Latest developments in the Europeana Fashion project.

1. EUROPEANA FASHION
disclosing European fashion heritage online
Achievements and future developments
Marco Rendina
Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale
@eurfashion
@mrendina
EVA/Minerva XIth Annual International Conference
Jerusalem, November 10-11th, 2014
Connected to
Co-funded by the
European Support
Commission
within the ICT
Policy Programme

2. EUROPEANA
FASHION
in a nutshell
Objectives and expected outcomes
aims and results of the project
The Consortium
the composition of our project consortium
The work done so far
the data model, fashion thesaurus, edit-a-thons
Next steps
semantic enrichment & visual thesaurus
The new portal
Connected to
Co-funded by the
European Support
Commission
within the ICT
Policy Programme

3. Objectives and expected
outcomes
The main objective of the
Europeana Fashion Best Practice
Network is to build a thematic
aggregator on fashion, putting
emphasis on the quality, the variety
and granularity of content that will
be delivered to Europeana, and
producing a significant increase of
the fashion related content in it.

4. Aims and results of
the project
aggregate 700.000+ digital
items of fashion content to
Europeana
improve interoperability in the
fashion community
create a specialised access
point for fashion content
develop case studies for the
exploitation of fashion material
build consensus and raise
awareness on best practices

5. The composition of our
project consortium
The Europeana Fashion Best
Practice Network will
encompass 22 partners from
12 European countries, which
represent the leading
European institutions and
collections in the fashion
domain.

6. The composition of our
project consortium

7. The composition of our
project consortium

8. Europeana Fashion
data model (EDM-fp)
Main features:
• EDM profile
• Added fashion-related elements (e.g.
color)
• Suitable for non-object entities (e.g.
exhibition)
• Use of specific relationships (e.g.
between a dress and an exhibition)
• Use of controlled vocabularies

9. Europeana Fashion
Thesaurus
The Europeana Fashion project has
created a multilingual thesaurus in 11
languages, for fashion and fashion-related
concepts.
We structured it in a faceted way:
Materials, Techniques, Object types and
Colors.
The thesaurus has been developed:
• as an aid for data entry
• as a knowledge base (open to
internal and external users)
• as a search enhancement tool
The Europeana Fashion Thesaurus is
based on the Art and Architecture
Thesaurus (AAT)

10. Europeana Fashion
Thesaurus
Managing Multilingual
Terms & Contents
SAPATOS DE SALTO ALTO
ZAPATO DE SALÓN
SALONKE CIPELE
DECOLLETÈ
ESCARPIN
נעלי עקב
ΓΌΒΕΣ
PUMPS

11. Data ingestion workflow
• Each partner extracts data from his
own database
• Using an open source ingestion tool
(MINT) metadata are uploaded and
transformed in a common data
model (EDM-fp)
• Digital objects are uploaded into the
Europeana Fashion repository

12. Museo del Traje, Madrid

13. Victoria & Albert Museum, London

14. Archivio Emilio Pucci, Florence

15. Sample of an imported record

16. Europeana Fashion
IPR guidelines
Rights management underpins
everything we wish to achieve for
Europeana Fashion.
That’s why we developed the IPR
best practice guidelines:
• Key to achieving project objectives
• Clarity for content holders
• Clarity for end users

17. Europeana Fashion
IPR guidelines

18. Fashion edit-a-thons

19. What is an edit-a-thon
An edit-a-thon is “a scheduled time
where people edit Wikipedia
together, whether offline, online, or a
mix of both; typically focused on a
specific topic, such as science or
women's history” *
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_run_an_edit-a-thon

21. What we have done
till now...
Eight edit-a-thons organised:
1. Nordiska Museet, Stockholm, 22
March 2013.
2. Centraal Museum Utrecht, 13
May 2013.
3. ModeMuseum Antwerp, 23
September 2013
4. Nordiska Museet, Stockholm, 12
November 2013
5. Museo Rossimoda, Strà, 14
November 2013
6. HIT, Holon, 20 November 2013
7. Les Arts Decoratifs, Paris, 22
March 2014
8. Museum of Applied Arts,
Belgrade, 18 October 2014

22. Europeana Fashion content
on Wikimedia Commons

23. Social Media
Facebook brings most people to the website
(4.500+ friends)
Our Twitter community is active and fashion-oriented
(over 1.200 followers)
Tumblr and Pinterest followers are highly
engaged (5.500+ followers)
Museums and schools love reading our
newsletter (800+ subscribers)

