Costis Dallas 2013 - Digital Curatorship - Onto-Epistemological Considerations and Implications for Cultural Information Systems

Costis Dallas (2013) Scholarly activity, information requirements and research infrastructures: European initiatives and intellectual foundations

Digital curatorshipOnto-epistemological considerations

and implications for cultural information systems

Costis DallasDirector of Museum Studies & Associate Professor

Faculty of InformationUniversity of Toronto

[email protected]


What constitutes an epistemicallyadequate digital representation of

(material or intangible) cultural heritage?

Costis Dallas (2013) Digital curatorship: Onto-epistemological considerations and implications for cultural information systems

Representing objects

The standard model in material culture disciplines and cultural heritage documentation

Based on an object ontology

Attested in historical context

Foundation of current documentation standards


Object information in museums


Object catalogue cards


Computerisation: IRGMA catalogue cards (1976)


Object documentation standards for museums

Conceptual Descriptions for Works of Art (CDWA)

Cataloguing Cultural Objects

CIDOC object documentation standard

SPECTRUM categories

.


Information structure: CCO groups

Object Naming Creator Information Physical Characteristics Stylistic, Cultural and Chronological Information Location and Geography Subject Class Description View Information

(Baca et al. 2006)


Object-centred knowledge practices in museums


Conceptualising musealia

Museological objects (van Mensch) Four levels of data

Structural properties Functional properties Context Significance

Idealist waterfall object model Conceptual identity: the idea of the maker Factual identity: the object in life history Actual identity: the object now


Elliots analysis grid for object description


Formal representations of cultural heritage objects

LoCloud and ARIADNE projects


Representing cultural objects: background

CIDOC CRM (Conceptual Reference Model) CARARE Connecting Archaeology and

Architecture with Europeana project Definition of an XML schema for archaeological and

architectural monuments and their representations (CARARE Schema v. 1.0)

Mapping of CARARE Schema to the Europeana Data Model (EDM)

3D-ICONS - 3D Digitisation of Icons of Architectural and Archaeological Heritage Extension of the CARARE Schema to cover the

representation of 3D architectural models (v. 2.0)


CARARE to EDM mapping: monuments and their representations


CARARE to EDM mapping: ORE aggregations


Representing cultural objects: current and future work

LoCloud Local Content in an Europeana Cloud (2013-2015) Formal representation and metadata mapping of cultural

resources from Wikimedia and social media contexts Conceptual modeling of domain knowledge on historic and

vernacular names, places and locations using SKOS

ARIADNE - Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Datasets Networking in Europe

(2013-2016) Individuation, mereology and emergent classification of

archaeological monuments Conceptualizing and representing artefact and monument

descriptions, and archaeological reports, as knowledge objects


Rethinking object representation


Why are representations important?

Current documentation practice is highly relevant to future epistemic adequacy of object-related information

Although they appear to be mere technicalities to some, metadata take on a central importance in the production of scientific theories in the degree to which they condition access to data, guarantee their integrity and delimit their interpretative uses (Millerand & G. C Bowker, 2007)


On fixity

The Ise Shinto shrine


The Zimbabwe bush pump

A fluid object (de Leet & Mol)

Made for continuous modification and repair

A mutable mobile (Mol, Law)

Cf. immutable mobiles (Latour)

Cultural objects as mutable mobiles


On individuation


On reflexivity


Objects from the field to the lab

Primacy of engagement with material objects, their traces and spatial-topological configurations

Field notes, log books, inventories

Illustration, visualisation, surrogation

Archaeology at the trowels edge


Objects and kinds


How fast and hard is the separation between objects and kinds?

David Clarkes artefact-type-assemblage model

A cultural object as instantiation of a type

Problem cases

A silkscreen print by Picasso

A digital surrogate of a photograph of a site


Pablo Picasso, Silkscreen for Yuri Gagarin


Fred Boissonas, Acropolis (1903)


Thick description as emergent classification

Identifications as relations between objects and kinds

Constitution of kinds through description

Constitution of objects in classifications


Cultural categories as interactive kinds

I want to focus not on the children but on the classification, those kinds of children, fidgety, hyperactive, attention-deficient. They are interactive kinds. [...] Interactive is a new concept that applies not to people but to classifications, to kinds, to the kinds that can influence what is classified. And because kinds can interact with what is classified, the classification itself may be modified or replaced (Hacking 2000)


