SOCH (Swedish Open Cultural Heritage) is maintained by the Swedish National Heritage Board and provides online access to catalogues from 60 museums and to the registers of protected monuments and buildings in Sweden. Altogether SOCH provides openly licenced access to 7.1 million items. In his presentation Smith looked at developments in Linked Open Data, Web APIs and licencing of content in the context of SOCH, Europeana and CARARE.

2. A presentation of SOCH:
Swedish Open Cultural Heritage
Marcus Smith
marcus.smith@raa.se

3. The Swedish National Heritage Board
• Government agency for heritage and the
historic environment
• One of Sweden’s oldest government
agencies, founded in 1630
• Preservation, use/re-use, development
• Offices in Stockholm, and on Gotland
• Visitor centres at Glimmingehus and Gamla
Uppsala
• Roughly 240 employees

4. What do we do?
The Swedish National Heritage Board ensures that Sweden’s
cultural heritage is preserved, is made use of, and continues to
be developed.

5. Swedish
Open
Cultural
Heritage
SOCH
https://www.raa.se/ksamsok

6. (K-samsök in Swedish)
https://www.raa.se/ksamsok

7. Swedish Cultural Heritage

8. Lots of Swedish Cultural Heritage!

9. 60 museums and heritage registers

10. SOCH

11. 7.1 million items
Helmet from Vendel.
CC-BY, Historiska Museet
The Stige silver hoard.
CC-BY-NC, Sundsvalls Museum

12. 972 thousand monuments
Ales stenar. CC-BY, Riksantikvarieämbetet

13. 143 thousand historic buildings & churches
Tjolöholms slott, Halland, & Lärbro church, Gotland.
CC-BY, Riksantikvarieämbetet

14. 3.1 million artefacts
Viking-age sword. CC-BY, Historiska Museet

15. Gamla Uppsala mounds under excavation, 1874.
Riksantikvarieämbetet
2 million photographs

16. And more!
Documents
Events
People

17. Openly licensed

18. Copy, Transform, Combine
CC-BY, Jens Rydén

19. Geolocated

20. High-resolution images
Vasikkajoki slåttermyr, Pajala.
CC-BY, Riksantikvarieämbetet

21. Browse with Kringla.nu

22. Linked Open Data

23. Linked Open Data
• Links describing how objects are related to one
another
• Links to external resources:
• Wikipedia articles
• Wikimedia images
• Books and articles at the Swedish National
Library
• Even more from Europeana

24. The old gallows (Galgberget), Visby – Riksantikvarieämbetet
Benefits of Linking
• Linking facilitates cross-
search
• Linking simplifies discovery,
and clarifies context
• Linking allows
unanticipated connections
appear!
Object metadata
Related external
objects
Images
Related SOCH objects
’Galgberget: Memories of Wisby’ – Västergötlands Museum

25. Web API
• Search a variety of parameters
• URIs as identifiers
• Data as
• Simple XML
• RDF/XML
• JSON-LD
• Even more links in our
UGC hub!
Documentation and terms of use at
https://www.raa.se/ksamsok

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

27. Licensing and Reuse
• Only metadata is indexed, and
all objects link back to their
source records with the data
provider
• All metadata is CC0
• Metadata contains licensing
information for the object itself
• 66% of the “rich” objects are
CC or PD

28. Europeana & CARARE
• SOCH is the Swedish national
aggregator for Europeana
• 3.3 million (47%) of SOCH objects
are harvested to Europeana
(due to content type, license, data
provider)
• Archaeological (monuments) data is
mapped via CARARE
• Active in CARARE project since
2010

29. Future work
• AAT concepts
• Test harvest of monuments data to
Europeana
• Enriched data model
• Triplestore + SPARQL endpoint
Framtiden och vår miljö
CC-BY, Vänersborgs museum

30. Examples
Bystan, Birka (Adelsö 119:1):
http://www.kringla.nu/kringla/objekt?referens=raa/fmi/10000101190001
https://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/record/2020702/raa_fmi_10000101190001.html
Glimmingehus, (Vallby 5:1):
http://www.kringla.nu/kringla/objekt?referens=raa/fmi/10113500050001
https://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/record/2020702/raa_fmi_10113500050001.html
Villa Muramaris:
http://www.kringla.nu/kringla/objekt?referens=raa/bbr/21400000581119
Rökstenen (Rök 1:1 ; Ög 136)
http://www.kringla.nu/kringla/objekt?referens=raa/fmi/10048200010001
https://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/record/2020702/raa_fmi_10048200010001.html

31. Examples
Ållebergskragen:
http://www.kringla.nu/kringla/objekt?referens=shm/object/108861
https://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/record/91624/shm_object_108861.html
Streiff:
http://www.kringla.nu/kringla/objekt?referens=LSH/objects/66967

32. Ancient stuff
Paleolithic aurochs metatarsus.
CC-BY, Historiska Museet

33. Modern stuff
Sony Walkman TPS-L2.
CC-BY, Tekniska Museet

34. LGBTQI Activist Pin
CC-BY, Unstraight Museum
Queer stuff

35. A "Viking" at Ármannsfell, Þingvellir, Iceland, 1930.
Picture stone from Hunninge, Gotland.
Riksantikvarieämbetet
Vikings

36. Bling
The Möne golden collar.
CC-BY, Historiska Museet

37. Karl XIV Johan’s war horse, Andalus.
CC-BY-SA, Skoklosters slott
Taxidermied horses
Gustav II Adolf’s horse, Streiff
CC-BY-SA, Livrustkammaren

38. Runic postcards
The fish market at Uddevalla, 1902.
Bohusläns museum

39. Stereographs
Market square, Landskrona, 1901.
Riksantikvarieämbetet

40. Stereographs
Market square, Landskrona, 1901.
Riksantikvarieämbetet

41. Thanks!
Marcus Smith
marcus.smith@raa.se
@carwash
https://www.raa.se/ksamsok
http://www.kringla.nu/