Team: LODLAM Patterns
Country: USA
Team Leader: Richard J. Urban
The universe of methods for representing cultural heritage resources is growing rapidly, despite the multiple standards that already exist across the library, archive, and museum domain. These various standards may address common problems, but there is little explicit coordination among the solutions. As Linked Data Principles increasingly allow us to “mix and match” vocabularies, we need a new way to understand the available techniques that solve specific representation problems.
Design patterns are a common tool in software and ontology engineering circles that present a clear definition of common problems, identify available solutions, provide examples, and establish links to related patterns. By providing this clear organization, design patterns facilitate discussion about problems and solutions, rather than debates about the “right” standard to use.
The LODLAM Patterns website will provide a venue for identifying, publishing, and refining what I call “”representation patterns”” for cultural heritage resources. Initial patterns will emerge from an analysis of contemporary cultural heritage metadata standards, but these will only serve to prime the pump. At the LODLAM Summit I will invite interested members of the community to join me in identifying useful patterns and improving published patterns through comments and discussion.