Background

The interdisciplinary field of Digital Culture in Europe is highly fragmented across regions and contributing disciplines. National, regional and local initiatives coincide with specialised institutions and networks. These specialisations are along the lines of different analogue media (e.g. books, paintings, photographs, films) different types of organisations (e.g. museums, libraries, archives, industry) and diverse scientific and artistic disciplines (e.g. restoration, 3D rendering, semantic web).

Any initiative like E-Culture Net that aims at integrating research efforts in this highly fragmented field must develop and refine a “lay of the land” in order to provide the overview needed for scientific co-operation and its management. This becomes even more important in context of the construction and maintenance of a Distributed European Electronic Dynamic resource (DEED) (cf. objectives of E-Culture Net).

Information System Strategy

Early during the FP5 Thematic Network (IST-2001-37491) it became apparent that the scope, complexity and volatility of the field are prohibitive for any centralised effort to yield satisfactory results. Consequently, the decision was taken to design and implement an online database in order to allow decentralised capturing of information and provide structured access to the combined body of knowledge.

The underlying strategy is that every member of E-Culture Net assumes responsibility of their own dataset. Researchers of a given institution are, after all, best equipped to provide information about themselves, their organisation and projects, solutions, standards, publications and conferences. The proposal for the 6th Framework programme also provides for country representatives who would be responsible for collecting information from outside E-Culture Net. Many thanks to Silvia Filippini for entering data about the Netherlands during the test period.

Database Design

The database and all interfaces are implemented on open source architecture (Linux, PostGreSQL and PHP) and are designed around three fundamental entities: organisation, person and resource and their interrelations (table 1). In addition, several classifications (table 2) were implemented as basis of structured access to the information base.

Special attention was paid to organisational interrelations (horizontal and hierarchical) and the existence of multiple names/titles referring to the same real entity (i.e. names in different languages or alternate names in one language). For more detailed information, please refer to the applicable sections on output and input interfaces and the E-Culture Net Database Manual (PDF).