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Semantic annotation for 3D cultural artefacts

A suite of tools for semantic annotation of 3D cultural artefacts is being developed as part of the NFDI4Culture project across several partner organisations (led by the Open Science lab at TIB, Hannover). Operating within Task area 1: Data capture and enrichment, the proposed toolchain focuses on the annotation of 3D data within a knowledge graph environment, so that 3D objects’ geometry, attendant metadata, as well as annotations remain searchable, while data interconnections are not lost. The project builds on several existing FOSS tools:

• OpenRefine, a data cleaning, reconciliation and batch upload tool;
• Wikibase (the tool behind the interface you are viewing now), a suite of services developed by Wikimedia Germany; it combines the ability to handle large volumes of data points with sophisticated data querying and extraction services via a dedicated SPARQL endpoint;
• Kompakkt, a browser-based open-source 3D- and multimedia viewer Kompakkt with built-in collaborative annotation features.

The integrated suite of tools follows FAIR principles and facilitates linking 3D-objects and annotations, and their cultural context (including historical people and places, geo-location and capture-technology metadata), to the broader semantic web and various national and international authority records (GND, VIAF and more).

About our case study

This Wikibase instance contains sample data about Weikersheim Castle from the Corpus der barocken Deckenmalerei in Deutschland, provided the MVP data partners at The Institute of Art History at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich.

Adding new data in the archive

• Create new item
• Create new property

Example item pages for different types of data

• An item describing a physical space
• An item describing a 3D model
• An item describing an annotation for a 3D model

Example data queries that visualize the data model

• Overview of all classes and their subclasses
• Overview of types of of human-made objects and instances
• Overview of types of conceptual objects and instances

Example data queries that showcase items from the case study

• All paintings from the cycle "Belagerungsszenen des Langen Türkenkriegs" with some properties
• Items that share an Iconclass notation

Example federated queries

• Simple query to get more information about Weikersheim castle (via owl:sameAs method)
• Simple query to get more information about Weikersheim castle (via GND external ID method)
• Castles of Renaissance architectural style within 100km of Weikersheim castle

Indexes for quick reference

• List of properties
• List of users