On the Use of Geographic Information in Humanities Research Infrastructure: A Case Study on Cultural Heritage

摘要

As an invaluable source of knowledge about the past, cultural heritage may be an important element of the humanities research infrastructure, along with other elements, such as spatial references. Therefore, this paper attempts to provide an answer to the questions concerning the ways in which spatial information can contribute to the development of this infrastructure and the aspects of storytelling based on cultural resources that can be supported by such infrastructure. The objective of the methodology that was used was to combine the aspects that refer to spatial information and cultural items into a single, common issue, and to describe them in a formalized way with use of Unified Modeling Language (UML). As a result, the study presents a proposal of the Humanities Infrastructure Architecture based on spatially-oriented movable cultural items, taking into account their use in the context of interoperability, along with the concept of creating spatial databases that would include movable monuments. The authors also demonstrate that the ISO 19100 series of geographical information standards may be a source of interesting conceptual solutions that may be used in the process of the standardization of geographical information that was recorded in the descriptions of cultural heritage items in form of metadata and data structure descriptions.