Assessment and Comparison of Metadata Schemas for Architectural Heritage

Conservation, protection and study of Architectural Heritage (AH) are based on the complete knowledge and documentation of its complex morphology, its architectonic components and all events related to the building. A key issue for a full recording of a monument is related to the cataloguing process, which is the action of registration, description and classification of Cultural Heritage (CH) assets. Many Cultural Institutions and National Bodies have been working towards the development of standards to make documentation uniform, retrieve information about Cultural Heritage, promote data sharing, improve content management and reduce redundant efforts. To regulate the cataloguing activity, rules, guidelines and indications were defined. In particular, thesauri were adopted to provide, with a controlled vocabulary, structure and guidelines for standardization of terms, avoiding ambiguity and subjectivity of documentation and the loss of important information. Some of these data standards have been defined within a national framework, such as the ICCD schema (Italy)or the MIDAS standard (England); others aim at guaranteeing data interoperability, such as, among others, LIDO and the CARARE schema. In this paper we carry out an assessment and comparison of the above mentioned schemas and standards, along with the schema adopted by l'Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel (France). After an analysis of the formal description of the single metadata schemas, we carried out the mapping of the different schemas to each other. The analysis is performed taking into consideration the RecorDim guidelines for documenting CH places. As a result, the mappings described in the paper enable the interoperability of data stored according to different metadata schemas. Furthermore the paper highlights properties, equivalencies and shortcomings of the schemas, confirming the idea that a more comprehensive documentation standard for Architectural Heritage is needed.