Cl PA 2003 XIX 11 ' International Symposium, 30 September - 04 October, 2003, Antalya, Turkey
most successful international effort of standardization
methodology in recent years.
CRM ‘provides definitions and a formal structure for describing
the implicit and explicit concepts and relationships used in
cultural heritage documentation’. In other words the result of
CIDOC-1COM workgroups has resulted into a comprehensive
data structure system that provides the basic framework for any
standardization effort. As a result CIDOC CRM serves as a
basis for mediation of cultural heritage information and thereby
provides the semantic 'glue' needed to transform today's
information sources into a coherent and valuable global
resource (Doher, 2000). Pilot applications have shown the
capabilities of such an integration such as museums with large
data sets (Crofts et a!., 2001).
This effort has placed itself one step forward by being approved
by several ISO committees (ISO Committee Draft ISO/CD
21127), aiming to become a voluntary consensus standard. This
successful move paves the way for an economically viable
project that remains of a high standard.
4. IMPLEMENTATION
Any decisions where different points of view need to converge
to one is a vigorous enterprise. Standardization is no exception.
The beaten path to achieve a starting line for any type of
standardization would include formal meetings and drafting
sessions aiming to produce a standard between all stakeholders.
‘Stakeholders’ in the case of a multidisciplinary scientific area
as cultural heritage is a considerable number since many
sciences, techniques, policies and philosophies meet.
Consequently, any effort has to be carefully planned ahead so
that best results can be accomplished.
As stated before, standardization efforts have been carried out
successfully in the past. However, very few have been directed
towards an international role. This section will try to bring
together an action plan from the past experience in cultural
heritage -through projects like the ones mentioned before- and
in other scientific areas.
The aim here is to achieve a globally accepted voluntary
consensus type standard that is self sustainable.
The objectives of such an undertaking are as follows:
- the whole effort to be patronized, supervised and
organized by an international, widely accepted
scientific body
- create a complete and solid data structure for all data
in cultural heritage
- undertake conformity assessments
In order to achieve the above objectives it is necessary to have
the support and acceptance of the scientific community. For this
reason, it is important to highlight the importance of
standardization and make clear the aims and objectives of such
an effort.
Having said that, a responsible body has to be chosen to
organise the project. Several criteria have to be fulfilled:
1. Wide acceptance: The responsible body must be able
to cooperate with all stakeholders. For this basic reason it
has to be widely accepted not only from the academic
world of cultural heritage but also in general since it will
have to cooperate with governmental bodies, and private
investors, for example.
2. Expertise: Largely due to the sensitivity of the
researchers to their data, the great expectations from the
academic world concerning an international
standardization project and / or the extent of the effort
itself, standardization has no room for mishandling or
failure. To achieve this, it is necessary to ensure that the
responsible body has expertise in this field. This would
imply completion of past standardization projects and links
with standardization bodies.
3. International: As expected, the whole effort will
demand bringing people, ideas, policies and decisions
together from all over the world. Consequently, the body
organizing the standardization project will have to have an
international character.
4. Powerful and well linked: At the same time, it will
have to have the power, ability and links to make its
decisions heard among all stake-holders. It is very
important to have strong links with state institutions so that
the latter can act as distributors and keepers of the
standards in later stages of the project.
5. Financially capable: Last but not least, the body
responsible will have to be able to make an investment into
such a project.
Several bodies that can be candidates for this place among
others are: UNESCO, ISO, CEN, ICOM-CIDOC, CIPA. Also
the possibility to create a new organisation having as a specific
purpose the standardization of data in cultural heritage has to be
carefully considered.
Having decided upon the body that is going to act as an
organiser, the stakeholders have to be determined. Attention has
to be placed into this component of the project since all parts of
the academic world of cultural heritage have to be determined.
Experts from all domains have to form workgroups that as a
whole they are going to act as consultants for the
standardisation experts from the responsible body.
Bodies that must not be left out in any such attempt are entities
in all national, regional and international levels. In more detail,
government bodies, industry, professional bodies, NGOs,
museums, libraries, academia, researchers in this domain,
should have a say in such an effort since a project that aims to
construct a platform for standardization will effect everyone to
a certain degree.
The output of the meetings and discussions should be a series of
tables/regulations that list the data structure when documenting,
archiving, presenting and conserving in cultural heritage. They
should include all aspects in cultural heritage from museum
exhibits, to excavation findings and archive files.
The application working package of the project will take
considerable time. Nevertheless, methods to accelerate the
process and guarantee compliance can be achieved. Examples
of such methods are:
- All state funding to relative projects should demand
the application of the standards
