Semantic Enrichment on Cultural Heritage collections: A case study using geographic information

Cultural heritage institutions have recently started to explore the added value of sharing their data, using Linked Open Data to integrate and enrich metadata of their collections. Œe catalogue of the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes contains about 200,000 records which were transformed to RDF triples employing basically the RDA vocabulary (Resource Description and Access) to describe the entities. However, further re€nements are needed for the recognition and extraction of implicit relationships expressed in natural language, such as geographic locations and dates. In order to facilitate literature researchers in carrying out sophisticated location-based searches, a web-based prototype is proposed. Œe usability of this web interface were evaluated in a user-based study, the results of which are also reported. Œe methods applied for the automation of the enrichment process, which build upon open-source so‰ware components, are described here.