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Dominic Oldman (British Museum), 'Data Harmonisation and the Ethical Representation of Cultural Objects: A ResearchSpace Perspective'

15 October 2013, 5:30 pm

dhevent

Event Information

Open to

All

Location

G31, Foster Court

The beginnings of the modern museum start with the Wunderkammer (a cabinet of curiosities), through which nature was represented by both natural and crafted objects. Without labels or classification the seemingly chaotic and disordered Wunderkammer revealed knowledge about the unity of nature through the resemblances and connections that could be found between things.

During the 18th century larger, more comprehensive collections, like the founding collection of the British Museum (accumulated by Sir Hans Sloane), addressed more sophisticated questions but continued to explore connections between natural and person-made objects. However, the development of more scientific classification systems and specialisms led to the division of these collections and the establishment of new institutions where the spirit of unity found in the Wunderkammer was lost.

The CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) ontology, used in the British Museum's ResearchSpace project, provides a knowledge representation system that re-establishes connections between objects found in different museums. It provides a unified framework for data harmonisation that allows us to once again explore the relationship between things without losing individual institutional perspectives. Using the Semantic Web and 'big data' it can allow researchers to explore and model data at both proximity and distance. It can bring together the different perspectives that have evolved across the cultural heritage sector that might combine to show a bigger and more complete picture with common historical themes and issues. 

Dominic Oldman is Principal Investigator on the ResearchSpace project and Deputy Head of Information Systems at the British Museum.

All welcome, there will be a drinks reception following the talk.