Semantic Approach to Presenting Information of Thematic Museum Collections
Svetlana E. Yalovitsyna, Valentina V. Volokhova, Dmitry Zh. Korzun · Herald of an Archivist · 2018
The article sums up the experience of using the Semantic web technologies and ontological modeling in the presentation of thematic collections of a museum in a case-study of the Museum of history of Petrozavodsk State University (PetrSU) for digital services construction. The main reason for turning to these technologies was the need to improve the efficiency of information retrieval in the Museum database. The former relational database did not meet these goals, and another approach, a semantic one, was chosen. The experience allows to contend the advantages of using such technologies in a thematically limited array. The observational information in the collection allows to approach the issue of ontology and semantic relations at a new qualitative level. On the basis of the created knowledge base, mobile applications for the user (Museum visitor) and a 'client for staff' for information support and assistance services have been developed. The article discusses possible scenarios of working with these services, as well as the advantages of using a semantic network to create them. As an example it assesses a thematic collection of exhibits about the student construction brigades movement. Some of the described services have already been implemented, some are under development. The article argues that the proposed solution can significantly increase the information impact of Museum objects by providing semantic annotation of Museum objects, identifying links between Museum objects, allowing the visitor to follow their own trajectory in studying the exposition of the Museum, collecting new information, expert evaluation of the information provided by the visitor. The semantic approach is applicable not only to the Museum development, but also to solving other application task. Any information systems using the mechanisms of search for the formal coincidence of characters can be extended by methods of the semantic network analysis. Participation of users in updating the description of information objects with an expert evaluation option for received information make annotation work more effective. In particular, this applies to thematic collections, to which the specialists usually apply.