The archival domain in a disciplinary-integrated ontological perspective

Abstract

In this paper the authors reflect on some topics related to the semantic modeling of cultural heritage description. In particular we move from some ontologies as developed in - and for - the archival domain. The purpose of this approach is double: to understand, from the one hand, the role of the archival conceptual metodology for the cultural heritage enhancement; from the other, to propose a model to let heterogeneous disciplines able to dialogue in a shared semantic perspective. The authors adopt a triple level vision: 1. the importance of the documentary unit as a primary full text source, 2. the possibility to integrate models from potentially different research environments and domain, 3. the relevance of agent's roles and functions as an exploratory approach to the meaning of documents. In particular we reflect on the concept of "creator" - the agent - as a key to manage multiple relationships (between people and between people and resources) in a provenance-oriented perspective. The authors finally discuss about an ontology that formally describes our vision: PRoles (Political Roles Ontology).