U. Porto Digital Museum Project: towards convergence in university's information management

Abstract

The University of Porto (U.Porto) aims to promote its scientific and cultural heritage through digitalmedia by providing the integrated aggregation of digital information and related metadata which is managedand preserved in archives, libraries, museums and other technology information systems and repositories.This goal is meant to be reached by a theoretical based approach and an information managementintervention model the MGSIU-AP (Active and Permanent University Information System ManagementModel), which support an intervention toolkit directed to U.Porto Museums. This toolkit is complemented bya learning through projects educational approach, a digital platform which considers, among others,semantics and systems' interoperability, a long term digital preservation repository and an online heritagediscovery portal to be developed in the scope of the U.Porto Digital Museum, itself an ongoinginterdisciplinary project. This paper describes and discusses the development and subsequent processmodel which has an inherent value of standardisation. It considers tools as CIDOC Conceptual ReferenceModel (CRM), providing an extensible ontology for concepts and information in cultural heritage and museumdocumentation, the standard SPECTRUM 4.0, describing 21 management procedures in workflow format,along with the policies and minimum features required for the standards to be met. Here will also bepresented the work in progress in the field of domain ontologies, framed by an interdisciplinary theoreticalapproach which crosses information science, information systems and museology in the context of a serviceorientedapproach. Both goals and issues will also be examined.