CLIO - Cultural Documentation System
Contact person:Chryssoula Bekiari <bekiari@ics.forth.gr>|
CLIO is a cultural documentation system, developed at
the Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology
- Hellas and was created especially to meet the needs of thematic documentation.
CLIO can be regarded as "flexible" system, in the sense that it is a
variable knowledge system aimed primarily at the museum curator and
the researcher, from which information bases of fixed structure and
content can be produced It supports the recording and management of
an evolving body of knowledge about ensembles of cultural goods.
Conventional visitor and educational information systems comprise
closed collections of information and emphisize mainly the presentation
of the material. In contrast CLIO focuses on extensibility of knowledge,
multiplicity of representation, managment of impresice and incomplete
information, interlinking of information, localization of updates and
access efficiency and effectiveness rather than on the elaboration of
the presentation of a given set of material. Its access speed exceeds
those of RDBMS by at least an order of magnitude
. The requirements analysis for the CLIO system has been performed
in close cooperation with the Benaki Museum, Athens and the Historical
Museum of Crete, Heraklion, under the terms of projects partially funded
by the STRIDE and ESPRIT programmes. The CLIO system has been installed
in the Documentation Department of the Benaki Museum and the Archeological
Museum of Heraklion and it was one of the starting points for our co-operation
with the Committee on Documentation of the International Council of
Museums (CIDOC/ICOM). The CLIO knowledge representation model subsumes
the 1992 CIDOC/ICOM Fine Arts Documentation Standard.
Structure
Information in CLIO is organized as a knowledge base
according to a specifically designed semantic model. The functional
kernel of CLIO is the Semantic Index System (SIS),
built at the Institute of Computer Science, FORTH.
The construction of CLIO allows extremely dense linking of information,
access by unlimited chained references, expression of historical and
cultural context as well as of abstract properties, joint temporal and
spatial assignment in absolute or relative terms, and recording alternative,
possibly conflicting information along with the respective sources.
Information is presented in graphical or textual form. For retrieval
purposes logical connections can be traversed in any direction and depth.
A particularly important feature (inherited from SIS) is the
uniform treatment of schema and data, enabling the immediate extension
and modification of the schema by the users themselves (with proper
authorization). A configurable meta-schema ensures consistency of the
schema with predefined queries and the user interface. The logical organization
is such that any addition of new facts and knowledge will preserve the
integrity of previous data. CLIO interoperates with collection management
systems on RDBMS and can be linked with geographical information systems
and authoring tools.
Applications using CLIO
CLIO system has been used in the development of a system for the documentation of holly orthodox pictures within the Anthivolon project.
