The Project of the Italian Culture Portal and

The Project of the Italian Culture Portal and its Development. A Case Study: designing a Dublin Core Application Profile for Interoperability and Open Distribution of Cultural Contents ELPUB 2007 – Vienna – 15. 06. 2007 I. Buonazia i. [email protected]. it M. E. Masci e. [email protected]. it D. Merlitti d. [email protected]. it

The Project of the Italian Culture Portal The Project and its Development ELPUB 2007 – Vienna – 15. 06. 2007 § September 2004: the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities (Mi. BAC) committed to Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa (SNS) the scientific and technical project for the Italian Culture Portal. § 2005: the project was delivered, together with a prototype to verify and test the project’s issues. § 2007: the Portal is now under development and will be delivered within this year. At the moment SNS is working as a consultant for Mi. BAC to flank the company which is carrying out the Portal, which will be named Cultura. Italia, and to help in the mapping activity of various resources to be harvested and published in the Portal. I. Buonazia i. [email protected]. it M. E. Masci e. [email protected]. it D. Merlitti d. [email protected]. it

The Project of the Italian Culture Portal Analysis: Users’ Identification ELPUB 2007 – Vienna – 15. 06. 2007 The target of the Portal will be Italian and foreign users, such as: § § tourists and people interested in, and passionate of, culture; business users (publishers, merchandising, etc. ); young people, from primary to high school; culture professionals such as scholars, museums curators, researchers, etc. Special contents and services will be created for each kind of user. It is important to notice that each user can be a person with physical or cognitive disabilities: the Portal must be accessible also for those categories. I. Buonazia i. [email protected]. it M. E. Masci e. [email protected]. it D. Merlitti d. [email protected]. it

The Project of the Italian Culture Portal Analysis: Mission ELPUB 2007 – Vienna – 15. 06. 2007 The mission of Cultura. Italia identifies the following goals: 1) To promote Italian culture and heritage in Italy and abroad: § to integrate Italian culture in the international context; § to attract web users toward cultural themes; § to give visibility to Italian cultural institutions; § to support activities and projects focused on culture; § to integrate cooperation between public and private institutions. 2) To promote and integrate existing resources: § To offer an index of Italian cultural resources and heritage; § to create flexible and scalable relations between resources; § to identify existing digital resources, websites, databases, etc. ; § to allow interoperable queries on subjects, places, events, and people. I. Buonazia i. [email protected]. it M. E. Masci e. [email protected]. it D. Merlitti d. [email protected]. it

The Project of the Italian Culture Portal ELPUB 2007 – Vienna – 15. 06. 2007 Analysis: Domain “Italian Culture” is a wide concept, conceived in very different ways. Mi. BAC is responsible for preservation, management, research and exploitation of the Italian Cultural Patrimony, which is composed by: Tangible heritage: § architectural and environmental objects; § artworks and collections; § manuscripts, edited books and the current literature; § archaeological and demo-ethno-anthropological objects; § contemporary art and architecture. Intangible heritage: § music; § dance and theatre, circuses and street performances; § cinema; § humanities; I. Buonazia M. E. Masci § scientific culture. i. bu[email protected]. it e. [email protected]. it D. Merlitti d. [email protected]. it

The Project of the Italian Culture Portal ELPUB 2007 – Vienna – 15. 06. 2007 Harvesting of Contents Cultura. Italia will give integrated access for information pertaining to the domain of Italian Culture. Resources coming from various data-sources will not be duplicated into the Portal’s repository and will remain under the control of institutions responsible of their creation, approval, management and maintenance. Cultura. Italia is a descriptive catalogue that indexes metadata and redirects to resources. Each institution responsible for contents to be harvested will establish, together with Mi. BAC, which data will be accessible from the Portal. I. Buonazia i. [email protected]. it M. E. Masci e. [email protected]. it D. Merlitti d. [email protected]. it

The Project of the Italian Culture Portal ELPUB 2007 – Vienna – 15. 06. 2007 Standards According the most used international standards, Cultura. Italia is based on: § protocol for Metadata Harvesting - Open Archive Initiative (OAI-PMH) § Dublin Core (DCMI) for the metadata description § HTTP protocol for data transfer § XML for data representation § XHTML for the layout I. Buonazia i. [email protected]. it M. E. Masci e. [email protected]. it D. Merlitti d. [email protected]. it

The Project of the Italian Culture Portal ELPUB 2007 – Vienna – 15. 06. 2007 Metadata Schema: PICO DC Application Profile Dublin Core has been adopted as metadata standard, as the most used internationally. DCMI suggests to institutions and research groups to develop DC Application Profiles for specific applications and domains, designing schemas which can join: § § § All, or a selection of, DC Elements and Refinements; Elements from one or more element sets; Elements from locally defined sets. The PICO DC Application Profile has been designed for Cultura. Italia on the basis of recommendations, documents and samples published by DCMI, to define further extensions for describing in the most proper way the resources of the domain covered by the Portal. I. Buonazia i. [email protected]. it M. E. Masci e. [email protected]. it D. Merlitti d. [email protected]. it

The Project of the Italian Culture Portal PICO AP ELPUB 2007 – Vienna – 15. 06. 2007 The PICO DC Application Profile joins in one metadata schema: § § § All DC Elements; All DC Element Refinements and Encoding Schemes from the Qualified DC; Other Qualifiers (refinements and encoding schemes) specifically conceived for the Cultura. Italia domain. Therefore, the following namespaces are included into this metadata schema: § § § dc: dcterms: pico: I. Buonazia i. [email protected]. it M. E. Masci e. [email protected]. it D. Merlitti d. [email protected]. it

