Windows on Data: Object Biography for Stained Glass Research

Windows on Data Object Biography for Stained Glass Research Anja Gerber, [email protected], ORCID: 0000-0003-2576-1511 DiHMa.Lab “Objects and Methods” 14./15. October 2025, Berlin Lion with coat of arms banner, montage, Bad Wilsnack, St. Nicholas Parish Church (1459/60 / 1886-1889), CVMA Germany Potsdam / Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, photo: Holger Kupfer; permalink: https://corpusvitrearum.de/id/F18514 ●Development of an Object Core Metadata Profile (N4O OCMDP) in cooperation with the TA 1-4 as a core schema for data integration in NFDI4Objects and MaCHECO (Material Cultural Heritage Crosswalk Ontology) with TA 2 to define basic entities (classes) in individual ontologies through a hierarchical crosswalk to CIDOC CRM (via a TWG) ●Development of the NFDI4Objects Object Ontology N4O OO based on the CIDOC CRM 7.1.3. and other ontologies to describe the Object Biography ●Development, implementation and proof of concept of a knowledge graph to represent Object Biographies in the VRE WissKI (“Maximum Dataset”) based on N4O OO ●Organisation of the Community Cluster “Authority Files and Community-driven Vocabularies” ●Memberships: CRM SIG, LIDOde WG, WG Minimum Data Recommendation, WG Digital Art History, DHd https://www.nfdi4objects.net/en/portal/tas/ta6/ Team Integration & Harmonisation in Task Area 6 ●Generation of heterogeneous and multidisciplinary research data in Task Areas 1-4 ("Documentation", "Collection", "Analytics and Experiments", "Protection") e.g. excavation data, distribution of finds, collection and provenance information, laboratory analyses such as genome determination or material analysis, conservation measures, building research, research of cultural monuments ●Various (meta)data, formats, systems, models, ontologies, authority files, terminologies, ... ●Orientation towards the object data lifecycle Object Data in NFDI4OBJECTS ●Objects → related to place and time (e. g. place of origin, place of discovery, place of storage, always in the context of time periods...) ●Mapping of places and processes (who, when, where, what) → Object Biographies ○Modelling with attribute events ●Uncertainty and inaccuracies (‘Looks Celtic, 300-600 BC?’, ‘Elbe site’) ●Relation to scientific methods (measurements, analyses...) ●Heterogeneous and unstructured data (e. g. free text fields and text documents) ●Data needs to be non-public due to theft and looted excavations ●Special vocabularies hidden in various systems or under development to cover own data collection needs Object Data in NFDI4OBJECTS Klassik Stiftung Weimar, Directorate Museums ●Proven tools for standardisation in the field of digital cultural heritage ●Integration of heterogeneous and scattered information ●Annotation of various file types, such as images, 3D, text ●Focus on detailed presentation of provenance information to illustrate the history of an object from its creation to its loss/current location ●Consideration of attributions to actors and groups, places, events and time periods even outside the collection, museum or own research context ●Goal: To offer information outside one's own (collection) context in a comprehensible and reusable form CIDOC CRM and LIDO ●Developed by the Documentation Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM CIDOC) ●Ontology and standard for representing cultural heritage data in the semantic web ●Consists of approx. 90 classes (e.g. physical object, place, actor, time, events, activities, etc.) and approx. 150 relations/properties for contextualising the information ●Ensures long-term interpretability and interoperability ●Event-centred ●Version 7.1.3 as the current ISO 21127 standard Starting point for developments in NFDI4Objects CIDOC CRM ●XML schema for exchange and standardised recording of object information from relational databases ●Aggregation of cultural heritage data (harvesting format) ●Based on CIDOC CRM, CDWA (Categories for the description of works of art) and Spectrum ●Few mandatory elements, therefore various application profiles, e.g. DDB, colonial contexts, painting and graphic art, sculpture, architecture ●Contains Metadata on the Physical Object, Metadata on Reproductions/Representations, Administrative Metadata ●LIDO terminologies (value lists) LIDO (Lightweight Information Describing Objects) ●Supporting museums and collections in publishing their object data online ●Low-threshold communication of relevant standards (CIDOC CRM, LIDO, EDM, etc.) ●Awareness of data quality ●Facilitating the integration of standard data and controlled vocabularies ●Important use case: data exchange and data delivery to portals ●Concordances with other standards and specifications ●Provides recording tips and vocabulary recommendations ●https://wiki.