24. Tumblr Blog
A collaboration between the
Europeana Foundation and the
Europeana Fashion project.
Each month, this Tumblr will
showcase a different theme
curated by experts from the
fashion and cultural heritage
community.
http://europeanafashion.tumblr.com/

25. Press
& Clustering Activities
Coverage in major publications
(New York Times/International Herald
Tribune, Vogue)
First International Conference
(Florence, April 2013)
Second International Conference
(London, April 2014)
Third International Conference (Antwerp,
February 2015)

27. Next Steps
• Data semantification
• Data linking
• Ontology development
• Semantic query answering
• Integration in the thesaurus of visual concepts

28. Semantic Data Access
Free text descriptions
id:VA_T.127-1933 dcterms:type “dress”
may be very informative (large text descriptions)
low level data-access: keyword-based search
Search for “dress”
hidden semantics
Thesaurus
id:VA_T.127-1933 dcterms:type <Dress>
<Dress> subClassOf <Main_garment>
high-level data access: term-based search
Search for <Dress> or <Main_garment>
clear semantics
Formal ontologies
<EveningDress> subClassOf <LongDress> and hasMaterial .<Silk>
properties, more complex axioms
full semantic data access: concept-based search
Search for <EveningDress>
rich semantics

29. Data Semantification
Extract thesaurus/ontology concepts from free text descriptions
property value
dc:type <http://thesaurus.europeanafashion.eu/
thesaurus/Parasol>
dc:title Parasol
dc:description A parasol with handle of composition ivory
carved with a lily-of-the-valley design, the
canopy of Brussels bobbin lace applied to
machine-made net, over black silk taffeta.
Lined with white silk taffeta and trimmed
with black satin ribbon raced with white
satin. Great Britain, 1870-1880. Linen, silk,
composition ivory, machine made.
dcterms:medium silk taffeta
dcterms:medium Brussels lace
dcterms:medium artificial ivory
dcterms:spatial Great Britain
materials:
<http://thesaurus.europeanafashion.eu/thesaurus/Silk>
<http://thesaurus.europeanafashion.eu/thesaurus/Artificial_ivory>
<http://thesaurus.europeanafashion.eu/thesaurus/Linen>
techniques:
<http://thesaurus.europeanafashion.eu/thesaurus/Taffeta>
<http://thesaurus.europeanafashion.eu/thesaurus/Satin>
<http://thesaurus.europeanafashion.eu/thesaurus/Brussels_lace>
<http://thesaurus.europeanafashion.eu/thesaurus/Machine_made>
colors:
<http://thesaurus.europeanafashion.eu/thesaurus/White>
<http://thesaurus.europeanafashion.eu/thesaurus/Black>
parts:
Handle, Canopy, Ribbon

30. Data Semantification process
1st step
• Retrieve text labels for all thesaurus concepts in each language
• Construct a table with a new row for each thesaurus concept
• URI
• Textual label
• Respective EDM-fp property
• The set of textual labels play the role of the vocabulary to look for in the
free text descriptions

31. Data Semantification process
2nd step
• Lookup the words that appear in the free texts that have been entered
as values for the several EDM-fp properties
• NLP techniques
• String (regular expression) matching
• For each match with the vocabulary output a row:
• Source EDM-fp metadata property
• Matched thesaurus URI
• Respective EDM-fp property for the matched URI
3rd step
• Export the enriched data

32. Data Linking
• Similar to semantification, but uses external resources.
• Some EDM-fp property values may be linked to the Linked
Open Data Cloud (e.g. DBpedia)
• Names of persons (creators, designers, photographers)
• Names of places
place:
<http://dbpedia.org/resource/Great_Britain>

33. Enriched data
The enriched data are currently exported as RDF files
• One RDF file for each item
• Replaces the original RDF/XML file generated by MINT
• Contains the enriched EDM-fp metadata
Things to check:
• Extension of the thesaurus to cover more concepts
• Verification of the enriched data by the providers
• Handling of original values (in cases of inconsistent values)
• Export to the Fashion portal.

