Historical methods

CARARE metadata schema

An application profile of the MIDAS Heritage standard intended for delivering metadata to the CARARE service environment about an organisation’s online collections, monument inventory database and digital objects.

CIDOC CRM

CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) is a conceptual model used in cultural heritage to enable information integration. It provides definitions and a structured framework to describe concepts, relationships, and data used in cultural heritage documentation. The CIDOC CRM, developed and maintained over a period of more than 20 years, was initially proposed by the CIDOC Documentation Standards Working Group and is currently managed by the CIDOC CRM SIG, both of which are working groups of the CIDOC Council. In December 2006, it received official recognition as an ISO standard, and this status was reaffirmed in 2014 under the ISO 21127:2014 designation.

CMDI (Component Metadata Infrastructure)

The Component Metadata Infrastructure provides a framework to create and use self-defined metadata formats. It relies on a modular model of so-called metadata components, which can be assembled together, to improve reuse, interoperability and cooperation among metadata modelers. The model is standardised in ISO 24622-1 and ISO 24622-2. The serialization is typically in XML. Metadata in this format are often distributed via OAI-PMH. The definition of data categories is provided externally, for example by linking to schema.org or the Clarin Concept Registry.

DDI (Data Documentation Initiative)

A widely used, international standard for describing data from the social, behavioral, and economic sciences. Two versions of the standard are currently maintained in parallel:

  • DDI Codebook (or DDI version 2) is the simpler of the two, and intended for documenting simple survey data for exchange or archiving. Version 2.5 was released in January 2012.
  • DDI Lifecycle (or DDI version 3) is richer and may be used to document datasets at each stage of their lifecycle from conceptualization through to publication and reuse. It is modular and extensible. Version 3.2 was published in March 2014.

Both versions are XML-based and defined using XML Schemas. They were developed and are maintained by the DDI Alliance.

EAD (Encoded Archival Description)

A standard for encoding archival finding aids using XML in archival and manuscript repositories, implementing the recommendations of the International Council on Archives ISAD(G): General International Standard Archival Description.

MIDAS-Heritage

A British cultural heritage standard for recording information on buildings, archaeological sites, shipwrecks, parks and gardens, battlefields, areas of interest and artefacts.

Sponsored by the Forum on Information Standards in Heritage, MIDAS Version 1.1 was released in October 2012.

OAI-ORE (Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange)

The goal of these standards is to expose the rich content in aggregations of Web resources to applications that support authoring, deposit, exchange, visualization, reuse, and preservation. The standards support the changing nature of scholarship and scholarly communication, and the need for cyberinfrastructure to support that scholarship, with the intent to develop standards that generalize across all web-based information including the increasing popular social networks of “Web 2.0”.

TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) Guidelines

The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines make recommendations about suitable ways of representing those features of textual resources which need to be identified explicitly in order to facilitate processing by computer programs. They specify a set of XML tags in order to mark the textual metadata, text structure, relationship between images and transcriptions and other features of interest. They therefore primarily define a data format, but the TEI Header in particular includes a native set of metadata and may include metadata from other schemas.

In their decades of community driven development they have developed into a de-facto standard in the production of textual data in the humanities. Since the release of version P5, 2 to 4 new revisions have been released each year.

TEI/EPIDOC

TEI/EPIDOC is a collaborative effort that combines the expertise of EpiDoc and the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). It establishes standardised guidelines and tools for encoding scholarly and educational editions of ancient documents, embracing inscriptions, papyri, manuscripts, and other text-bearing objects. By leveraging a subset of TEI's standard, TEI/EPIDOC enables the representation of texts in a digital form while also addressing the historical context and materiality of the objects. This comprehensive approach allows scholars to publish digital editions that not only encompass the transcription and editorial treatment of the texts but also provide insights into the objects themselves. As a result, TEI/EPIDOC enriches our understanding of ancient civilizations and facilitates the dissemination of knowledge about their tangible heritage. TEI/EPIDOC is currently employed by the EAGLE Project and Epigraphy.info.