Enhancing technoscientific heritage and introducing concepts into culture in the age of data, semantic web, and Artificial Intelligence

The ITinHeritage project

Abstract

In Semantic Web age, enhancing heritage means bringing collections beyond the confines of the museum. But this ethical mission of transmitting culture and knowledge to the general public is made complex by the massive and heterogeneous data that museums now have to manage. As data are now the new collections of museums, they are the starting point for the ITinHeritage project. It focuses on Information Technology (IT) heritage, the preservation of which is of general interest, and raises the question of “How to pass on complex scientific and technical concepts embodied in artefacts not mediators in themselves?” Backed by European science and IT museums, we develop innovative Digital Humanities approaches, combining terminology, Linked Open Data (LOD), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. In this article we set out the context of our questioning and present the basis of the answer we wish to provide, i.e. the onto-terminological work.