Speaker
Description
Consistent use of authoritative terminologies is a prerequisite for
interoperable collection data across the German university collections
landscape. SODa (Sammlungen, Objekte,
Datenkompetenzen) builds data literacy and provides shared
infrastructure for this community; its Semantic Co-Working Space
(SCS) hosts containerised WissKI
Barrels -- domain-specific research
environments built on WissKI and CIDOC CRM.
Today, however, each Barrel still manages terminology lookup
independently. Authority sources such as GND, Getty Vocabularies,
GeoNames, and Wikidata are each integrated through a separate API
client, with bespoke autocomplete UI inside the WissKI Authority
Document
module.
Domain-specific controlled vocabularies (for example provenance event
types or conservation treatment categories) remain local custom terms
and are not discoverable beyond a single instance. The result is
fragmented maintenance, duplicated integration effort, and missed
opportunities for cross-consortium reuse.
This TS4NFDI Service Incubator addresses that gap. Over a six-month
cycle starting in Q3/2026, we will refactor the Authority Document
module so that terminology lookup and selection in WissKI editing forms
use Terminology Service Suite
(TSS)
widgets and route queries through the TS4NFDI API Gateway rather than
calling each provider directly. Selected terms will continue to be
stored as URIs in link fields, preserving compatibility with the WissKI
Default Data
Model, CIDOC
CRM paths, and Linked Open Data export. In parallel, we will publish one
or more terminology collections maintained by SODa and the Barrels
project via the API Gateway, making shared vocabularies reusable across
Barrels and beyond SODa.
Preparatory work is already in place: The linked open data management
system WissKI is technical foundation of WissKI Barrels; the Authority
Document module supports field-level authority linking for SCS and
Barrel deployments; and the Default Data Model installs a ready-to-use
Pathbuilder environment for collection cataloguing. What is missing is a
shared Basic Service path -- standard widgets, unified discovery and
caching, and collection provisioning -- rather than yet another
provider-specific client.
Collaboration with TS4NFDI focuses on widget integration guidance in a
Drupal/WissKI form context, API Gateway onboarding for SODa collections,
provider mapping for the authority sources required in material-culture
cataloguing, and iterative testing with museum and collection-domain
users. For our part, we contribute a dedicated contact person, a staging
environment in SCS, user testing in realistic cataloguing workflows, and
maintainer documentation so that new Barrels can adopt terminology
sources without custom development.
Keywords: terminology services, collection data, linked open data,
WissKI
| background | SODa (https://sammlungen.io) |
|---|