Putting cultural knowledge into context

A pilot project for the semantic linking of information in the Salzburg Open-Air Museum (KuWi project)

The digitization of cultural heritage information is a process that has been underway for many years. Museums, archives, libraries, and others are in the process of digitizing their collections and making them available to the public, which represents great potential for public accessibility.

However, this form of publication means that the information is not intuitively findable, and search commands often yield unsatisfactory results, which does not leverage the existing potential but instead creates a barrier to accessing information. The aim of the KuWi project is now to break down this barrier by creating simple, intuitive, and narrative-based access to information on cultural heritage in the form of a knowledge management system. To this end, a pilot project in cooperation with the Salzburg Open-Air Museum (www.freilichtmuseum.com) is investigating the primary research question of how the museum’s various pieces of information can be linked in order to achieve intuitive searchability of the knowledge base. This will also make it possible to link the locations of the open-air museum with digital information, which on the one hand will facilitate access to information for visitors, as information about the locations will be made available at the locations themselves, and on the other hand will enrich the experience through the additional availability of the virtual level in the space, thus creating a new form of museum visit.

Eugen Unterberger (Department of German Studies, University of Salzburg / LINK) is responsible for the overall implementation of the content. In line with the interdisciplinary approach required for the project, further expertise is being pooled through collaboration with Franz-Benjamin Mocnik (Faculty of Digital and Analytical Sciences, University of Salzburg / EXDIGIT / LINK) and Peter Fritz (Salzburg Open-Air Museum).