ECHOLOT: European Cultural Heritage Optimised Linked Open Tools - Semantic Computing Research Group (SeCo)

Open-source software suite for data enrichment in the Cultural Heritage Cloud

ECHOLOT project supports the development and adoption of the Cultural Heritage Cloud's (ECCCH) digital infrastructure by researchers and institutions across Europe. ECHOLOT's open-source software suite enables the curation and enrichment of cultural heritage data through AI-enhanced workflows combining automated processing and human input. Integrated as a core service within the ECCCH, ECHOLOT facilitates the simultaneous publication of high-quality, semantically rich and interoperable data by aggregators such as Europeana and the common European data space for cultural heritage, as well as citizen science platforms from the Wikimedia ecosystem. Tested and validated through five thematic case studies, ECHOLOT's added support for embedding rights and provenance metadata opens new collaboration opportunities across the research, heritage and creative sectors.

Project objectives

In support of the development and adoption of ECCCH by Cultural Heritage Professionals and Researchers (CHPR), ECHOLOT will make the creation, provision, and reuse of high-quality, semantically rich, and interoperable Cultural Heritage (CH) data accessible to scholars and institutions, significantly lowering the threshold for joining the collaborative cloud. ECHOLOT will address the fundamental issue that, while ever larger amounts of diverse CH data are available through CH institutions (CHIs), the active reuse of this data especially in research and the creative sectors, is hampered by poor quality and lack of interoperability.

It will achieve this by seamlessly integrating as a core service in the ECCCH that enables the quality curation and enrichment of CH data, including multimedia, through AI-enhanced workflows combining automated processing and human input. Moreover, it will natively support embedding rights metadata and chain-of-production provenance, thereby preserving the value and integrity of CH datasets.

ECHOLOT will serve as an interoperability hub facilitating the exchange of CH data between systems. It will enable CHPRs to publish simultaneously to aggregators, such as Europeana, and open knowledge platforms from the Wikimedia ecosystem, as well as contribute to ECCCH and Common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage (DS4CH).

Together, these technical innovations will revolutionise CHPR practices and increase the availability of CH data for reuse and collaboration across institutional and sectoral boundaries. ECHOLOT's solutions will be validated and tested in five case studies presenting a wide spectrum of CH actors. Maximising the adoption of ECHOLOT and ECCCH will be enabled by social and organisational change measures, including innovative business models co-created with relevant stakeholders. Training resources, interactive workshops and open source software best practices will further support capacity building and long-term sustainability.

The Cultural Heritage Cloud is a large-scale European Union initiative for a digital infrastructure that will connect cultural heritage institutions and professionals across the EU. It will develop specific digital collaborative tools for the sector while removing barriers for smaller and remote institutions. The initiative was launched in 2023 based on the expert group report (Brunet et al., 2022) below.

Project Partners

1 TECHNISCHE INFORMATIONSBIBLIOTHEK (TIB) Germany Coordinator
2 DIGITAL RESEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE ARTS AND France Partner
3 OESTERREICHISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN Austria Affiliated
4 Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Scie Czechia Partner
5 INSTYTUT BADAN LITERACKICH POLSKIEJ AKADEMII NAUK Poland Partner
6 STICHTING EUROPEANA Netherlands Partner
7 INSTYTUT CHEMII BIOORGANICZNEJ POLSKIEJ AKADEMII N Poland Partner
8 INSTITUT JOZEF STEFAN Slovenia Partner
9 UNIVERSIDAD DEL PAIS VASCO/ EUSKAL HERRIKO UNIBER Spain Partner
10 Professional Wiki GmbH Germany Partner
11 KMA Knowledge Management Associates GmbH Austria Partner
12 HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO Finland Partner
13 MEEMOO - VLAAMS INSTITUUT VOOR HET ARCHIEF Belgium Partner
14 MTU AUSTRALO ALPHA LAB Estonia Partner
15 Takin.solutions Ltd. Bulgaria Partner

Role of the SeCo Group in ECHOLOT

The work of the Semantic Computing Research Group (SeCo) is related especially to the Work package 2 "Infrastructure, Integration, Interoperability", Work package 4 "Hybrid curation workflows", and Work package 6 "Evaluation and further development", focusing especially on the tasks of entity linking, reconciliation, and deduplication.

In particular, the plan is to re-use solutions developed for the Finnish Linked Open Data infrastructure in the FIN-CLARIAH initiative and Sampo model and series of systems on an European scale.

Contact Persons

Dr. Jouni Tuominen (PI),
University of Helsinki, Helsinki Centre for Digital Humanities (HELDIG) and Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH)

Dr. Petri Leskinen,
University of Helsinki, Helsinki Centre for Digital Humanities (HELDIG)

Publications

2022

Pere Brunet, Livio de Luca, Eero Hyvönen, Adeline Joffres, Peter Plassmayer, Martijn Pronk, Roberto Scopigno and Gabor Sonkoly: Report on a European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage. Ex-ante Impact Assessment. European Commission, Directorate-general for Research and Innovation, March, 2022. 108 pp. bib pdf link