Presentation Abstracts
Opening
(Grigoris Antoniou, FORTH-ICS)
This short presentation will introduce the Institute of Computer Science at FORTH, our interest in the area of cultural informatics, and the motivation for the event.[Speaker's Biography] [Slides]
Cultural informatics: supporting the information lifecycle
(Martin Doerr, FORTH-ICS)
Cultural informatics deals with supporting the lifecycle of information found, produced and used by professionals, scholars and interested public about all aspects of human history and activity, including products, art objects, science, thoughts and ideas by information technology (IT). The lifecycle begins with collecting and documenting evidence from any material trace up to written documents and even oral tradition, typically by professionals and amateurs with very high specialization. From the vast evidence collected, it is our ambition to arrive at an integrated picture of the latest stage of knowledge, and to use it for interpretation and presentation of the past in education and to the public. This last stage results again in documents that become subject of collection. Currently collection, interpretation and presentation are widely supported by IT. The greatest challenge still is to close the gap between those systems in order to manage the integrated latest stage of knowledge globally and across the numerous disciplines involved. Semantic Web technologies and formal ontologies are about to provide new solutions.[Speaker's Biography] [Slides]
The Role of Web 2.0 in Generating Knowledge about Cultural Resources: An IFT Experience
(Sharif Shams Imon and Chin Ee Ong, Heritage Studies Centre, Institute For Tourism Studies)
Recently, the Heritage Management students of the Institute For Tourism Studies (IFT), under the guidance of international and local academic faculty members, carried out a cultural mapping project that involved collection of field data on previously unmapped cultural resources in Macao. Sharing the experiences gained from the project, the first part of the presentation will discuss (1) the type of information collected, (2) the methods employed to collect them, (3) the advantages and disadvantages of the methods used and (4) the way the collected information was analysed, organised and presented.The second part of the presentation will discuss issues related to the existing cultural mapping system as a linear process and the knowledge generators (academics) role in it. The presenters will discuss the possibility of developing an interface in which the knowledge holders (community members), knowledge generators and knowledge users (public and private organisations) could collaborate in an integrated environment so that more can be achieved and shared efficiently and meaningfully. The focus will be on the use of Web 2.0 to develop a platform for direct community participation in knowledge generation in heritage-related fields.
[Speaker's Biography]
Cultural information systems: A practical guide to integrated solutions
(Martin Doerr, FORTH-ICS)
There are fairly standard IT solutions for the traditional library task of collecting and providing access for the public to various information sources in printed or other form, and integrated Internet access to large public libraries is standard. There are also industrial solutions for managing the inventory of objects in museums and the administrational processes. However, most cultural heritage institutions, such as archives, libraries, museums, SMR ("sites and monuments records") are also engaged in research, preservation, exhibition and publication of their holdings in relation to other sources. A typical museum also contains libraries and archives. These integrated processes within each institution and between institutions require integrated solutions, but no single product and provider covers the whole spectrum. Also, as technology and the appreciation of its benefits by the users progress, different components needs to be upgraded at different times. We present a practical characterization of the major components currently needed by an organization and the state-of-the-art to manage system integration and migration.[Speaker's Biography] [Slides]
Batik Recommendation System: On Algorithms of Clustering and Classifying Batik Images
(Veronica Moertini, Parahyangan Catholic University)
Although it is well known that wearing proper outfit could increase self-confidence, lots of people do not really care of how to select the most suitable apparels. This conclusion is drawn after some observation at public places, where lots of people are found miss-dressed. Online recommendation system could provide solution for them. Upon study literature, it is found that in general, color, contrast degree and motif of apparels play significant roles in determining whether a specific type of apparel is well suited for a certain person profile (having certain skin, hair color and personality). In this early stage of research, batik, which is originated in Indonesia, is chosen as an apparel case study as it is more complex than general textile that leads to more difficulties in selecting the right ones.The recommendation system requires clustering and classification techniques that work on textile (in this case, batik) images. The research is aimed to find methods for clustering and classifying batik images based on color, contrast degree and motives. The presentation held in UNU - IIST Macao would discuss the architecture of the recommendation system, back ground theory of apparel selection concerning people profile, 9 proposed algorithms and the experiments result of: (1) Fashion color clustering using HSV color model. (2) Contrast clustering using wavelet. (3) Motif classifying and clustering using wavelet, Canny edge detector, shape-based and texture-based approaches.
As the recommendation currently has not existed yet while this would be usefull for lots of people (in helping them to dress up well), further research on this field would be needed. Therefore, on each algorithm dicussion, how the algorithm would be used and possibly enhanced to cluster or classify general textile would also be presented with the hope that it would give future work direction.
[Speaker's Biography]
Modelling information for integration and sense-making: an introduction to ISO21127 CIDOC CRM
(Martin Doerr, FORTH-ICS)
Any integrated representation of the latest stage of knowledge about cultural heritage must overcome the semantic heterogeneity of hundreds of different formats and schemata in which digital cultural information is currently documented and managed. The high diversity has many reasons: It is not only the lack of adherence to standards, and the innovation rate of the standards themselves, it is also the high diversity of the subject matter itself and the need of system optimization for many particular processes. Therefore the International Committee for Documentation (CIDOC) of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) has engaged in defining and propagating a core ontology for the semantic integration of cultural information with library, archive and other information, the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM), also ISO 21127:2006. It is a compact model of 80 classes and 130 relationships, which concentrates on the definition of relationships, rather than terminology, in order to mediate between heterogeneous database schemata and metadata structures. Its central idea is the explicit modeling of events, both for the representation of metadata, such as creation, publication, and use, as well as for content summarization and the creation of integrated knowledge bases. It is not prescriptive, but allows for annotating and transforming existing or new data structures to a core set of commonly understood concepts. The closer to the CRM a data structure is designed, the easier is the task of transforming the data to another representation or merging complementary information into larger units of knowledge.We present major concepts of the CRM and a case study of transforming data. It is the intellectual key to globally integrate latest stages of knowledge.
[Speaker's Biography] [Slides]
Model Development of an Archival Management System for the Macao Historical Archives
(Marie Imelda MacLeod, Director of Historical Archives, Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macao S.A.R. Government)
Archives constitute the memory of nations and of societies, shape their identity, and are a cornerstone of the information society (ICA). Archives in Macao law are defined as the set of documents, in any form or material support, produced and received in the course of business by public or private bodies or by single or collective persons, within the framework of the activities of the Government and Public Administration of Macao. This presentation describes the workflow model of an archival management system adopted by the Macao Historical Archives. To further analyze the strength and the weaknesses of the current system, the conceptual workflow model from the Macao Historical Archives has been mapped onto the OAIS functional reference model (ISO standard 14721). As the project is still ongoing, this presentation will focus on the modeling requirements, discusses challenges, and conclude with pointers to future work.[Speaker's Biography]