Vocabulary in museums and the provision of a webservice for museum vocabulary

12. Seminar AKM, Porec, Nov. 2008 Axel Ermert

Vocabulary in museums and the provision of a

webservice for museum vocabulary


Since the 1960s, museums are increasingly perceived as information institutions

Museums have a strong impact on audiences (107,3 Mio museum visits in Germany in 2007)


"Halskette aus dünnen Goldröhrchen, goldenen Lunulae, Pyramiden und Perlen aus blauem Glas. Aus Kertsch/Südrussland. 3.-4. Jh. nach Chr. Misc 10520, 10; L 36,5 cm. Greifenhagen II Taf 21,3. Der röm. Schmuck lässt sich bisher nur ganz allgemein den aus den übrigen Künsten bekannten Entwicklungsphasen der frühen Kaiserzeit des 1., der mittleren des 2. und der späten des 3. Jhs. nach Chr. zuordnen. (…)"

(Aus: Antikenmuseum Berlin. Die ausgestellten Werke. 1988)


1. PROPER OWN PROFESSIONAL VOCABULARY OF MUSEUMS

Not yet developed fully and in standardized form

Dictionarium Museologicum 1987 20 Spr.

Courierspeak (phraseolog. Dict.) 1993 6 Spr.

SPECTRUM 1997 / 2005 English, translations

Dutch, German, (French)

MUSEUMWISE: Workplace words defined 2003 Enflish

(…)

Museumsvokabular


2. VOCABULARY OF RESTORATION / RESTORERS

Museumsvokabular



3. „DOCUMENTARY ‚SUPER-TERMS‘ / NODE LABELS“

Museumsvokabular

Resulting from the construction and ordering of vocabulary forMuseum object description(s)

Examples:

„Activities“, „Materials“,„Furnishings and Equipment“ …. (AAT)„Communication Artefacts“ („Nomenclature ..“)

Labels for grouping, „Node labels“ in thesauri


4. DESCRIPTIVE VOCABULARY FOR MUSEUM OBJECTS

by far the biggest group

• Object terms (designations) and names

• Manufacturing techniques

• Material of production

• Cultural Context (habits, social institutions, social values, …)

• „Formal data“ – Concerning the objects‘ contexts / history (extrinsic)

- Names of persons (owners, previous owners, artists, ..)

• - Geographical names (Place of production, of use, interim abidence, ..)

- Language names, names of cultures / civilizations

„Formal data“ – Concerning the objects‘ status (e.g., in the museum)

- Mode of acquisition of the object, etc.

Museumsvokabular


Vocabulary vs. Terminology

The (technical) words / language The vocabulary, structured by concept used in a given subject field relations, proper definitions, fixed rela- tion term – concept, and possibly term conventions (‚motivated terms‘)

Often: a description of a word / concept A precise and accurate definition of a word / concept according to est. rules


Terminology principles (some of them)

For the field of words you want to cover, always establish a concept system, showing all the words and their interrelations.

Define a word / concept by referring to (stating) the next broader (higher) concept / term and give in addition – only – the differentia specifica, usually 1 charac-teristic.

Using this method, define words / entries from the same line / „array“ always byfollowing a same criterion („aspect of division“): animals by age, by skin, by num-ber of legs, etc.






Museum vocabulary / terminology originates:

- („is coined“) to a large degree in the individual museum(s): card files, internal and public catalogues, lists of all sorts, object acceptance receipts, …

- This uses a lot of common vocabulary, but often not in a structured way

- Some of the vocabulary originates from the subject science to whose field the object belongs (fixed nomenclature in natural history !), and is sometimes specifically coined in case of new objects

Other:

- Common vocabulary beyond the individual museums: auction catalogues (18th century on), scholarly descriptions of the antique, inventory lists of aristocratic holdings/tenure,

- and the „Corpus“ works from 19th c. on: „Corpus of antique vases / coins / vessels / glass painting / mosaics, ..“ etc

Museumsvokabular


In this frame, within the museum - which vocabulary / terminology arises ?

It does arise, first, in the context of the immediate action frame of those doing the work:

- „ordinary language“ voc. with ordinary museum staff

- Scientific voc. / terminology with specialized / scientific staff

- Local / regional voc./term. with specifically local / regional objects and with staff knowledgeable of these loc./reg. specialities



Museumsvokabular

Intrinsic data; by sensual perceptiondirectly readable from the object

Extrinsic data; Object-external knowledge (account, narra-tion, other sources): Everything that „happened to the ob-ject“ (that „the object experienced“), its surrounding – events, circumstances, affiliations, usage, etc.

What kind of data about an object are linguistically expressed ?


Basic categories (fields) for the description of a museum object

• Maker / artist (Person or corporate body)• Name / Product name or proper name of the object• Title (if there is an exact wording, firmly assigned to or

passed down by the object, e.g. a painting) of the object• Subject term for the object (as short as possible, but also

as precise as possible)• Group or class, to which the object belongs• Physical appearance (measurements, weight ..) of object• Date / Time of formation / nascency of the object• Material / manufacturing technique• Intended and actual use of the object (if ascertainable)• Subject headings for subject access to the object

Aus: „Datenfeldkatalog …“


(Museum) Terminology in the (data) fields


Museums, more than others, are forced to operate with only partially validated information. Many objects first need to be „determined“/“ascertained“, then „termed“ / „named“, a lot in them is often unknown in the beginning.

This is a difficult area; here, formation of vocabulary and (systematic) terminology as much as of the subject knowledge – in their interrelation – can be studied in nuce.


Terming / naming principles of museum objects are:

a. According to form (typology) („cup", "ovoid Aryballos")b. According to function / purpose / use (typology) („coffee cup“)c. According to material(s) (typology) („porcelain cup")d. According to style / period („Jugendstil cup“)e. By a personal or geogr. name, given to / used for a type of object ("Lord-Salvage-clock“, „Zaandamer Wanduhr“, „Nürnberger Ei“, „Appenzeller Uhr“, ..)

And, for ‚individual(ised) names‘ of objects:f. Referring to – sometimes famous - personalities ("Homer-Fries", „Adenauer-Mercedes“, „Elgin marbles“. etc.)g. Referring to geographic origin ("Goldbecher von Gölenkamp", "Krieger von Hirschladen").

Adjectives ? Judgemental expressions ? („very nice smallsculpture of a dancer“)


A number of published vocabularies / terminologies (some differentiated by the different data fields they pertain to) :

Typically, these take the form of

-Controlled alphabetic lists

-Classifications / Typologies / Taxonomies

-Thesauri


Auszug aus:„Systematik … Kultur-geschichtlicherBestände“(Hessen)2001


ICONCLASSBd. 5


Art and ArchitectureThesaurus(AAT)Getty, 1990


Art and ArchitectureThesaurus(AAT)Getty, 1990


Glossarium ArtisBand 2


Chenhall, NomenclatureGor museum cataloging1978 (AASLH) / 1989


mda (now collectiontrust), UKRailway Thesaurus (1994)


Inventaire général (FR)La sculpture1989


Thesaurus des objets religieux(1994)en – fr - it


Problems / next tasks:

1) Relations to be established between the individual museums and trans-individual vocabularies / terminology

2) Missing poly-hierarchy of many classifications etc., makes access via / to the different aspects of an object difficult

3) Existing good-quality vocabularies / terminologies are often hard to use because they do not exist in multilingual form

Could European projects, EU-projekts help in this respect ?


• Web-Services for controlled vocabulary

Fundaments

Interface definition

Examples of application

The initiative www.museumsvokabular.de




• Vocabularies exist in different (data) formats !

Shared vocabulary for all –

but:


Vocabularies exist in different (data) formats !Solution:

museumvok: Format for the description of vocabularies

• Based on SKOS - Simple Knowledge Organization System / W3C –

• Vocabularies on „museumsvokabular.de“ are provided in this format


• Lexikal units / denominations (preferred, alternative, dis-recommended)

• Semantic relations (Broader concepts / terms, narrower, related)

• Documentation of the format (definitions, notes)

• Cross-references between concepts in different vocabularies

museumvok: Format for the description of vocabularies


Basic structure: Concept

prefTerm (prefLabel, source)

narrower

useFor

altTerm (altLabel, source)

notation

memberOfCollection

hiddenLabel

use

broader

inScheme

museumvok: Elements

relationship (related, typeOfRelationship)

equivRelationship (equivConcept (equivID, equivLabel, equivSource) mappingRelation)

definition

depiction

subjectIndicator

note

creation

status

about


There are different vocabularies !

Shared vocabularies for all –

but:


There are different vocabularies !

Solution :

Web-Service

„W3C defines a Web Service as a software system, established to support interoperable machine-to-machine communication via a network. (…)“

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_serviceshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP


• Different vocabularies can be used when existing in the same format. here: museumvok-Format

• Different services can be used with the same client when the services use a uniform interface here: museumvok-ws (interface definition of the SIG Dokumentation, IfM and ZIB)

• Users already: Adlib, GOS, ImdasPro

There are different vocabularies ! Solution : Web-Services


• Open standards and widely used internet-technology

• http as the network protocol

• SOAP as the data exchange protocol

• WSDL WEB Services Description Language

• XML as the system-independent mark-up language

• All these technologies are independent of operating systems and hardware(s)

Advantages of a WEB-Service:


• searchConceptsById: finds for each ID from a list the related concept

• searchConceptsByTerm: finds for each term from a list the related concept(s)

• fetchHierarchy: provides for an ID the requested hierarchy-string. Depth and direction of search can be parametrised

• getSchemeMetadata: provides on request the Metadaten for the available vocabularies

Description of functionalities:


Example of application for Web-Service:Thesaurus-based search in collections

Local Browser

DB-query

Result HTML, XML

communication via http

Thesaurus-Server (MySQL o.a.)

Object-DB-Server (GOS o.a.)

communication via http

SOAP-Request

SOAP-Responsemuseumvok-Format:

XML-based, SKOS-compatible




Back, for a second, to the beginning: professional vocabulary

of the museums themselves
















Thank you !

http://www.museumsvokabular.de

Contact:

Axel Ermert | [email protected]

Institut für Museumsforschung, In der Halde 1, 14195 Berlin, Germany

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Vocabulary in museums and the provision of a webservice for museum vocabulary

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