The CIDOC Conceptual Reference Module: An Ontological Approach to Semantic Interoperability of Metadata

This article presents the methodology that has been successfully used over the past seven years by an interdisciplinary team to create the International Committee for Documentation of the International Council of Museums (CIDOC) conceptual reference model (crm), a high‐level ontology to enable infor...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe AI magazine Vol. 24; no. 3; pp. 75 - 92
Main Author Doerr, Martin
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published La Canada American Association for Artificial Intelligence 01.10.2003
John Wiley & Sons, Inc
Subjects
Archives & records
Artificial intelligence
Computerized information storage and retrieval
Councils
Cultural heritage
Data warehouses
Design
Documentation
Dublin Core Format
Internet
Interoperability
Knowledge
Library of Congress Subject Headings
Metadata
Museums
Ontology
Programming language
Programming languages
Semantics
Subject specialists
Terminology
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Summary:This article presents the methodology that has been successfully used over the past seven years by an interdisciplinary team to create the International Committee for Documentation of the International Council of Museums (CIDOC) conceptual reference model (crm), a high‐level ontology to enable information integration for cultural heritage data and their correlation with library and archive information. The CIDOC crm is now in the process to become an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard. This article justifies in detail the methodology and design by functional requirements and gives examples of its contents. The CIDOC crm analyzes the common conceptualizations behind data and metadata structures to support data transformation, mediation, and merging. It is argued that such ontologies are property‐centric, in contrast to terminological systems, and should be built with different methodologies. It is demonstrated that ontological and epistemological arguments are equally important for an effective design, in particular when dealing with knowledge from the past in any domain. It is assumed that the presented methodology and the upper level of the ontology are applicable in a far wider domain.
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ISSN:0738-4602
2371-9621
DOI:10.1609/aimag.v24i3.1720