From Inception to Interface: Linked Data, Ontologies, and Modelled Instances for Online Exhibition-Making

Abstract

Beyond the Book: A Digital Journey through the Treasures of the Emmerson Collection is an online exhibition composed of several interconnected parts: prose, images, photogrammetry, and data. Rich photographic reproductions of rare materials from the Emmerson Collection - which contains more than 5000 pamphlets and books from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, mainly produced in England - accompany seven stories on themes related to the collection. These stories are enhanced with contextual information and woven together through curated points of connection, as well as through a Linked Data Index. These elements contribute to the dual objectives of the exhibition: to highlight the richness and materiality of items from the Emmerson Collection for a general audience, and to provide context for this audience via the many people, places, and events that contribute to a book's journey through time and space - hence, "Beyond the Book."

To develop the site, I experimented with a new methodology for online exhibition-making: using the cultural heritage ontology CIDOC CRM (International Committee for Documentation / Conceptual Reference Model) and the semantic data platform ResearchSpace, developed by the British Museum, I meticulously modelled, created, and published Linked Data related to the Emmerson Collection as a method of curatorial enquiry. As well as communicating context within the exhibition by making the "junctions" (Obrist) between entities related to the Emmerson Collection explicit, this data encodes it in a versatile and durable form, in a way that can be repurposed and integrated into collection catalogues and resources.

Beyond the Book also addresses a knowledge gap in online exhibition-making: online exhibitions of cultural heritage material typically either replicate the format of physical exhibitions - a static label alongside an image - or, in cases of special projects and collaborations, display a collection of interactive data. In both cases, their capacity to communicate context for objects is limited: to retain viewer attention, label texts need to be short and succinct, and for data to begin to express meaning it needs to be connected and contextualised. Beyond the Book combines both textual narratives and a Linked Data Index to offer the viewer multiple ways into the collection and convey a rich "web of meaning" (Jones) surrounding the collection.

The process of experimenting with this method for online exhibition-making demonstrated its reliance on collaboration; many parties and individuals contributed to and influenced the development of Beyond the Book from inception to interface. Thus, the results of this research project suggest that my method for online exhibition-making is reproducible if the essential role collaboration plays in its application is taken into consideration.