The Standard of Management and Application of Cultural Heritage Documentation

Abstract

Using digital technology for cultural heritage documentation is a global trend in the 21 st century. Many important techniques are currently under development, including 3D digital imaging, reverse engineering, GIS (Geographic Information Systems) etc. However, no system for overall management or data integration is yet available. Therefore, we urgently need such a system to efficiently manage and interpret data for the preservation of cultural heritages. This paper presents a digitizing process developed in Taiwan by the authors. To govern and manage cultural property, three phases of property conservation, registration, restoration and management, has been set up along a timeline. In accordance with the laws of cultural property, a structural system has been built for project management, including data classification and data interpretation with self-documenting characteristics. Through repository information and metadata, a system catalogue (also called data dictionary) (Figure 1) was created. The primary objective of the study is to create an integrated technology for an efficient management of databases. Several benefits could be obtained from this structural standard: (1) cultural heritage management documentation can be centralized to minimize the possibility of data re-entry resulting inconsistency, and also to facilitate simultaneous updating of data; (2) since multiple data can be simultaneously retrieved and saved in real time, the incidence of errors can be reduced; (3) this system could be easily tailored to meet the administrative requirements for the standardization of documentation exchanged between cultural properties institutions and various county and city governments.