BM extensions to CRM

BM Data

The data includes 2-3M museum objects, 60-100 statements per object, or a total of 120-300M statements (this is a very rough approximation!)

• 14Gb of XMLs exported from BM's collection system (Merlin). Took several weeks (SSL says it'd have been faster if they knew better)
• RDF takes between 12 and 24 hours to assert in the current triple store (IntelliDimension)
• Exported from Merlin, a C/C++ system with a proprietary OO database. BM's Merlin model is based on the SPECTRUM standard for Museum Documentation. The functionality of other museum collection systems is also based on SPECTRUM
• http://collection.britishmuseum.org/: live links to BM objects
  (was http://bm2.rkbexplorer.com during development)

• recommended URI allocation:
  http://collection.britishmuseum.org/object/PPA1818832 : object (non information resource)
  http://collection.britishmuseum.org/object/PPA1818832.html : html representation (information resource for humans)
  http://collection.britishmuseum.org/object/PPA1818832.rdf : rdf representation (information resource for computers)
  http://collection.britishmuseum.org/object/PPA1818832/production : info about production (who when where created it)
  http://collection.britishmuseum.org/object/PPA1818832/acquisition : info about acquisition (when the BM got it)

BMX Description

Developed by Seme4 as part of BM collection data mapping to RDF in the CRM schema.
The following documents describe the BM data

D1 Conversion

D1 - BM to ResearchSpace- Conversion Process and Schema.pdf. Ian Millard, Seme4.
"Recommended process for converting data from a Collections Management System in the Cultural Heritage domain into Open Linked Data"

• demonstrate feasibility for converting the entire Collections data from the British Museum into Linked Data
• describes the developed ETL tool "makeRDF": based on config files, uses xpath, similar to xslt but simpler
• describes the technical aspects of data conversion
• nice intro to CRM

D2 Mapping

D2 - Commentary on the mapping process- from BM to CIDOC-CRM.pdf, Hugh Glaser, SotonU

• very informative description of the mapping and the thinking behind it, shows the complexity of museum data.
• description of BMX
• instructive usage guide for the CRM

Sample object

BM-object-GAA87981.pdf: Shows all triples for a single object, and describes them

BMX ontology

• http://crm.rkbexplorer.com: live links to CRM & BMX class & property desciptions
• [^bm-extensions.ttl]: BMX definition. It's RDFS only, not OWL
• BM-extensions.pdf: BMX description

bm graph

Picture of the BM data by Dominic
[vsd|^bm graph v3 prints.vsd], [png|^bm graph v3 prints.png], [pdf|^bm graph v3 prints.pdf]
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