CROWN
PROJECT
The Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire is one of the most important symbols of European history. Today it is held by the Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM) in Vienna. Within the framework of the CROWN project initiated by the KHM, a comprehensive analysis of the Imperial Crown is being carried out. The cooperation partner is the Centre for Information Modelling at the University of Graz.
The aim of the analysis of the Imperial Crown is to determine the conservation status of the object and to advance the discussion on its context of origin. To this end, all components of the crown (plates, front cross, bail, precious stones, decorative elements, etc.) will be analysed from a scientific, conservation and (art) historical perspective.
EXAMPLE
A "raised bezel for pearl with insertion pins" is a component on a plate of the Imperial Crown. This is a 30 x 30 x 20 mm setting made of gold. Five points on this setting are each examined using three analytical techniques: 3D microscopy, X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF) and multispectral imaging (MSI).
Each analysis includes a description of the measurement process, tabular measurement data and results in the form of diagrams, as well as a (con-)textual interpretation of the measurement by the subject scientists.
WORKFLOW
Description, analysis results and links between the individual components of the Imperial Crown and secondary sources are research data. These are recorded in The Museum System (TMS). To FAIRify this collection data as a Linked Open Data resource, the following work steps are necessary:
- Requirements analysis and modelling involving existing models (CIDOC-CRM, CRMsci, BFO, Linked Art).
- Normalisation via controlled vocabularies (Getty, GND etc.) and Public Knowledge Graphs (DBpedia, Wikidata).
- Transformation & mapping of CSV export from TMS with Python (RDFlib).
- Semantic enrichment through reconciliation and automated tagging of free text fields.
- Publication & long-term archiving via the Humanities Asset Management System (GAMS) with request-specific frontend.
BEST PRACTICES
All collection areas of the KHM enter their data into TMS. In addition to the "classic" data fields for object description, specific research questions are also pursued. In the case of the Imperial Crown, for example, these are the analysis procedures and their interpretation. Mapping to Linked Open Data vocabularies alone is not sufficient to meet the requirements.
Accordingly, it is necessary to develop a best-practice workflow that makes it possible to transfer more complex facts from a TMS system into re-usable research data. The development of these best practices will be funded by CLARIAH-AT in 2023.
Project contact: Christopher Pollin, christopher.pollin@uni-graz.at
https://www.projekt-reichskrone.at
