A Management Perspective
A special message for administrators of cultural heritage
collections from David Green, Executive Director of the National
Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH)
Cultural Heritage is an alive and precious resource, something
we all contribute to and are part of one way or another. Today,
digital networking has the immense potential of bringing wide,
equitable access to the texts, objects, sounds and sights
that form our global cultural heritage. It also has the added
potential of being able to show the complex inter-relationships
between these objects, their histories and contexts. By networking
the materials held by thousands of collectors and repositories,
we can tell the stories of the objects of creation and their
creators in a much richer and rewarding way than ever before.
However there is an enormous amount of work for us all to
do to ensure that this potential is achieved. Not only are
the traditional activities of conservation and preservation
still essential but so also is the newer work of describing,
cataloging, and encoding, rigorously and generously.
Implementing newly-developed metadata standards and vocabularies
will provide critical support for these efforts. This web
site is designed to help you make informed decisions in this
area by demonstrating how standards-based practice can help
advance the overall mission of your institution. Specifically,
it demonstrate how:
- Vocabularies can be used as "assistants" in
database search engines, creating a semantic network (or
roadmap) that shows links and paths between concepts. When
querying a database, users can follow these paths composed
of synonyms, broader/narrower terms, and related concepts
to refine, expand, and enhance their searches and achieve
more meaningful results. When used as a search assistant,
a vocabulary is a powerful knowledge base -- linking searchers
to information from both structured and unstructured databases.
- Vocabularies are sources of "standard terminology"
for use in the description, cataloging, or documentation
of cultural heritage collections. Vocabularies often reflect
consensus of opinion within a community, that is, by answering
the question - "How do we talk (or write) about this
particular subject area?" In doing so, vocabularies
become valuable tools for professional catalogers and documentation
staff who need to establish consistent access points.
Vocabularies play a critical role in the larger movement
to create and apply standards that will improve access to
cultural heritage information.This work requires creative
collaborations among nations and disciplines in ways that
have not been attempted before. Fortunately, several initiatives
and projects are emerging to pave the way, and I highly recommend
that you take a minute to look at the examples of this work
selected for Chapter 6 of the Tutorial..
Cultural heritage could be the heart of the new world that
is being created in cyberspace; it could be our lifeline in
a world of information overload. However we must be vigilant
on many fronts, the intellectual, the political and the economic,
lest our heritage be robbed of its immense potential.
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