Objects as Information Carriers
Abstract
The Community Cluster Objects as Information Carriers within the National Research Data Infrastructure for Objects (NFDI4Objects) seeks to establish an open, collaborative platform for all researchers working in epigraphy with a material-oriented perspective. Its core objective is to formulate community-driven recommendations for the digital recording of objects and inscriptions in ways that best support material-based research while adhering to FAIR and Linked Open Data (LOD) principles as fundamental components of the semantic web. Regular cluster meetings and workshops have already identified several key requirements: precise documentation of the placement of inscriptions on objects; explicit modelling of the relationships between textual information, the object itself, its spatial context and associated objects; and the integration of links to people and places. Further essential aspects include capturing temporal dimensions and sequences of inscriptions, as well as their connections to object design and decoration. The systematic use of structured thesauri and controlled vocabularies is vital to achieving this.
Current work within one of the cluster’s working groups focuses on gathering and evaluating digital tools and services from various disciplines through a criteria-based checklist reflecting these needs. Parallel efforts are analysing how existing resources may be sustainably reused and interconnected via LOD principles, and how graph-based modelling approaches can relate multimodal information for research. These activities are presently underway and will be presented in detail at the epigraphy.info meeting at the end of March, where they will be discussed and further refined together with the wider community.