Dear All,
I cannot find the issue, but we had discussed that the introduction
needs updating:
Introduction
This document is the formal definition of the*CIDOC Conceptual Reference
Model (“CRM”), *a formal ontology intended to facilitate the
integration, mediation and interchange of heterogeneous cultural
heritage information. The CRM is the culmination of more than a decade
of standards development work by the International Committee for
Documentation (CIDOC) of the International Council of Museums (ICOM).
Work on the CRM itself began in 1996 under the auspices of the
ICOM-CIDOC Documentation Standards Working Group. Since 2000,
development of the CRM has been officially delegated by ICOM-CIDOC to
the CIDOC CRM Special Interest Group, which collaborates with the ISO
working group ISO/TC46/SC4/WG9 to bring the CRM to the form and status
of an International Standard.
Objectives of the CIDOC CRM
The primary role of the CRM is to enable information exchange and
integration between heterogeneous sources of cultural heritage
information. It aims at providing the semantic definitions and
clarifications needed to transform disparate, localised information
sources into a coherent global resource, be it within a larger
institution, in intranets or on the Internet.
Its perspective is supra-institutional and abstracted from any specific
local context. This goal determines the constructs and level of detail
of the CRM.
More specifically, it defines and is restricted to the *underlying
semantics* of database schemata and document *structures* used in
cultural heritage and museum documentation in terms of a formal
ontology. It does *not* define any of the *terminology* appearing
typically as data in the respective data structures; however it foresees
the characteristic relationships for its use. It does *not* aim at
proposing what cultural institutions *should* document. Rather it
explains the logic of what they actually currently document, and thereby
enables *semantic interoperability.*
It intends to provide a model of the intellectual structure of cultural
documentation in logical terms. As such, it is not optimised for
implementation-specific storage and processing aspects. Implementations
may lead to solutions where elements and links between relevant elements
of our conceptualizations are no longer explicit in a database or other
structured storage system. For instance the birth event that connects
elements such as father, mother, birth date, birth place may not appear
in the database, in order to save storage space or response time of the
system. The CRM allows us to explain how such apparently disparate
entities are intellectually interconnected, and how the ability of the
database to answer certain intellectual questions is affected by the
omission of such elements and links.
*Here my proposal:*
Introduction
This document is the formal definition of the*CIDOC Conceptual Reference
Model (“CRM”), *a formal ontology intended to facilitate the
integration, mediation and interchange of heterogeneous cultural
heritage information and similar information from other domains. The CRM
is the culmination of more than two decades of standards development
work by the International Committee for Documentation (CIDOC) of the
International Council of Museums (ICOM). Work on the CRM itself began in
1996 under the auspices of the ICOM-CIDOC Documentation Standards
Working Group. Since 2000, development of the CRM has been officially
delegated by ICOM-CIDOC to the CIDOC CRM Special Interest Group, which
has been collaborating soon after with the ISO working group
ISO/TC46/SC4/WG9 to bring the CRM to the form and status of an
International Standard. This collaboration has resulted in ISO21127:2004
and ISO21127:2014, and will be continued to produce the next update of
the standard. This document belongs to the series of evolving versions
of the formal definition of the**CRM, which serve the ISO working group
as community draft for the standard. Eventual minor differences of the
ISO standard text from the CIDOC version in semantics and notation that
the ISO working group requires and implements are harmonized in the
subsequent versions of the CIDOC version.
Objectives of the CIDOC CRM
The primary role of the CRM is to enable the exchange and integration of
information from heterogeneous sources for the reconstruction and
interpretation of the past at a human scale, based on all kinds of
material evidence, including texts, audiovisual material and even oral
tradition. It starts from, but is not limited to, the needs of museum
documentation and research based on museum holdings. It aims at
providing the semantic definitions and clarifications needed to
transform disparate, localised information sources into a coherent
global resource, be it within a larger institution, in intranets or on
the Internet. Its perspective is supra-institutional and abstracted from
any specific local context. This goal determines the constructs and
level of detail of the CRM.
More specifically, it defines, in terms of a formal ontology, the
*underlying semantics* of database *schemata* and *structured* documents
used in the documentation of cultural heritage and scientific
activities. In particular it defines the semantics related to the study
of the past and current state of our world, as it is characteristic for
museums, but also or other institutions and disciplines. It does *not*
define any of the *terminology* appearing typically as data in the
respective data structures; however it foresees the characteristic
relationships for its use. It does *not* aim at proposing what cultural
institutions *should* document. Rather it explains the logic of what
they actually currently document, and thereby enables *semantic
interoperability.*
It intends to provide a model of the intellectual structure of the
respective kinds of documentation in logical terms. As such, it is not
optimised for implementation-specific storage and processing aspects.
Implementations may lead to solutions where elements and links between
relevant elements of our conceptualizations are no longer explicit in a
database or other structured storage system. For instance, the birth
event that connects elements such as father, mother, birth date, birth
place may not appear in the database, in order to save storage space or
response time of the system. The CRM allows us to explain how such
apparently disparate entities are intellectually interconnected, and how
the ability of the database to answer certain intellectual questions is
affected by the omission of such elements and links.
......
--
------------------------------------
Dr. Martin Doerr
Honorary Head of the
Center for Cultural Informatics
Information Systems Laboratory
Institute of Computer Science
Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH)
N.Plastira 100, Vassilika Vouton,
GR70013 Heraklion,Crete,Greece
Vox:+30(2810)391625
Email: mar...@ics.forth.gr
Web-site: http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl
