Project final report

Outputs

• Release of open data, including guidance for the reuse of this metadata, for more than 175,000 item records of the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum. This is made available via an open data service at: http://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/
  This will now form an ongoing service at the Fitzwilliam and will expand with the addition of new object records to the Museum’s collection information database in line with the Museum’s digitisation programme.

• The data is made available in the following ways:

1. Open data permanent URI identifiers for objects, e.g. http://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/656
2. SPARQL endpoint, using RDF and mapped to the CIDOC-CRM
3. OAI-PMH interface, supplying data in PNDS Dublin Core profile
4. REST based API, returning JSON responses

• A new licensing structure for data and metadata released by the Fitzwilliam Museum. See: https://jiscopenbook.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/benefits-of-our-approach/
• Prototype data models for research outputs related to the collection, resulting in emphasis on research activity data. See: https://jiscopenbook.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/users-collection-descriptions-and-research-activity-data/
• Middleware collections information integration system (CIIM)  Initial implementation at the Fitzwilliam, assisting the augmentation and publication of object and collections information as open data

Lessons Learned

• Learning technical lessons (blog post)  https://jiscopenbook.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/learning-technical-lessons/
• Do collections exist? (blog post)  https://jiscopenbook.wordpress.com/2012/08/29/do-collections-exist/

Opportunities and Possibilities

• Long-term assessment of uptake and value of the open data service offered by the Fitzwilliam Museum. We still regard the service as being at beta stage. Our next step will be to publicise what is available and invite community feedback to assist in refining and developing the service. As yet there has been relatively little work in the museum and heritage sector on developing RDF triples and mapping to CIDOC-CRM. The ultimate value of this is still to be proven but the Fitzwilliam Museum is now in a good position to participate in this early phase assessment.
• Further work on how research activity data might be aggregated with data from other Museums, as well as the HE sector.
• Continue to explore how ‘sets’ and ‘contexts’ can be used in the middleware system as part of a revised approach to the storage and publication of collections information, adding further scope and depth to the open data released.