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/spaces /DFD/pages/218628097/English+Translation+Mini mum+Record+Recommendation+for+Museums+an d+Collections+MDS+v1.1 Minimum Data Recommendation for Museums and Collections www.minimaldatensatz.de Minimum Data Recommendation for Museums and Collections Object Biography in NFDI4Objects Fig.: Schematic representation of an object biography © Sarah Wagner, CC-BY 4.0 What is an Object Biography ●Transfers the concept of biography to material cultural heritage ●Attaches any information (contexts, paths, meanings, interpretations) to an object ○Objects (artifacts, plants, animals, rocks) ○Phases and contexts ○Actors, places, time (who? where? when? context?) ○Sources (pictorial and written material, data, findings, ...) Fig.: Schematic representation of an object biography © Sarah Wagner, CC-BY 4.0 What is an Object Biography ●Contexts/events include, for example ○Origin (commissioning, creation, production) ○Use ○Encounter (“discovery,” excavation, etc.) ○Collection/museum context ○Change of ownership/possession ○Reception history and cultural actions ○Modifications (addition of inscriptions, conservation and restoration measures) ○Research activities Fig.: Unknown (Apulian), red-figure oinochoe with cloverleaf-shaped mouth, 370 to 340 BC, Klassik Stiftung Weimar What is an Object Biography ●Introduced in academia by anthropologist Igor Kopytoff in 1986 in ‘The Biography of Things’: ○Objects are individuals due to their specific meaning and individual history. ○Focuses on social relationships between object and actor. ○Transitional moments are central → breaks in context and meaning. ●Term used especially in material culture ○such as art history, ethnology or archaeology, disciplines that explore the ‘life story’ of objects. Fig.: Crucifixion of Christ, montage, Bad Wilsnack, St. Nicholas Church (1460/70), CVMA Germany Potsdam/Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, photo: Renate Roloff/Holger Kupfer. What is an Object Biography ●Criticism of the term (e.g. Hans Peter Hahn 2015; Kim Siebenhüner 2017): risk of simplification; ○biography suggests that something is alive, is an actor, has a beginning and an end; ○further problems arise with individual objects vs. multi-part objects (e.g. buildings); ○fragmentation (e.g. with shards: what is the main object?); ●Objects do not live or act, but can certainly have an inviting or appealing character, which in turn leads to certain ways of dealing with them (Jung) ●Peter Braun and Matthias Jung: Merit of the term in that new questions about objects can be asked and changes in meaning are brought to the fore. ●Metaphorical use of the term ●→ Representation of the object's history What is a digital Object Biography ●Transfers the concept of object biography to the digital realm; ●Event-based data model: contextualisation of assigned object information, time, place, actors and sources across various events from creation/production to the present day; ●Who, when, where, what, how ●Networks data and information that is usually heterogeneous and distributed across various institutions; ●Object biography as a ‘maximum data set’; ●Takes into account information provenance, ambiguity and contradictions. Chances of the digital Object Biography ●Enables integration of heterogeneous and distributed information, ●detailed presentation of provenance information above ownership/acquisition, ●based on the indication of the origin of information, as reconstruction, ●creates a meta-perspective on knowledge objects, as previous object documentation has been carried out from the perspective of the current collection, ●equal account of attributions by actors and groups outside a collection, a museum or a scientific context, such as societies of origin, popular culture, ec Beginning of Existence [E63] Object [E22] Usage [E7] Encounter [E7] Museum-/ Collection Affiliation [E7] Research Activity [E7] Modification [E11] Transfer of Custody [E10] E22 Human-Made Object E63 Beginning of Existence E65 Creation E12 Production E10 Transfer of Custody E11 Modification E5 Event E7 Activity E6 Destruction Destruction [E6] Objects and Events/Context Beginning of Existence [E63] Object [E22] Usage [E7] Encounter [E7] Museum-/ Collection Affiliation [E7] Research Activity [E7] Reception [E7] Destruction [E6] Transfer of Custody [E10] Production [E12] Creation [E65] E5 Event E7 Activity E6 Destruction E12 Production E22 Human-Made Object E63 Beginning of Existence E65 Creation Characteristics of the Data Model Beginning of Existence [E63] Object [E22] Production [E12] Time (E52) Actor (E21) Place (E53) p4 has time span p108i carried out by p7 took place at Factual modeling of characteristics and properties → not quite FAIR! How can information provenance or uncertainties be mapped in a structured way? p92i was brought into existence by p9 consists of E22 Human-Made Object E63 Beginning of Existence E12 Production E52 Time Span E21 Person E53 Place Characteristics of the Data Model ●Tool for implementing data models ●Mapping semantic paths to entry forms in the front end ●in most cases using CIDOC CRM WissKI Pathbuilder View of the WissKI