Ooops….after the iSchools 2009 conference, I updated a page on my website that contained my poster “Modelling CDWA Lite as an OWL-DL Ontology” but never posted anything here at Inherent Vice.  You can also download the full poster from the IDEALS repository.

I’ve also just posted the beta version of the OWL file on my website as well. I do this with some trepidation, since this is probably the first full OWL model that I’ve created from top to bottom. As I note in the paper, the current structure of the CDWA Lite XML schema forces ontology developers to make some choices about how certain parts of the schema are modelled in an ontology.

This was a useful learning exercise, but I’m not sure if I will take this particular OWL model forward. I had intentionally avoided using the CIDOC-CRM and the improvements suggested by the MuseumDAT project. CDWA and CDWA Lite have enough of a toehold here in the United States and had impacted other influential standards such as the VRACore and Cataloging Cultural Objects. I felt that it deserved a fair shake to stand on its own. But some of the problems I encountered in trying to create an OWL model suggest that modeling CDWA using CRM would be a worthwhile next step.

If you’re working on a similar project I would be interested in hearing from you and would appreciate any comments or feedback on the ontology itself.