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By Angela Spinazze - July 2000
CIMI is a consortium of cultural heritage institutions and organizations working together to promote interoperability and remove barriers to sharing valuable information [1]. In this article, Angela Spinazze introduces the five key program areas around which CIMI is based, focusing on the Test Bed experience to report on CIMI’s work with metadata and the Dublin Core.
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For over ten years, the Computer Interchange of Museum Information (CIMI) Consortium has given the museum community a voice in shaping the digital future. A collaboration of cultural heritage institutions - museums, software developers and support organizations - CIMI is unique within the international cultural community. Membership is open to any institution, organization, corporation (for-profit or non-profit) or individual interested in and committed to standards based, open approaches to sharing cultural information. [2]
Consortium work is focused around five key areas: test beds, standards, current awareness, advocacy and education. Through these program areas, CIMI provides a research and development environment where museums can collaborate on testing new technologies, encourages the use of standards for sharing information, communicates with its members about issues of importance, voices the needs of the museum community within the global technology arena, and teaches the latest methods and processes so that new technologies can be skillfully applied within museums.
This article will discuss recent activities in each of these program areas.
The CIMI Dublin Core Metadata Test Bed began in March 1998 and ended in January 2000 [3]. Seventeen organizations participated, representing constituencies in Australia, Canada, Denmark, The Netherlands, Taiwan, United Kingdom and the United States. There were two phases to the project.
The first phase involved an in-depth exploration of the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set [4] for resource discovery. Three assumptions served as the basis for this work:
The second phase involved investigating the use of qualifiers to aid in discovery of richer, more complex museum information. A set of assumptions, were defined.
There were many significant conclusions and outcomes from this test bed experience.
The DCMES provides a coarse set of categories designed for the purpose of resource discovery at the broadest possible level. CIMI endorses the use of the DCMES for this purpose. In addition, CIMI encourages museum professionals to recognize the importance of metadata and join us in implementing the element set according to the ‘best practices’ set out in the Guide to Best Practice: DC (more on the Guide below). Consensus and consistency in implementation is important to providing meaningful access to valuable resources.
The element set is not effective for discovery of complex, museum information. Attempts to extend the DCMES using Semantic Refinements resulted in violation of both the 1:1 and dumb down principles. There is a tension between the type of information that museums are used to sharing and the fundamental principles of the Dublin Core.
Value encoding schemes, on the other hand, are useful and work with the controlled vocabulary and thesauri practices already in place in museums. A more detailed discussion of these issues can be found in the test bed final report, available in several formats from the CIMI web site.
The results of the test bed took on many forms. They are listed here and are discussed in more detail throughout the remainder of this article.
CIMI has been creating, testing and implementing standards for information management and access in museums since its inception. Standards offer museums a means to communicate, interoperate, and collaborate. As noted above, the recent test bed project involved testing the Dublin Core metadata standard as well as XML to determine their efficacy for museums.
CIMI recommendations, standards and best practices most often are developed as a result of a test bed. This is the case with both the Guide to Best Practice: Dublin Core and the CIMI Dublin Core XML DTD.
The Guide to Best Practice: Dublin Core contains a museum-centric view of the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set and provides guidance for implementing the standard in museums. DCMES v1.1 definitions are provided for each element along with a CIMI interpretation, definition and examples from the art, cultural and natural museum communities. The Guide is available for down load from the CIMI web site.
The CIMI Dublin Core XML DTD was developed as part of the database building exercise that occurred during the test bed. A database of Dublin Core records was created and used to test assumptions about the use of the Dublin Core for discovery of museum resources. The DTD is published as an Appendix to the Guide.
One way that CIMI communicates the results of test bed work and articulates issues of concern to the greater cultural community is through papers, reports, articles and through member and staff participation in cultural heritage and information technology conferences, workshops and meetings. CIMI members are active in many activities around the globe. Some of these activities are included here:
An article, published in the International Working Group of Taxonomic Databases by Neil Thomson, Head of Systems and Central Services, at CIMI member Natural History Museum, London (NHM) discussed the second phase of the test bed and specific issues of interest to the natural history community [8].
The experience working with XML to build a database of Dublin Core records is captured in an article by Bert Degenhart Drenth, Managing Director of CIMI member ADLIB Information Systems [9]. The article describes how XML was used in the test bed, provides insight into lessons learned and outlines some of the issues of particular concern when creating an XML DTD.
In May, CIMI participated in the Meta-Lib workshop held in Göttingen, Germany [10]. It was a wonderful opportunity to share with the library community the experiences of museums working with metadata and in particular, the Dublin Core.
Continuing on in this tradition, throughout the coming year CIMI will be issuing a series of briefing papers and bulletins authored both by CIMI members and by leading experts in a variety of fields. Topics will focus on contemporary problems surrounding issues such as digital art, archiving digital materials, digital library initiatives, wireless access devices and the like.
