From ISAD(G) to Linked Data Archival Descriptions

Inês Koch, Catarina Pires, Carla Teixeira Lopes, Cristina Ribeiro, Sérgio Nunes

Abstract: Archives preserve materials that allow us to understand and interpret the past and think about the future. With the evolution of the information society, archives must take advantage of technological innovations and adapt to changes in the kind and volume of the information created. Semantic Web representations are appropriate for structuring archival data and linking them to external sources, allowing versatile access by multiple applications. ArchOnto is a new Linked Data Model based on CIDOC CRM to describe archival objects. ArchOnto combines specific aspects of archiving with the CIDOC CRM standard. In this work, we analyze the ArchOnto representation of a set of archival records from the Portuguese National Archives and compare it to their CIDOC CRM representation. As a result of ArchOnto’s representation, we observe an increase in the number of classes used, from 20 in CIDOC CRM to 28 in ArchOnto, and in the number of properties, from 25 in CIDOC CRM to 28 in ArchOnto. This growth stems from the refinement of object types and their relationships, favouring the use of controlled vocabularies. ArchOnto provides higher readability for the information in archival records, keeping it in line with current standards.