The CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model

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CRM as a MWS application

CIDOC is the Documentation Committee of the International Council of Museums. The Conceptual Reference Model is an abstract framework which describes the entities of relevance to museums. It is currently being proposed as a potential ISO Standard. I have re-cast the CRM into Topic Map format, and intend in the longer term to make it available as a searchable XML database.

For now there is a "CRM Topic Browser". This is a MODES Web Server application, which lets you search for topics by their Base Name, ID, Role or Superclass. As well as the CRM, I have stored three low-level Topic Maps (Core concepts; Languages; Countries) as separate databases. The application searches all four databases, and displays topics which match your search criteria. It displays found topics one at a time, and allows you to hyperlink to related topics, even if they are in another database. The display also includes links to sub-topics, which are not present in the source XML for the topic - they are "discovered" via the Superclass index and retrieved using XSLT's document() function.

I am interested in using these types of resource as the basis for experiments in the automatic mapping of search terms, etc., via persistent Web-based XML authorities such as this one.