Linked Conservation Data: the Adoption and Use of Vocabularies in the Field of Heritage Conservation for Publishing Conservation Records as Linked Data

Abstract

One of the fundamental roles of memory organisations is to safe-keep collections and this includes activities around their preservation and conservation. Conservators produce documentation records of their work to assist future interpretation of objects and to explain decision making for conservation. This documentation may exist as structured data or free text and in both cases they require vocabularies that can be understood widely in the domain. This paper describes a survey of conservation professionals which allowed us to compile the vocabularies used in the domain. It includes an analysis of the vocabularies with key findings: a) the overlapping terms with multiple definitions, b) the partial coverage of the domain which is lacking controlled vocabularies for condition types and treatment techniques and c) the limited formats in which vocabularies are published, making them difficult to use within Linked Data implementations. The paper then describes an approach to improve the vocabulary landscape in conservation by providing guidelines for encoding and aligning vocabularies as well as considering third party platforms for sharing vocabularies in a sustainable way. The paper concludes with a summary of our findings and recommendations.