Kindful objects

This sculpture from the Parthenonshows a Centaur rearing triumphantlyover a dying human Lapith. This focuson human suffering epitomises the intense humanism of Greek art. The sculpture also represents Greece'sstruggle to resist being absorbed intothe Persian Empire. The Greeks had a strong notion of their own identityand regarded the Persians asbarbarians like the Centaurs. The Parthenon was completed in 432 BC on the site of an earlier unfinishedtemple destroyed by the Persians(British Museum 2010)


Object-actor networks


From objects to things

Assembly drawing is how engineers call the invention of the blueprint. But the word assembly sounds odd once the shuttle has exploded []. They are now provided with an exploded view of a highly complex technical object. But what has exploded is our capacity to understand what objects are when they have become Ding. [] Its only after the explosion that everyone realized the shuttles complex technology should have been drawn with the NASA bureaucracy inside of it []. The object, the Gegenstand, may remain outside of all assemblies but not the Ding. [] What are the various shapes of the assemblies that can make sense of all those assemblages? (Latour, 2005)


On object agency

Efficacious objects (Gell)


Missed opportunity

The extra checks were made in an atmospherehaunted by a tragic missed opportunity []. Investigators say a piece of Columbia's broken heatshield panel shook loose during some thrusterfirings on the day after launch and drifted off intospace. For many minutes, the debris was wellwithin range of the shuttles cameras and the crewmembers eyeballs but nobody noticed [] The piece was tracked by sensors around the world, atsuch precision that its shape and mass could beestimated. It matched a broken-off, curved panelwith supporting ribs [] Had the object been seen, many flight controllers now feel, enough suspicionwould have been raised to look more closely for heat shield damage. (NASA website)


Where does Columbia belong?

In the domain of material objects Subsumed in its mereological, and topological-

compositional, material structure? I.e., as a complex spatial (possibly also temporal) configuratio?

Subsumed in its functional structure? I.e., as a complex cause-and-effect configuration

In the domain of ideas An analogical model, diagram, blueprint, or description Other conceptual representations, e.g. a process model

In the domain of events A sequence of transitions and/or states A narrative, or biography

In the domain of categories


Adopting the intentional stance vis--vis cultural objects

We adopt the intentional stance toward someone (or something) when we predict its behavior on the basis of what it would do if it had beliefs, desires, and intentions, while leaving open the possibility that it does not, in fact, have them (Appiah 2003)

Cultural biography of objects


Things beyond objects

Objects become things, that is, when matters of fact give way to their complicated entanglements and become matters of concern(Latour, 2005)


Eventful objects


How to create an epistemically adequate representation of the Yalta photograph?

What is it? A photograph, with specific material, technical and other

properties

Published in a specific historical and interpretive context

Where does it come from? Who shot it, how it came to be in our disposal..

What does it show? Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, others, chairs, a table, a room..

Properties of the scene represented: state conference, at Livadia palace, Yalta, between 11-14 February 1944

A event, i.e., a meeting between people, objects and information in time and space


Some conceptual problems with representing this photograph of the Yalta conference

What are the boundaries of the photograph? The blind man stick problem

Is what takes place in Yalta a structure of events, of objects, or (also) something else? Mental events: motives, plans, intentions

Causes, effects, purposes?

In general, how can we usefully think of events?

Is the Yalta conference the same event for Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill, you and me? Intentionality

Context


What boundaries for a cultural object?

The Yalta agreement

Where should we cut the network? Physical document

Also text

Also entities and relations about agreement terms

Also background, preparatory documents

Also entities and relations about outcomes

where do we stop?


Speaking of events

Objects, which can be collected or represented, may exist as evidence associated with events: bloodstains on the carpet, perhaps, or a footprint in the sand; There may well be representations of the event itself: photos, newspaper reports, memoirs. Such documents can be stored and retrieved; and, also, Events can, to some extent, be created or recreated. [] Since an event [in experimental science] cannot be stored and since accounts of the results are no more than hearsay evidence, the feasibility of reenacting the experiment so that the validity of the evidence, of the information, can be verified is highly desirable. (Buckland, 1991)


Metaschema of the CIDOC CRM

participate in

Actors

Types

Conceptual Objects

Physical Entities

Temporal Entities

affect or / refer to

refer to / refine

location

at PlacesTime-Spans


The Yalta Conference acc. CIDOC CRM (Doerrand others, various publications)


Eventful objects, objectful events

A possible formalization Representing objects as star graphs, through

their participation in events (biographical, other)

An alternative approach Representing objects as meetings between

events

Both objects and events bestowed with primary ontological status


Adding value to the archaeological record: on archaeological

curatorship


Information objects in archaeological curatorship

Sites, artefacts and texts Excavation logs, personal notes, museum

catalogues, photographs, sketches, plans, historical-philological sources

Their event histories, actors, and relations Cf. artefact analysis research (McClung Fleming,

Pearce, Prown..)

