Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence

Julien A. Raemy (Digital Humanities Lab, University of Basel / DaSCH)
ORCID Google Scholar GitHub Mastodon

International Conference on Digital Humanities (CIHN24)
Geneva School of Business Administration | Carouge, Switzerland | 13.02.2024
🇫🇷 LOUD : Catalyseur de Convergence

CIHN24 | Geneva School of Business Administration | 13.02.2024 |
Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

PhD Thesis

Linked Open Usable Data for Cultural Heritage: Perspectives on Community Practices and Semantic Interoperability

Supervised by:

  • Prof. Dr. Peter Fornaro (University of Basel)
  • Prof. Dr. Walter Leimgruber (University of Basel)
  • Dr. Robert Sanderson (Yale University)

https://phd.julsraemy.ch

Preambule
Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

Agenda

LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence

  • Interlinking data on the web
  • Linked Open Usable Data (LOUD)
  • LUX, LOUD in action
  • Conclusion
Preambule

Interlinking Data on the Web

Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

An open vision of the web

The [World Wide Web] project merges the techniques of information retrieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system. The project started with the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone.

[Berners-Lee 1991]

Interlinking Data on the Web
Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

The Semantic Web or the Web of Data

The Semantic Web is an extension of the World Wide Web, through standards, to make it machine-readable.

center

Tweaked Semantic Web Layer Cake [Idehen 2017]

Interlinking Data on the Web
Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

Linked Open Data (LOD)

center

5-star deployment scheme for Open Data: https://5stardata.info/

Interlinking Data on the Web

Linked Open Usable Data (LOUD)

Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

Linked Open Usable Data (LOUD)

LOUD

  • LOUD's goal is to achieve the Semantic Web's intent on a global scale in a usable fashion by leveraging community-driven and JSON-LD-based specifications.

  • It has five main design principles (https://linked.art/loud/) to make the data more easily accessible to software developers, who play a key role in interacting with the data and building software and services on top of it, and to some extent to academics.

[Sanderson 2019]

Linked Open Usable Data (LOUD)
Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

Linked Open Usable Data (LOUD)

Specifications that follow the LOUD principles

  • International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF)
  • W3C Web Annotation Data Model
  • Linked Art
Linked Open Usable Data (LOUD)
Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

LOUD-driven Communities

IIIF and Linked Art: social fabrics of sound socio-technical practices

  • Synergy of effective social and technical integration with an emphasis on usability
  • Collaboration beyond technical boundaries
  • Inclusivity and diversity in participation
  • Openness and friendliness as core values
  • Commitment to transparency
  • Organisation of online and face-to-face meetings

[Newbury 2018; Raemy 2023]

Linked Open Usable Data (LOUD)
center
Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF)

IIIF

  • A model for presenting and annotating content
  • A global community that develops shared application programming interfaces (APIs), implements them in software, and exposes interoperable content

https://iiif.io

Linked Open Usable Data (LOUD)
Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

IIIF – Use Case

center

https://www.theleidencollection.com/viewer/david-and-uriah/

Linked Open Usable Data (LOUD)
Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

IIIF – Use Case

center

Storiiies: http://storiiies.cogapp.com/

Linked Open Usable Data (LOUD)
center
Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

Linked Art

Linked Art is a community and a CIDOC (ICOM International Committee for Documentation) Working Group collaborating to define a metadata application profile for describing cultural heritage, and the technical means for conveniently interacting with it (the API).

https://linked.art

Linked Open Usable Data (LOUD)
Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

Linked Art

Level Linked Art
Conceptual Model CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM)
Ontology RDF encoding of CRM 7.1, plus extensions
Vocabulary Getty Vocabularies, mainly the Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), as well as the Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN) and the Union List of Artist Names (ULAN)
Profile Object-based cultural heritage (mainly art museum oriented)
API JSON-LD 1.1, following REST (representational state transfer) and web patterns
Linked Open Usable Data (LOUD)
Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

Linked Art

center

[Raemy et al. 2023, adapted from Sanderson 2018]

Linked Open Usable Data (LOUD)
Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

Linked Art Digital Integration (with IIIF)

center

Linked Open Usable Data (LOUD)

LUX, LOUD in action

Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

Yale Collections Discovery

LUX provides a unified gateway to more than 41 million cultural heritage resources held by Yale's museums, archives and libraries: Yale University Library, Yale Center for British Art, Yale Peabody Museum, Yale University Art Gallery.

