Interoperability among digital repositories of Brazilian cultural heritage: from the Semantic Web and Linked Open Data to search and retrieval tools

Abstract

The digitized collection of memorial institutions constitutes a strategic input for important international initiatives aimed at the formation of large databases. These databases both feed new research methods in the so-called Digital Humanities, as well as fuel new flows of innovation and content reuse by the creative industry, fostering the cultural and economic development of society. However, there are major challenges in integrating digital repositories of institutions that already have digitized collections available on open platforms. From the understanding of the conceptual models of organization and representation of the information of these repositories to the understanding of the different methods of information aggregation, there are important methodological and technical steps to be overcome. The semantic web and linked open data models have been used by various initiatives as a solution for interoperability of digital repositories. The present project aims to propose a semantic conceptual model for the interoperability of digital repositories of cultural heritage within the Brazilian federal sphere, as well as to produce a technical solution to search for and retrieve aggregate information from these repositories, providing a single access point to this rich information to the Brazilian public. (AU)