Scholarly identifications, retroductive descriptions, narratives, interpretations, theories


Artefact description: orientation, segmentation, differentiation (Gardin 1967)


Interpretation at the trowels edge

As the trowel moves over the ground it responds to changes in texture and colour, but always in a way informed by a particular perspective. The knowledge of the archaeologist influences the way in which the site is dug. (Hodder 1999)

If archaeological interpretation starts at the trowels edge [] it is because, in the context of archaeological excavation, the trowel, more than a tool for digging, becomes a boundary artefact that inhabits simultaneously the realms of pragmatic and epistemic action [] participating in the processes by which archaeological brains make up their minds (Malafouris, 2004)


Archaeological fieldwork as activity framework: pointing, tracing, highlighting

Instead of offering a neutral description of phenomena beingtreated as clearly visible on the surface being examined, thischaracterization of the color stain proposes a theory about no longervisible agents or processes that might have caused such a pattern, i.e., the stripe was made by a plow moving through the dirt. (Goodwin 2003)


Dirt, colour classification and recording (Goodwin 2010)


Archaeological vision

Despite the rigorous way in which a tool such as this one structuresperception of the dirt beingscrutinized, finding the correctcategory is not an automatic oreven an easy task. [] The colorpatches on the chart are glossy, while the dirt never is [] Moreover, the colors being evaluatedfrequently fall between the discretecategories provided by the Munsellchart. Two students at the fieldschool looking at exactly the samedirt and reference colors can and dodisagree as to how it should beclassified (Goodwin 1993).


Archaeological reports

The typical layout of a report is rather similar from one country to another. A report consists of a description of investigation process, a survey of related literature and an interpretation of the results of the investigation. The description is followed by a catalogue of finds unearthed during the project, a list of photographs, plans, drawings and samples. The most important findings are often summarised in a separate short introductory chapter in the beginning of the report. (Huvila, 2008)


Fluidity in cataloguing

We need to incorporate fluidity in the cataloguing model itself [] The record should model the document as a series of transition events, and should describe the nature of the events, the agents responsible for the events, and the times and places of those change events (Carl Lagoze on the Harmony project / ABC ontology).


Thick description

Geertz, after Ryle Whats the difference between twitching, winking, parodying?

the point is that between what Ryle calls the "thin description" of what the rehearser (parodist, winker, twitcher . . .) is doing ("rapidly contracting his right eyelids") and the "thick description" of what he is doing ("practicing a burlesque of a friend faking a wink to deceive an innocent into thinking a conspiracy is in motion") lies the object of ethnography: a stratified hierarchy of meaningful structures in terms of which twitches, winks, fake-winks, parodies, rehearsals of parodies are produced, perceived, and interpreted, and without which they would not [..] in fact exist, no matter what anyone did or didn't do with his eyelids


Inscription as archaeological thick description

A hypothetical site section (5a), and (5b) its hermeneutic matrix, [..] illustrating the temporality of each individual cut, fill ordeposit, processes and/orpractices, and the activereworking of certain contexts. [] the horizontal zones are a relative evaluation of longevity, derived from the total number of steps on the matrix. They are notbased on information from 14C or material culture dates. However, such information couldbe incorporated at a post-excavation stage. (Chadwick 2003)


Making archaeological facts

Facts as informed reports on thing cultures Archaeological objects: descriptions,

identifications, classifications, attributions

Object types: functional, morphological, cultural-historical

Events: periods, actions, states, causes, motives...

Assemblages, sites, archaeological cultures

Concepts, ideas, propositions

Properties, relations


Studying scholarly practices and digital research methods

EHRI, DARIAH-EU, ARIADNE & Europeana Cloud projects


Studying scholarly practice and needs in EU research projects: background

Semi-structured interviews in the Preparing DARIAH project (Digital Curation Unit-IMIS, Athena Research Centre, Greece)

Mixed methods research in EHRI, based on: Researcher questionnaire survey (N: 277; DCU,

Greece)

15 semi-structured interviews with researchers (DCU, Greece)

20 semi-structured interviews with archivists (KCL, UK; NIOD, Netherlands)


Scholarly Research Activity Model


Scholarly information activity as curation at the source


Activity theory

Activity: purposeful interaction of a subject with the world

Directed toward an object, a physical or conceptual entity embodying the fulfilment of some objective or motive, intended to meet a specific need of the subject

Activity systems are composed as a hierarchy of activities, constituted by conscious actions, which in turn are constituted by sub-conscious operations

Subjects can be individuals, but also communities of practice, sharing needs and motives

Activities take place by means of tool mediation, which include both physical and cognitive mediational artefacts


Activities-actions-operations

Source: Wilson (2006)


A scholarly curation continuum


Issues

What is the scope of information objects curated in the scholarly research process?