The Project of the Italian Culture Portal ELPUB 2007 – Vienna – 15. 06. 2007 PICO AP - Extensions to DCMI Type Vocabulary The element DCType, with its controlled vocabulary (DCMI Type Vocabulary), can describe the greatest part of resources to be managed within Cultura. Italia. PICO Type Vocabulary integrates three more resource types. The resources managed with DC and PICO Type Vocabulary are: dcmtype: Collection dcmitype: Dataset dcmtype: Event dcmtype: Image dcmtype: Moving. Image dcmtype: Still. Image dcmtype: Physical. Object dcmtype: Interactive. Resource dcmtype: Service dcmtype: Software dcmtype: Sound dcmtype: Text picotype: Institution picotype: Physical. Person picotype: Project I. Buonazia i. [email protected]. it M. E. Masci e. [email protected]. it D. Merlitti d. [email protected]. it

The Project of the Italian Culture Portal PICO AP Added Qualifiers – Element Refinements PICO AP extends the Qualified DC by adding the following Refinements: ELPUB 2007 – Vienna – 15. 06. 2007 Elements added Element Refinements CREATOR DESCRIPTION PUBLISHER CONTRIBUTOR FORMAT RELATION author, commissioner information, contact, service distributor, printer editor, performer, responsible, producer, translator material and technique promotes / is promoted by, manages / is managed by, is owner of / is owned by, produces / is produced by, performs / is performed by, is responsible for/ has as responsible, contributes to / has as contributor, digitizes / is digitized by place of birth, place of death, date of birth, date of death COVERAGE I. Buonazia i. [email protected]. it M. E. Masci e. [email protected]. it D. Merlitti d. [email protected]. it

The Project of the Italian Culture Portal PICO AP Added Qualifiers – Encoding Schemes ELPUB 2007 – Vienna – 15. 06. 2007 PICO AP extends the Qualified DC by adding the following Encodings: Elements added Encoding Schemes CREATOR SUBJECT ULAN PICO Thesaurus, UNESCO Thesaurus, AAT, ICONCLASS ULAN PICO Type Vocabulary, CLDT ISBN, ISSN URI ISTAT CONTRIBUTOR TYPE IDENTIFIER RELATION COVERAGE I. Buonazia i. [email protected]. it M. E. Masci e. [email protected]. it D. Merlitti d. [email protected]. it

The Project of the Italian Culture Portal PICO AP – Further Extensions ELPUB 2007 – Vienna – 15. 06. 2007 PICO AP can be further extended: § By adding new encoding schemes: they must be defined and published as xsd schemas § Using DCSV (Dublin Core Structured Values), defined in: Simon Cox - Renato Iannella DCMI DCSV: A syntax for writing a list of labelled values in a text string, 2000 -07 -28 http: //es. dublincore. org/documents/dcmi-dcsv/ I. Buonazia i. [email protected]. it M. E. Masci e. [email protected]. it D. Merlitti d. [email protected]. it

The Project of the Italian Culture Portal User interface ELPUB 2007 – Vienna – 15. 06. 2007 Cultura. Italia will join different kinds of contents: § static contents: Head and logo, access to multilingual versions, credits, contact info, mission, site map, copyright policy; § dynamic contents, from CMS: news, itineraries, focuses, events § business logic contents, depending on the user session: research results, bookmarks, “my favourites”, “shopping basket”; § user inputs: layout personalization controls (font, contrast, colour), registration area to access in a private area to save bookmarks, annotate events in agenda etc. I. Buonazia i. [email protected]. it M. E. Masci e. [email protected]. it D. Merlitti d. [email protected]. it

The Project of the Italian Culture Portal Search and browse ELPUB 2007 – Vienna – 15. 06. 2007 Searching & browsing are fundamental functions of each portal. Cultura. Italia contents could be retrieved through: § free search: the user composes one or more words, using boolean syntaxis (ex. Google); § advanced search: the user refines the query in the catalogue, searching for one or more words in one or more elements; § geographic search: selecting on a map (related to a GIS system); § browse the catalogue: According to the 4 High Level Elements of DC. Culture, defined by Aquarel project and approved by MINERVA project, the catalogue is structured in : “who”, “what”, “when”, “where”; § themes menu: the main menu allows browsing through 16 main cathegories I. Buonazia M. E. Masci D. Merlitti i. [email protected]. it e. [email protected]. it d. [email protected]. it

The Project of the Italian Culture Portal ELPUB 2007 – Vienna – 15. 06. 2007 Usability and Accessibility: Recommendations for graphic interface: § SIMPLE - according to W 3 C Consortium recommendations (XHTML & CSS), § USABLE - following guidelines on quality for cultural web sites defined by MINERVA project (wp 5) § ACCESSIBLE - in order to comply with Italian law n° 4 /2004 on public web sites full accessibility. Public institutions web sites MUST be accessible by persons with physical or cognitive disabilites. It is mandatory to adopt a DTD Strict and to use XHTML. Technologies: Complying to Italian directive on OPEN SOURCE (February 2004), the software used to develop the Portal should be open source, in order to avoid license costs. I. Buonazia M. E. Masci D. Merlitti i. [email protected]. it e. [email protected]. it d. [email protected]. it

ELPUB 2007 – Vienna – 15. 06. 2007 The Project of the Italian Culture Portal and its Development Thank You for your kind ATTENTION! I. Buonazia i. [email protected]. it M. E. Masci e. [email protected]. it D. Merlitti d. [email protected]. it