Metadata for the Construction of Thematic Collections: the “Art by Female Artists” Collection

Abstract

Objective: The Europeana Digital Library was developed by the countries of the European Union with the aim of providing free online access to cultural heritage from institutions such as museums, libraries, and archives. To this end, Europeana developed the Europeana Data Model (EDM) — an interoperable model for collecting, connecting, and enriching metadata of cultural heritage — and adopted Linked Data practices in its catalog, ensuring interoperability.To discuss the importance of metadata in assisting the construction and curation of thematic collections.

Method: This is a bibliographic review aimed at understanding the concepts of data, metadata, Linked data, and Linked open data, as well as the technical and qualitative documentations of Europeana, with the goal of exploring and identifying the relationship between these themes within a collection of artworks by female artists.

Results: In general, the metadata from the institutions are reused by Europeana.

Conclusions: However, reusing them is not always straightforward, as creating interoperable metadata with quality and consistency is a task that requires investment, specialization, and appropriate tools. Moreover, the absence of gender metadata hinders the creation and curation of special collections, such as grouping artworks by female artists as in the case presented, because the absence of these metadata prevents the separation of artists by gender, thereby reducing diversity in collections in cultural institutions.