What is the relation between data and scholarly objects?

What is the structure of scholarly research activity, and what does it entail?

How do workflows look like, and how fixed are they?

How serialised, and how granular, are scholarly primitives?

What is the relationship between information seeking and curation, as part of scholarly activity?

When is curation enacted in the scholarly activity lifecycle, and by whom?


Co-evolution of facts and domain knowledge

As far as possible I use established terms as clearly as I can. I would rather try to describe what Im looking at and see how it sits within the framework of discussion in the literature. I think if you have to call a new term you could have to be really sure what you are doing. [] Where one does have to create a new term it needs to be glossed with the kind of definition that you hope will then get into the secondary literature in its own right (UK archaeologist, quoted in Benardou et al. 2010)


A messy view of the research process

Developing a hunch, or liking some stuff

Describing this stuff, or the hunch, quite naively

Re-expressing it in terms of a (middle-range) theory

Aha! So, we do have a theory to start with?

Seeking confirmation

Writing up

Looking up at more stuff, and going around in circles

More writing up

Publishing


Information process factors (Bearman and Trant, 2005)

82


Scholarly primitives as curatorial activity-centred relations


The scope of thing-centred knowledge

[I]deas and not just things alone also lie at the heart of the museum enterprise. Reality is neither objects alone nor simply ideas about objects but, rather, the two taken together [] Unless we can understand the intellectual framework through which we perceive an object, and unless we more fully understand the various intellectual frameworks through which the members of our public might themselves in turn perceive that same object, how can we ever truly hope to be in communication? (Weil 1990)


Schematisations of epistemic constructs (Gardin 2002)


How an archaeological site remembers its facts (after Goodwin)


87

From objects to theories

categorical knowledge,domain knowledge,

theories, classifications,ontologies

things in the world

identifications, descriptions, facts


Digital curation vs. digital curatorship


Descriptive : prescriptiveactivity : procedure


Digital curatorship

The network of knowledges, norms, motives and goals shaping curatorial activity

It privileges the role of the actor: the scholar, the visitor, the community

It identifies a third pillar in the structure of activity systems, beside the domain of objects and the domain of processes:

the domain of agency


Scholarly activity meta-domains

Scholarly activity

Epistemic agency

Epistemic objects

Epistemic process

Ep

iste

mo

log

y


Digital infrastructures as tools for digital curatorship


Curation-aware metadata repositories

LoCloud, ARIADNE

and DARIAH-EU


Curation-aware cultural information systems: background

Evidence-based specifications for a curation-aware research repository

Preparing DARIAH and EHRI projects

MoRe: Monument Repository

Developed for the CARARE project

OAIS-compliant architecture

OAI-PMH aggregator and server

Metadata mapping and enrichment


Monument Repository data flow

Mapping toolContent

Providers

Repository

SIP

Define Mapping

Native XML

Checks

Structural

Well-formedness

Integrity

Enrich

AIP

Versioning

Europeana

Mapping AIP

EDM(selected data)

Native, CARARE, Mapping, Provider & item admin info(package independence)

EDM

RDF

CARARE

Negotiation for acceptance

AIP

DIP

Element & attribute clean/filling

9898

001

http://acropolis.gr/001.tifftiff

AcropolisAthensGreece

Acropolis, Athens, Greece

IMAGE

Spatial transform

9999

EPSG:28992

point

121821; 487476

Check coordinate system:spatialReferenceSystem : EPSG:28992

Transform WGS84 :52.374154418236424.899978444680552

Check if X/Y Lat/Lon or

Lon/Lat

Check if the monument is located in the country that is described in the record (country code = NL)

