archaeological Process

27. The Problem
• No central fieldwork
register

28. The Problem
’Charles Babb parts storage’ – SDASM (flickr)
• No central fieldwork
register
• No central digital
archive for
archaeological data

29. The Problem
• No central fieldwork
register
• No central digital
archive for
archaeological data
• Digital availability of
fieldwork reports is
patchy

30. The Problem
• No central fieldwork
register
• No central digital
archive for
archaeological data
• Digital availability of
fieldwork reports is
patchy
• Existing resources not
linked
’silos’ – Doc Searls (flickr)

31. The Problem
• No central fieldwork
register
• No central digital
archive for
archaeological data
• Digital availability of
fieldwork reports is
patchy
• Existing resources not
linked
• Inefficient information
transfer
(digital → paper → digital)
How It Works – The Computer.
The Output Unit. (Ladybird books)

32. Goals for DAP
• Fully digitised seamless
information transfer

33. Goals for DAP
’CERN storage servers’ – skimaniac (flickr)
• Fully digitised seamless
information transfer
• Digital archive for
archaeological data

34. Goals for DAP
• Fully digitised seamless
information transfer
• Digital archive for
archaeological data
• Access to source data

35. Goals for DAP
• Fully digitised seamless
information transfer
• Digital archive for
archaeological data
• Access to source data
• Semantically linked
data
’Anchor Men of the Mauretania’
Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums (flickr)

36. Goals for DAP
’Come in We’re Open’ – jilleatsapples (flickr)
• Fully digitised seamless
information transfer
• Digital archive for
archaeological data
• Access to source data
• Semantically linked
data
• Openly licensed, re-useable
data
• National ‘events’
register

37. DAP so far…
• Government directive, with extra funding for five years
• LOD as a core idea; openness and transparency as core
values
• Collaborative effort with the archaeological community
• DAP requires a new data infrastructure for us at RAÄ
• DAP requires a new way of working for archaeologists in
Sweden:
– Technical challenges
– Licensing challenges
– Mindset challenges

38. DAP so far…
• Already in place:
– SAMLA reports/PDF
repository:
http://samla.raa.se/

39. DAP so far…
• Already in place:
– SAMLA reports/PDF
repository:
http://samla.raa.se/
– Processes mapped

41. DAP so far…
• Already in place:
– SAMLA reports/PDF
repository:
http://samla.raa.se/
– Processes mapped
– Conceptual modeling
ongoing

43. Actor / Role
Organisation
Organisation
Research
event
Development
Legal
framework
Legal
framework
Land
management
Legal framework
Method
Archaeological
event
Analysis
Fieldwork
Documentation
Resolution
Documentation
Actor
/
Role
Assessment event
Legal
status
Monument
type
Period
Information
Legal
event
Natural
event
event
management event
Tangible
Heritage
Temporal
Context
Geographical
Context
Event
Context
Operative
Context

44. DAP so far…
• Already in place:
– SAMLA reports/PDF
repository:
http://samla.raa.se/
– Processes mapped
– Conceptual modeling
ongoing
• Still to plan:
– protocols & formats
– data mapping
– digital archive…
• To do straight away:
– rescue fieldwork data
– start a skeleton of an
events register
– …and ‘master data’
such as ontologies,
thesauri/controlled
vocabularies!

45. Structured Vocabularies
• SOCH publishes LOD…
• …but the majority of the
classification metadata is
still text strings, rather than
URIs pointing to terms in
authoritative controlled
vocabularies
• We’re going to need a
number of such thesauri in
for the data a future DAP
infrastructure is going to
handle
• Monuments types
• Legal status
• Events
• Periods
• Materials
• Built heritage
• Evidence types
• Techniques
• Artefact types
• …etc
• Extant/non-existent
• Internal/external

46. Who manages what data?
• Local authorities: resolutions
• Fieldwork units: field
documentation; produce reports
• National Heritage Board:
national monuments register,
buildings register, monuments
types thesaurus, etc; archive
reports
• Forest Agency: forest sites
• Museums: finds
• Universities, SND: research
data, analyses
• National Land Survey:
geospatial data
• Law: legal terms/concepts, legal
events
• We need to be able to
manage the data
we're responsible for
• We need to be able to
connect to (fetch)
data that external
bodies are
responsible for, and
react when they
change

47. Challenges
• We welcome suggestions and feedback -
we're very much finding our way as we go!
• DAP is a massive undertaking, and we
don’t want to reinvent the wheel if we can
help it.

48. DAP
SOCH
http://www.raa.se/dap
http://www.ksamsok.se/
http://www.kringla.nu/
marcus.smith@raa.se
@carwash