Making Museum Records Interoperable Over The Web 2005 CollectioOrg The CollectioOrg system is an Open Framework for Interconnectivity of Museum Knowledge Domains, defining a XML hyperdocument scheme for museum records with a mechanism of hyper-linking via URNs for interconnectivity between museums and external providers using a webservice in REST. hyperdocuments records interoperability webserviceopen source XML

The CollectioOrg system is an Open Framework for Interconnectivity of Museum Knowledge Domains, defining a XML hyperdocument scheme for museum records with a mechanism of hyper-linking via URNs for interconnectivity between museums and external providers using a webservice in REST. Museums want to digitize their museum records in a way, that they can link them to other additional documentation in the form of catalogs, registers, reports, archival documents etc. which often reside in external domains. And libraries wish to be able to connect their documentation with the museum items. Therefore a modular record schema has been developed, which allows to annotate references to other resources, be these documents or records. All resources are stored in database repositories, and the actual links are established only on the request of the resource, including redirections to external repositories or larger aggregations. The whole system is built as web service. This offers a series of advantages, as it allows, for example, to easily add new repositories with more resources. Additionally, external service providers can use the web service for the integration of their own products. To allow free participation, only open standards, protocols and technologies defined by the W3C are used.

A reference system is currently being built using mostly open/free software, with financing from the European Union's Culture 2000 program. The partners are the Capitoline Museums (Rome, Italy; Project leader), bringing into the project their collection of finest classical antiquitiesthe Hertziana Library (Rome, Italy; Partner), adding their collection of manuscript illustration, and the Theological University Library Maribor (Maribor, Slovenia; Partner), adding their collection of smaller antiquities