Enhance access to culture and heritage collections: Commitment 8

The Government of Canada will expand collaboration with its provincial, territorial, and municipal partners and key stakeholders to develop a searchable National Inventory of Cultural and Heritage Artefacts to improve access across museum collections.

Lead department:

Canadian Heritage

Email address for enquiries:

pch.rcip-chin.pch@canada.ca

Other involved actors:

n/a

Overall status:

Most deliverables on schedule

You'll be able to browse, discover, share and re-use data on cultural and heritage artefact collections from Canadian museums.

Note: Canadian Heritage (PCH) has completed several other milestones as part of this project and in preparation for the solution. The dimension of the project has changed since the key indicators were identified and we are now looking at a 5 year deployment strategy. As such, PCH will not be able to meet the key indicator targets.

Status of Open Government Plan milestones (complete, substantial, limited, not started)

Completed

• 8.1 Develop authorities and standards to guide the consistent implementation of this approach.
  • Nomenclature for Museum Cataloging will be launched in the summer 2018 and will be available online for use. Nomenclature will be available as Linked Open Data in 2020.
  • Nomenclature is a system for classifying human-made objects and the standard cataloging tool for thousands of museums and historical organizations across the United States and Canada.
  • Developed more than 3,000 standardized values for names, object types, subjects and other terms in 2016.
• 8.2 Enhance the ability to search and browse across museum collections.
  • Completed a linked data demonstration project called “150 Years of Canadian Art” which showcases the potential that a Linked Open Data (LOD) model offers to more widely publish, connect and enrich museum collections information.
  • In 2016-17, a second prototype was developed which added information from recognized web resources and authorities (such as Nomenclature 4.0) and enhanced search functionalities.
  • Canadian Heritage has built in-house expertise to support the Linked Open Data Strategy and they have developed a data model for Linked Open Data.
  • Procurement strategy being put in place for the development of the LOD environment
• 8.3 Expand the network of museums participating in this initiative and the links to related external resources.
  • As of December 2016, 8 partner museums have joined the project: the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the McCord Museum, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, the Musée des beaux arts de Montréal, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Select data contributed by these institutions has been enhanced with linkages to Linked Open Data sources from around the world.
  • Developed educational and promotional material for the museum community.

Limited

• 8.4 Host digital collections for museums that currently do not have a digital presence.
  • In 2017-2018 PCH began the redevelopment of the Artifacts Canada database which serves as a hosting platform for Canadian museums that are unable to host their own collections.
  • The creation of linked open data is a relatively new way of publishing data on the web, and standards and tools are still being developed. Canadian Heritage will be examining tools that are available for harvesting or collecting museum data, but due to the foundational work needed to harvest and provide a repository for digital collections for museums that currently do not have a digital presence, Canadian Heritage will not be in a position to make additional progress on this deliverable within the time period of the plan.

Note: Canadian Heritage has completed several milestones in support of this commitment and in preparation for a solution however the project has changed since the start of the 2-year plan and they are now looking at a 5-year deployment strategy.  They are one of the first groups in the GC working with external partners to explore publishing 5 star open data and have had to make adjustments along the way as they innovate.

• As one of the first groups in the Government of Canada that is working with multiple external partners to publish data as 5 star open data, this is a pilot project with a number technical challenges which could affect our ability to meet targets. If this is something you have expertise in, we would love to connect with you.
• We would like to expand participants. Who could we work with?