121821487476

100

CARARE Record 1

heritageAsset ID: H-1

digitalResource ID: D-1



CARARE Record 2





CARARE Record 3





CARARE Record 1





CARARE Record 2


digitalResource

Relation : H1D-1


ID: D-4

CARARE Record 3



Relation : H1D-1

Relation : H2D-5

De-duplication


Digital curatorship: requirements for cultural information systems


Ontological considerations

Objects as mutable mobiles 4-dimensional semantics, including time

Reflexive, interpretive objects

Support for eventful objects Objects and events as symmetric graph structures

Emergent individuation dependent on context

Support for kindful objects Co-evolution of categorical and factual level

Thesauri, domain knowledge with item descriptions

Emergent classification of categories


Epistemological considerations

Contingent nature of cultural knowledge Support for multiple points of view

Support for inconsistent facts

Support for curation lifecycle

Support for intuition vs. analysis Affective,multisensorial affordances

E.g., 3D reconstructions and VR environments

Interface and user experience is important


DCC&U extended digital curation lifecycle model

Source: Constantopoulos, Dallas et al. (2009)


Cultural information systems: recommendations

Adopt a curation at the source approach Support an extended curation lifecycle Integrate semantic services with curation Support flexible ontologies Incorporate curation methods knowledge Develop functionalities based on principles of

good domain-specific curatorship Accommodate community-based and social

participation and co-curation functionalities Attend to user experience


Current and future work


Representing cultural objects

LoCloud Local Content in an Europeana Cloud (2013-2015) Formal representation and metadata mapping of cultural

resources from Wikimedia and social media contexts Conceptual modeling of domain knowledge on historic and

vernacular names, places and locations using SKOS

ARIADNE - Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Datasets Networking in Europe

(2013-2016) Individuation, mereology and emergent classification of

archaeological monuments Conceptualizing and representing artefact and monument

descriptions, and archaeological reports, as knowledge objects


Studying scholarly practice and needs in EU research projects: ongoing

Europeana Cloud - Unlocking Europes Research via the Cloud Expert forums, case studies, questionnaire surveys (2013-2014)

DARIAH-EU Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities Mixed methods research on Understanding scholarly practice,

based on transnational questionnaire survey and digital humanities project profiling (2013-2015)

Digital methods ontology work, in collaboration with NeDiMAH(2013-2015)

ARIADNE - Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Datasets Networking in Europe Archaeological research methods SIG (2013-2016)


Europeana Cloud needs analysis

Desk research: digital research practices and

digital tools state of the art

Research Communities web survey

Identification and creation of Humanities and

Social Sciences case studies

User requirements analysis


DARIAH-EU VCC2 Task 2 work: approach and objectives

Specification of digital infrastructures for the arts and humanities should address the historical practices, needs and perceptions of scholars

Evidence-based substantiation of infrastructure requirements and specification How scholars interact with the whole spectrum of

information and conceptual entities, digital as well as non-digital

Understand differences between disciplines and approaches

Develop an ontology for the formal representation of digital scholarly methods and tools, and their use in digital humanities research projects


Protocol for primary research on scholarly practice and needs

Mixed methods

Questionnaire survey

Case studies

Multilingual

Comparative, aggregated

Leveraging cooperation with Europeana Cloud project

Manual to be produced

Published in knowledge portal

Participants (2013)

Denmark

France

Germany

Greece

Ireland

Lithuania

Netherlands

Slovenia

08 March 2014111


Trans-European survey

To include questions on:Scholarly data and collectionsDigital humanists and centres

Information seekingOrganisingStudying and annotatingSharing and publishingTools and services usedInfrastructure and standardsDevices and environmentRequirements and foresight

Sch

ola

rly

pra

ctic

esD

igit

al u

sean

d n

eed

s


Methods ontology

In collaboration with the NeDIMAH network

Leveraging earlier work

AHDS computational methods taxonomy

DARIAH-DE taxonomy

DARIAH-GR Scholarly Research Activity Model

Modelling processes, tools/services and data

08 March 2014113


Curation-aware cultural information systems: current and future work

LoCloud Local content in an Europeana Cloud (2013-2015) Curation-aware cloud-based aggregator with semantic

enrichment microservices, supporting heterogeneous metadata schemas and Wikimedia object ingestion

ARIADNE - Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Datasets Networking in Europe (2013-2016) Metadata registry; semantic annotation and linking service

DARIAH-EU Digital Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (2012- ) Digital research methods, digital humanities projects and

scholarly practice knowledge portal


LoCloud architecture

IndexDatabase

Storage NodeStorage Node Storage NodeStorage Node

LoCloud Core Services Layer

Authentication Services Object/Datastream Services Collection Services

Lightweight Repository

MINT EnrichmentServices

Export Third PartyServices


Thank you!

For more info:

[email protected]

http://bit.ly/CostisDallas

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Costis Dallas 2013 - Digital Curatorship - Onto-Epistemological Considerations and Implications for Cultural Information Systems