Werner PREININGER / Silvia RUSSEGGER
(JOANNEUM RESEARCH, Graz, Austria)
Keywords: archaeology, DAM, conversion, portal
Abstract:
Nowadays collection management systems based on information technologies are widely used and have proven to provide valuable support for the management of objects in the archaeological domain. Archiving of archaeological data is still an important issue not only cultural heritage per se but also for the domain of cultural heritage preservation.
An important fact is also that the presentation of the data becomes more and more important after archiving and putting a lot of effort into the scientific preparation of the data. After several years of data entry into various databases, it is now possible for cultural institutions to make real use of these data repositories.
As cultural institutions begin to transform their data management applications into smaller and more manageable application modules, it seems likely that data management will become more and more relevant. This is already considered in the imdas pro software package developed at JOANNEUM RESEARCH. The programme can be customised to individual user needs and can be adapted to different types of objects and collections. It supports a combination of visual representations (text, images, symbols, multimedia data, and maps) and intelligent collection management. This concept of customisation enables a flexible software solution for archaeological sites and offers multiple ways of accessing, analysing and presenting the data.
The customization of an information system in the domain of cultural heritage leads to individualisation also regarding metadata and metadata format. In order to enable different organizations with customized imdas pro applications to exchange data with these kind of portals it is necessary to do the mapping definition and further on the export of the data in house – without additional implementation of individual software pieces.
The aim must be to have a flexible configuration tool that allows specifying the mapping between individualized database formats and common public portals like Europeana.