Metadata aggregation: Assessing the application of IIIF and sitemaps within cultural heritage

Abstract

In the World Wide Web, a very large number of resources is made available through digital libraries. The existence of many individual digital libraries, maintained by different organizations, brings challenges to the discoverability and usage of the resources. A widely-used approach is metadata aggregation, where centralized efforts like Europeana facilitate the discoverability and use of the resources by collecting their associated metadata. This paper focuses on metadata aggregation in the domain of cultural heritage, where OAI-PMH has been the adopted solution. However, the technological landscape around us has changed. With recent technological accomplishments, the motivation for adopting OAI-PMH is not as clear as it used to be. In this paper, we present the first results in attempting to rethink Europeana’s technological approach for metadata aggregation, to make the operation of the aggregation network more efficient and lower the technical barriers for data providers. We (Europeana and data providers) report on case studies that trialled the application of some of the most promising technologies, exploring several solutions based on the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) and Sitemaps. The solutions were trialled successfully and leveraged on existing technology and knowledge in cultural heritage, with low implementation barriers. The future challenges lie in choosing among the several possibilities and standardize solution(s). Europeana will proceed with recommendations for its network and is actively working within the IIIF community to achieve this goal.