34. Ontology developmnet
The Fashion Thesaurus is just a taxonomy
• In a formal ontology axioms interconnecting concepts can be
defined
• Rich semantics and full semantic data access
Classes and Taxonomy:
Extension of the Fashion Thesaurus
Properties:
hasPart, hasTechnique, hasMaterial, hasColor, depicts, ...
Axioms:
Definitions of common terminology concepts
Organza ⊑ SheerFabric ⊓ ∃hasTechnique.TaffetaWeave
Sateen ⊑ Textile ⊓ ∃hasTechnique.SatinWeave ⊓ ∃hasMaterial.CottonFiber
Brass ⊑ Alloy ⊓ ∃hasMaterial.Copper ⊓ ∃hasMaterial.Zinc
Definitions of useful, complex concepts
GoldenRing ⊑ Ring ⊓ ∃hasMaterial.Gold
SatinDress ⊑ Dress ⊓ ∃hasTechnique.Satin
BrownLeatherBelt ⊑ Belt ⊓ ∃hasMaterial.Leather ⊓ ∃hasColor.Brown
EveningDress ⊑ ...

35. Ontology developmnet
A mainly manual process
• Domain expert
• “Complete” description of an entire domain
Data-driven automatization
• If data are available, use them to get information about the domain.
• Very frequently occurring phrases may correspond to useful
concepts.
Ontology refinement tool
• Semi-automatizes the ontology development
• Data-driven enrichment of an existing ontology
• Process free text descriptions.
• Visually explore the actual data.
• Define new axioms for frequently occurring complex concepts

36. Ontology Refinement Tool
How the tool works (preliminary steps):
• Load an ontology.
• Map the ontology concepts to existing instances residing
in a database or a triple store.
• Declare the instance properties that should be retrieved
and the properties whose textual contents should be
retrieved and analyzed.
• E.g. for the Europeana Fashion data:
• Description (analyze)
• Materials (retrieve)
• Techniques (retrieve)
Identifier Class Description Materials Techniques
Record_1023_1687_T.93&A-1959 Dress Dress and train of embroidered silk satin,
retailed by Russell & Allen, Great Britain,
1898. Embroidered silk satin with pastes,
pearl and diamente beads, chiffon, lined with
silk, net.
silk satin,
pearls,
chiffon,
paste
embroidery

37. Ontology Refinement Tool
Ontology Concept
Tree
Instance Table
(for instances of the
Dress concept)

38. Ontology Refinement Tool
How the tool works (further steps):
• Select a concept from the Ontology Concepts Tree.
• The tools retrieves automatically from the database
the mapped instances and analyzes their
properties.
• Performs NLP processing in order to extract
frequent noun phrases and adjectives (Terms).
• The terms, along with their frequency of
appearance statistics, are displayed in the Analysis
Results Table.
• Define a sub-concept of the selected concept by using
the graphical interface of the Ontology Sub-concept
Definition Panel.
• The instances that match the new definition will be
automatically classified as instances of the new sub-concept.

39. Ontology Refinement Tool
Ontology Concept
Tree
Analysis Results
Table
⊑ Dress ⊓ ∃hasMaterial.Silk
Drag & Drop a concept from the Ontology Concepts Tree and a term from the Analysis
Results Table. Link them by the desired ontology property.

40. Ontology Refinement Tool
Ontology Sub-concept
Definition Panel
Possibly drag & drop more terms from the Analysis Results Table in order to create a
more complex sub-concept.
Ontology Concept
Tree
Analysis Results
Table
⊑ Dress ⊓ ∃hasMaterial.Silk
⊓ ∃hasTechnique.Satin

41. Ontology Refinement Tool
Ontology Concept
Tree
Ontology Sub-concept
Definition Panel
Analysis Results
Table
SilkSatinDress ⊑ Dress ⊓
∃hasMaterial.Silk ⊓
∃hasTechnique.Satin
Name the new sub-concept and add it to the Ontology Concepts Tree.

42. Work still to be done
• Completion of Fashion Ontology
• Enrichment with “useful” axioms for user queries
• E.g. Evening dark-colored dress, Non-extravagant haute
couture dress
• Integration of the Fashion Ontology with the
Fashion Portal
• Query construction interface based on the ontology
• Integration of the enriched data
• Integration of reasoning service

50. Thank you!
Follow us @eurfashion
Visit us at http://www.europeanafashion.eu
Contact me at rendina@rinascimento-digitale.it
http://www.slideshare.net/mrendina