Pathbuilder with the semantic paths of the object biography (excerpt) The Data Model in the WissKI Pathbuilder View of the WissKI Pathbuilder with the semantic paths of the object biography (production – actor assignment) The Data Model in the WissKI Pathbuilder vor 1886 Beginning of Existence [E63] Object [E22] Usage [E7] Encounter [E7] Museum-/ Collection Affiliation [E7] Research Activity [E7] Modification [E11] Transfer of Custody [E10] E22 Human-Made Object E63 Beginning of Existence E65 Creation E12 Production E10 Transfer of Custody E11 Modification E5 Event E7 Activity E6 Destruction E25 Human-made feature Destruction [E6] 1459/1460 1886 - 1889 Human-Made Feature [E25] Still work in progress: https://nfdi4objects.wisski.data.fau.de/wisski/navigate/2607/view Interested in creating an Object Biography? ●Please feel free to contact us! ○Anja Gerber, Klassik Stiftung Weimar, [email protected] ○Sarah Wagner, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg, sarah.[email protected] ●Our Use Cases: ○https://nfdi4objects.wisski.data.fau.de/use_ca ses ●The NFDI4Objects Object Ontology: ○https://github.com/nfdi4objects/n4o-ontology Resources: ●Becker, Marcus, Eva Dolezel, Meike Knittel, Diana Stört, Sarah Wagner (2023). Die Berliner Kunstkammer. Sammlungsgeschichte in Objektbiografien vom 16. bis 21. Jahrhundert, Petersberg. ●Bednarz et al. (2010). Die mittelalterlichen Glasmalereien in Berlin und Brandenburg, Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi Deutschland Bd. XXII, Berlin. https://corpusvitrearum.de/publikationen/editionen/cvma-xxii.html ●Braun, Peter (2025). Objektbiographie. Ein Arbeitsbuch. Weimar. ●Fichtl, B. (2024). LIDO Training (1.1.0). NFDI4Culture. https://docs.nfdi4culture.de/lido-schulung ●Fischer, K., Gerber, A., Koprucki, T., Noback, A., Reidelbach, M., Schrade, T., & Thiery, F. (2025). Windows on Data: Federating Research Data with FAIR Digital Objects and Linked Open Data. 2nd Conference on Research Data Infrastructure (CoRDI), Aachen, Germany. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16736222 ●Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (2025). WissKI Development Environment for NFDI4Objects. https://nfdi4objects.wisski.data.fau.de/ ●Corpus Vitrearum.de (2025). https://corpusvitrearum.de/ ●Gerber, Anja, Sarah Wagner, Günther Görz (2025). Objektbiografie - Ein Ansatz für die integrative Datenmodellierung: Eigenschaften, Chancen und Anwendungsmöglichkeiten. DHd 2025 Under Construction (DHd2025) (DHd2025), Bielefeld, Deutschland. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14943052 ●Gerber, Anja, Sarah Wagner, Günther Görz (2025). Objektbiografie - Ein Ansatz für die integrative Datenmodellierung: Eigenschaften, Chancen und Anwendungsmöglichkeiten. DHd 2025 Under Construction (DHd2025) (DHd2025), Bielefeld. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15126917 ●Gerber, Anja, Sarah Wagner (2024). Development of the N4O Objects Ontology, Object Biography data model and Minimal metadata set in NFDI4Objects. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13936583 ●Gerber, Anja, Sarah Wagner (2024). NFDI4Objects Core Ontology und Objektbiografien. https://zenodo.org/records/10591898 ●Hahn, Hans Peter (2015). Dinge sind Fragmente und Assemblagen: Kritische Anmerkungen zur Metapher der ‚Objektbiografie‘, in: Dietrich Boschung, Patric-Alexander Kreuz, Tobias Kienlin (Hg.): Biography of Objects. Aspekte eines kulturhistorischen Konzepts, (Internationales Kolleg Morphomata: Morphomata, Bd. 31), Paderborn, S. 11-33. ●Krmnicek, Stefan (2009). Das Konzept der Objektbiographie in der antiken Numismatik. In. Kaenel/Kemmers hg.: Coins in context I. New Perspectives for the Interpretation of Coin finds. Studien zu Fundmünzen der Antike 23, Mainz, S. 47-59, insb. S. 55-57.Kopytoff, Igor (1986). The Cultural Biography of Things, in: The Social Life of Things. Hg. v. Arjun Appadurai, Cambridge, S. 64-91. ●NFDI4Objects (2025). N4O Graph. GitHub. https://github.com/nfdi4objects/n4o-graph ●NFDI4Objects (2025). N4O Ontology and Data Models. GitHub. https://github.com/nfdi4objects/n4o-ontology ●NFDI4Objects (2025). Terminologies in NFDI4Objects. GitHub. https://github.com/nfdi4objects/n4o-terminologies ●Wagner, Sarah (2024). Digitale Objektbiografien für NFDI4Objects. 15. Jahrestagung für Universitätssammlungen 2024, Neue Rollen, neue Ziele? Universitätssammlungen im Spannungsfeld von Forschung, Finanzen und Politik, Zürich. Zenodo. https://zenodo.org/records/11471183 ●Wagner, Sarah, Diana Stört, Meike Knittel: Die Berliner Kunstkammer als Wissensgraph – Quellengestützte Erschließung von Sammlungsund Objektinformationen mit Semantic Web Technologien. In: Sammler*innen | Sammlung | Netz: Die Netzimplikationen von Sammlungspraxis und Sammlungsforschung, Hg. v. Jörn Münkner, Joëlle Weis, Maximilian Görmar, Göttingen 2024, S. 63-84. Thank you for your attention! Förderkennzeichen: 501836407 NFDI4Objects ist Teil der https://www.nfdi4objects.net/ https://linktr.ee/nfdi4objects