What is the Index?
The CulturaItalia user can consult the Italian cultural resource information by way of the Metadata Index which represents the organized aggregation, into a tree-shaped infrastructure, of the resources at the heart of the nation’s cultural heritage. The Index’s resources are classified on the basis of a Thesaurus, a specialised dictionary, designed to manage and organize varied informational elements coming from different cataloguing systems. By searching the Index, the users consult the resources through a classification by facet, exploring itineraries determined by their own interests or curiosity. The Metadata Index is made up of four elements - Who, What, Where and When - defined by the profile DC Culture, an adaptation of the Simple Dublin Core for cultural metadata. The four points of access at this top level help the user to begin his/her consultation of the vast holdings of the information gathered by CulturaItalia on the resources. WHO Using this element, the user can reach resources related to entities or persons, divided into certain categories. For example, if you are interested in tracking down an archive, you can navigate the Who branch, refining the results in order to reach the resource you are interested in. Or, if you intend to search works dedicated to a particular figure in Italian history, you can follow the “people” itinerary down to the level of “ historical figures”. WHAT If you are interested in discovering the resources delineated by cultural heritage item or by activity, you can navigate the What branch, progressively selecting the informational elements available on the cultural items or activities. For example, a scholar interested in prints can search among the “works of art”, with a further defined search level of “prints and plates”, in order to continue along an even more specific search path. WHERE With the Where branch, you can consult the information elements on the cultural resources by place, selecting as you move forward: region, province and city/township where you want to discover what resources are available. WHEN In the Index the information elements on the resources can be consulted according to a certain timeline, by selecting the period of interest. For example, the user interested in exploring the informational elements available on Roman archaeology during the imperial period can select the option “Ancient Rome” and then “Empire [29 B.C. – 476 A.D.]” to focus on the resources relevant to that era. Combined use of criteria The CulturaItalia user can explore the informational elements available in the Index by combining the four elements, Who, What, Where and When. The resources stored in the Portal's database are present in more than one branch of the Index since they contain informational elements related to the entities to which they belong (Who), the type of resource (What), their location (Where), and the relevant time period (When). For example, the user can explore the Index, selecting first the region where the resource is located (Where>Lazio), then the characteristics of the cultural item in question (What>photographs) and finally the relevant time period (When>Twentieth century), in order to further filter the results. What contents are present in the Index? The CulturaItalia index is an ever-growing database, thanks to the informational items provided continuously by museums, archives, libraries, and public and private cultural institutions who are participating in the project. Informational items (relating to the various disciplines within Italian culture and selected by the central editing staff of Cultural Italia) on resources coming from internet sources such as websites, portals, forums, blogs, or online communities are also available in the index. The added value of the portal The descriptive informational elements on the cultural resources, present in the index of CulturaItalia, are provided according to standard structures and defined sets of terms. Thanks to these, the content providers who participate in CulturaItalia, make only the “metadata” available, which then permit the CulturaItalia user to explore the Italian cultural heritage with sophisticated semantic searches, which would be impossible on normal search engines. An example A museum, participating in CulturaItalia, provides the “metadata” relevant to works on display in its own gallery. For every painting it must communicate a structured description, specifying for example artist, owner, type, subject, and period of creation. The “metadata” provided are memorised in the Portal’s database, together with millions of other informational elements. The CulturaItalia user, curious to find out the works of a certain artist, can track down, by way of the Index, a series of descriptive informational elements, among which those related to the paintings, provided by the museum. |