Built on open standards

  • Linked Art, IIIF, W3C Activity Streams
  • Widespread technologies: Python, JavaScript, Node.js, React, AWS
  • Multimodal database (NoSQL): MarkLogic Server

https://lux.collections.yale.edu/

See Metcalfe Hurst [2023]

LUX, LOUD in action
Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

Data pipeline and architecture

center

[Raemy & Sanderson 2023]

Data Transformation Pipeline Code: https://github.com/project-lux/data-pipeline

LUX, LOUD in action
Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

LOUD in action

center

Link to optimised video resolution

LUX, LOUD in action

Conclusion

Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

Impact and perspectives

  1. Improving interoperability and accessibility
  2. Facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration
  3. Enhanced understanding of cultural heritage
  4. Improving research methods and data management
  5. Promoting convergence between digital humanities and information science
LUX, LOUD in action
Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

LOUD-Driven Infrastructure

center

[Felsing et al. 2023]

LUX, LOUD in action
Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

Concluding thoughts

Towards collaborative and interoperable convergence

  • Grassroots development of IIIF and Linked Art with collaboration and transparency are one of the key factors, but implementations are needed to be conducted in parallel (specifications versus demonstrability).

  • LOUD standards, when used in conjunction, enhances semantic interoperability, even if it comes at the cost of ontological purity.

  • LOUD practices and standards should serve as common denominators for cultural heritage institutions, public bodies as well as research projects.

Conclusion

References and Image Credits

Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

References

Berners-Lee, T. (1991, August 6). WorldWideWeb — Executive summary. Archive.Md. https://archive.md/Lfopj

Felsing, U., Fornaro, P., Frischknecht, M., & Raemy, J. A. (2023). Community and Interoperability at the Core of Sustaining Image Archives. Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries Publications, 5(1), 40–54. https://doi.org/10.5617/dhnbpub.10649

Idehen, K. U. (2017, July 24). Semantic Web Layer Cake Tweak, Explained. OpenLink Software Blog. https://medium.com/openlink-software-blog/semantic-web-layer-cake-tweak-explained-6ba5c6ac3fab

Metcalfe Hurst, E. (2023). LUX: Yale Collections Discovery. ARLIS/NA Multimedia & Technology Reviews, 2023(4), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.17613/3hy1-pv45

Newbury, D. (2018). LOUD: Linked Open Usable Data and linked.art. 2018 CIDOC Conference, 1–11. https://cidoc.mini.icom.museum/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2021/03/CIDOC2018_paper_153.pdf

Raemy, J. A. (2022). Améliorer la valorisation des données du patrimoine culturel grâce au Linked Open Usable Data (LOUD). In N. Lasolle, O. Bruneau, & J. Lieber (Eds.), Actes des journées humanités numériques et Web sémantique (pp. 132–149). Les Archives Henri-Poincaré - Philosophie et Recherches sur les Sciences et les Technologies (AHP-PReST); Laboratoire lorrain de recherche en informatique et ses applications (LORIA). https://doi.org/10.5451/unibas-ep89725

Raemy, J. A. (2023). Characterising the IIIF and Linked Art Communities: Survey report (p. 29) [Report]. University of Basel. https://doi.org/10.5451/unibas-ep95340

References and Image Credits
Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

References

Raemy, J. A., Gray, T., Collinson, A., & Page, K. R. (2023, July 12). Enabling Participatory Data Perspectives for Image Archives through a Linked Art Workflow (Poster). Digital Humanities 2023 Posters. Digital Humanities 2023, Graz, Austria. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7878358

Raemy, J. A., & Sanderson, R. (2023). Analysis of the Usability of Automatically Enriched Cultural Heritage Data (arXiv:2309.16635). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2309.16635

Sanderson, R. (2018, May 15). Shout it Out: LOUD. EuropeanaTech Conference 2018, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. https://www.slideshare.net/Europeana/shout-it-out-loud-by-rob-sanderson-europeanatech-conference-2018

Sanderson, R. (2019). Keynote: Standards and Communities: Connected People, Consistent Data, Usable Applications. 2019 ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), 28. https://doi.org/10.1109/JCDL.2019.00009

References and Image Credits
Julien A. Raemy | LOUD: Catalyst of Convergence | CC BY 4.0

Image Credits

Cultural Anthropology Switzerland (CAS)

These images are part of the photographic archives of Cultural Anthropology Switzerland, formerly the Swiss Society for Folklore Studies, based in Basel, Switzerland. Licence: CC BY-NC 4.0

References and Image Credits

5-star open data scheme  1) make your stuff available on the Web (whatever format) under an open license 2) make it available as structured data 3) make it available in a non-proprietary open format (e.g., CSV instead of Excel 4) use URIs to denote things, so that people can point at your stuff 5) link your data to other data to provide context