The ontologies MuseumLetterBellinInRete, PrintedMusicBellinInRete, ManuscriptMusicBellinInRete and MuseumLegacyBellinInRete are built according to Linked Open Data and Semantic Web paradigms, making the rich cultural heritage of the Bellini Museum in Catania interoperable and reusable.
They are inspired by CIDOC-CRM, the standard conceptual model for semantic knowledge bases in Cultural Heritage. Ontologies are composed of different (ontological) entities and relations between these entities, and each entity is characterised by attributes. Each entity is implemented by means of a specific OWL class and the relationships between entities correspond to OWL properties. Attributes are also linked to the “parent entities” that possess them through OWL properties that determine the semantic role of the attributes themselves in relation to these parent entities. The ontologies describe different collections and typologies of “museum objects” – corresponding to a subset of the ontological entities – kept in the Bellini Museum of Catania:
– MuseumLetterBellinInRete concerns corpora of letters of correspondence;
– PrintedMusicBellinInRete concerns printed music collections;
– ManuscriptMusicBellinInRete concerning musical manuscript;
– MuseumLegacyBellinInRete describes Bellini’s remaining museum holdings of statues, paintings, furniture, posters, musical instruments, etc.
The ontological structures (taxonomies) and the data of the ontologies were defined by exploiting the information collected in tabular form through the study and analysis of Bellini’s rich heritage.
The documentation of the ontologies was generated by LODE (Live OWL Documentation Environment) and is available at the following links:
– documentation of MuseumLetterBellinInRete
– documentation of PrintedMusicBellinInRete
– documentation of ManuscriptMusicBellinInRete
– documentation of MuseumLegacyBellinInRete
The interactive graph-oriented visualisation of ontologies through WebVOWL is accessible HERE and it is possible to switch from one ontology to another using the “Ontology” menu at the bottom of the window.
The ontologies have been developed by the group of the Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione of the CNR in Catania, composed by Daria Spampinato, Salvatore Cristofaro and Pietro Sichera.