CIMI advocates to the international museum community by being a consistent voice for uses of technology that maintain the high standards that museums are known for. CIMI members participate, for example, in DCMI Working Groups and maintain representation in the Dublin Core Directorate, Usage and Advisory Committees. Through participation at this level, CIMI is able to keep abreast of current issues that can inform test bed initiatives as well as advocate for museum needs as standards evolve.
CIMI vendor members contribute to advocacy efforts by implementing new methods and processes into the products they develop for the museum community. CIMI members, ADLIB Information Systems, Intermuse, and Gallery Systems, participated in the CIMI Dublin Core Metadata Test Bed. As a result, DC export routines are now available for use with the collections information management systems produced by these vendors.
Founded in 1999, the CIMI institute is an educational outreach initiative. The Institute disseminates important information about the use of standards for resource discovery, information management and interoperability.
The first workshop series offers practical insights gained by the Test Bed experience. Test bed participants contributed to the development of a two day workshop designed to inform and educate museum professionals about the issues related to implementing the Dublin Core in museums. With support from the Getty Grant Program, six workshops were offered between September 1999 and June 1, 2000 with attendance by one hundred museum professionals from North America, Australia, and Europe. In addition, a one-day version of the workshop is being offered at both the CIDOC and mda conferences later this year.
The CIMI Dublin Core Metadata Test Bed project was a useful exercise to examine the efficacy of the DCMES for the museum community. The DCMES is useful at a coarse grain level for discovery of museum resources. CIMI endorses the use of the DCMES for broad level resource discovery and encourages the museum community to adopt its use according to the guidelines set out in the Guide to Best Practice: DC.
CIMI’s investigation of Semantic Refinements and Value Encoding Schemes resulted in the conclusion that for the discovery of rich, descriptive museum information, Semantic Refinements are not effective but Value Encoding Schemes are.
Building upon the results of the Dublin Core Metadata Test Bed, CIMI continues its investigation of how museums can exchange complex, domain specific information through the Museum Initiative for Digital Interchange Semantics and Syntax (MIDISS) project. The goals for this project are to scope the needs, possible services and issues related to proving rich museum information for a variety of applications. This step - finding the rich record - happens after the end user has discovered the resource using the Dublin Core. One application being considered in this research effort involves the ability for museums to deliver content to wireless devices.
A knowledge model will be developed representing the types of resources and associated complex descriptions. The rich descriptions of varying types will be tested against existing models such as the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model, and the CIMI Access Points to determine points of convergence and efficacy. Eventually, the complex descriptions representing various resources found in museums will be rendered in XML and linked to the existing data base of Dublin Core records developed during the previous test bed.
Anticipated outcomes for this work include: a consensus on a suite of richer descriptions; the applications for which they may be used; and a greater understanding of the issues surrounding expressing this complex information in XML so that implementers can work together to design interoperable systems.
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Angela Spinazze
Programs Manager
CIMI Consortium
350 West Erie Street
Suite 250
Chicago
Illinois, 60657 USA
ats@atspin.com
<http://www.cimi.org/>
Phone: +1 312 944 6820
Angela Spinazze is Programs Manager for the CIMI Consortium. Her responsibilities include management and planning of test bed research and development and educational initiatives. In addition, she is involved directly with the museum community as a consultant specializing in interoperability and knowledge management issues.
Angela has worked within the cultural heritage community since 1986 and has a broad range of experience and expertise. She works with museums and cultural heritage organizations and her consulting focuses on issues related to knowledge management, strategies for integrated access to collections and institutional information, process re-engineering, data migration, and development planning.
Some of her recent projects include, strategic planning and process re-engineering with the Toledo Museum of Arts and managing the Quebec Museum Consortium data migration and collections application implementation initiative. In addition, she is Programs Manager for the CIMI Consortium.
She spent several years in the Annual Programs Department at The Art Institute of Chicago where she participated in initiatives that generated over $3,500,000 in revenue and 100,000 members for the museum. Also, at the Art Institute, she served as a core member of the first comprehensive physical inventory team. She participated in the design and development of a software application to facilitate the physical inventory of the collections and was responsible for the conversion of the museum’s collection records from paper to electronic format. In addition, Angela was Director of Marketing for Willoughby Associates, a developer of systems for collections management information.
Angela received her Bachelors of Arts from Miami University and her Masters of Arts in 19th and 20th Century Art History, Theory and Criticism from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago.
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For citation purposes:
Spinazze, A. "Collaboration, consensus and community: CIMI, museums and the Dublin Core",
Cultivate Interactive, issue 1, 3 July 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue1/cimi/>
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