Connecting the KHI Digital Resources

The aim of this project is to devise linked data based solutions to create a semantic platform that enables scholars to ask research questions in a more intuitive language. By collecting, cleaning, normalizing and meaningfully connecting data from a wide range of different sources that had previously been isolated, this project will allow researchers to look at subjects from a multi-layered perspective.

The first phase of the project processes bibliographic data from the Library and the data related to the Photothek holdings. We have harvested and converted part of the data from the MARC21 format to the BIBFrame linked data model and used the data converted from the Photothek database to the PHAROS model, which was done in the PHAROS projects. In the second phase, we devised solutions to connect these databases by using the bibliographic references defined in some photographs to link book subjects with subjects of the photographs gleaned from Iconclass information. In the third and final phase of the project, we adopted and configured a ResearchSpace based solution, which provides a wide range of semantic tools to manipulate, analyze and visualize data that can be searched contextually and continually expanded by new knowledge, thus creating a semantic library prototype for the KHI.  We also aim to include other heterogeneous sources of data and knowledge and develop a use case that includes most departments of the KHI.