On the Use of Geographic Information in Humanities Research Infrastructure: A Case Study on Cultural Heritage

Albina Mościcka, Agnieszka Zwirowicz-Rutkowska
2018 ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information  
As an invaluable source of knowledge about the past, cultural heritage may be an important element of the humanities research infrastructure, along with other elements, such as spatial references. Therefore, this paper attempts to provide an answer to the questions concerning the ways in which spatial information can contribute to the development of this infrastructure and the aspects of storytelling based on cultural resources that can be supported by such infrastructure. The objective of the
more » ... ethodology that was used was to combine the aspects that refer to spatial information and cultural items into a single, common issue, and to describe them in a formalized way with use of Unified Modeling Language (UML). As a result, the study presents a proposal of the Humanities Infrastructure Architecture based on spatially-oriented movable cultural items, taking into account their use in the context of interoperability, along with the concept of creating spatial databases that would include movable monuments. The authors also demonstrate that the ISO 19100 series of geographical information standards may be a source of interesting conceptual solutions that may be used in the process of the standardization of geographical information that was recorded in the descriptions of cultural heritage items in form of metadata and data structure descriptions. Much of the big data remains in the hands of its creators, but the institutions that are involved in the recording of cultural heritage are becoming increasingly more often involved in capturing, storing, analyzing, and visualization of big cultural datasets [8] . National libraries, museums, and archives digitize physical collections on a large scale. Europeana alone [9] collects about 51 million works of art, books, films, and audio files from all over Europe, while the London Metropolitan Archives put online over 20 million parish records [10] and the US Library of Congress has 25 million digitized items, which represent less than 16% of the Library's total 160-million item collection [11] . The importance of cultural big data and the need to provide access to cultural resources to the widest possible audience resulted in defining the guidelines for Member States of the European Union on the policy on big data for culture [12] . Big data on cultural heritage is a rich source of information about the past, as it describes people, places, events, and at the same time providing material evidence of past times. We do not always realize that all of it is related to the places where people used to live and events happened. It refers to places that existed in the past, etc., which is why it is a great source for storytelling with the use of geographic space.
doi:10.3390/ijgi7030106 fatcat:vpqrccihgrhfzhurh7oxle5u2y