Bio

Sven Lieber works as data manager at The Royal Library of Belgium (KBR), where he supports the improvement of data quality, mainly by using computational methods and Linked Data. Sven is currently involved in the research infrastructure project MetaBelgica and was involved in the research project BELTRANS. For both projects, Sven helped to make data available according to the FAIR principles. He studied Computer Science at the University of Freiburg in Germany and pursued a PhD related to Knowledge Graphs at the University of Ghent in Belgium, where he was also involved in several interdisciplinary research projects at the IDLab research group

Abstract

Federal Scientific Institutes (FSIs) such as the Royal Library of Belgium inventorise, publish and query their collections in a database or online catalogue with the help of entities, such as names or places. This kind of data is important for various reasons, but every FSI is creating and maintaining their own entities in their own systems using different programs and data standards. This is a problem as it results in duplicate efforts and data quality problems. Additionally, this complicates efficient data exchange in a national or international setting due to different standards and tools.

In this presentation, the partners of the MetaBelgica consortium introduce themselves and present both the current situation and solutions applied in the project. Concretely the presentation will focus on the data integration of more than 1 million entities, the setup of a Wikibase infrastructure and establishment of a shared data governance.

Bio

Annerose Tartler-Ostrizek is Data Steward for the Arts and Humanities Cluster of the Federal Open Science Cloud Belgium (FedOSC), where she works with federal scientific institutions to gain insight into their data management practices, provide training and guidance in research data management, and contribute to community building around Open Science knowledge, tools and services. She has a background in digital humanities and historical musicology, with a focus on cultural transfer and collection studies, and previously worked as a Data Librarian at the Austrian National Library.

Abstract

Across the GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) Federal Scientific Institutions (FSIs), metadata are used to describe and preserve collections, while enabling discovery, interpretation, and reuse. Yet metadata practices often remain fragmented across standards, vocabularies, repositories, and institutional workflows. As research is increasingly relying on cross-disciplinary approaches, digital humanities methods and AI-driven analyses, these silos become major barriers to the reuse of heritage (meta)data.

This presentation aims to explore how the Belgian Federal Open Science Cloud (FedOSC) project addresses these challenges by advancing metadata interoperability within the FSIs. FedOSC promotes Open Science and FAIR data practices, by developing the infrastructures, policies, services and skills needed to support (meta)data exchange and reuse.

As FedOSC nears completion, now is the time to share FedOSC’s three-pillars interoperability strategy: technical interoperability (PIDs, metadata catalogue, repository development, and FAIR assessment activities), semantic interoperability (metadata standards, DCAT-AO alignment, and cross-domain collaborations), and organisational interoperability (governance, policy development, training and community building).

Through ongoing engagement with FSIs, FedOSC maps datasets, metadata practices, and FAIR maturity, identifying opportunities for a more aligned metadata ecosystem.

By reflecting on lessons learned from the GLAM community, this presentation argues that interoperability does not require uniformity but rather depends on creating the conditions that allows diverse metadata communities to connect while preserving the richness and specificity of the FSIs collections.

Bio

Originally trained as a historian, Barbara Fischer is now an art manager committed to connecting people and institutions to strengthen the impact of arts, culture, and heritage. Since 2018, she has worked at the Agency for Standardization (AfS) at the German National Library, where she leads communication and cooperation around the Integrated Authority File (GND). Her work focuses on fostering collaboration and openness in digital transformation, improving metadata quality through FAIR data and Authority Control, and advancing information retrieval and linked open data.

Abstract

The Integrated Authority File (GND) comprises authority data on persons, corporate bodies, geographic entities, subject terms, works, and conferences. It is collaboratively created and maintained by more than 1,000 institutions across the German-speaking region. Authority data enable the reliable identification of entities and, for example, ensure the disambiguation of entities with identical names. As a controlled vocabulary, the GND provides extensive opportunities for linking diverse information resources, making it particularly relevant to archives, museums, cultural and research institutions, research projects, and public administrations. The GND currently contains ten million records.

This presentation examines the concrete services and approaches through which the GND Cooperative supports the integration of diverse communities from research, culture, and public administration into the GND network. Integrating these sectors also enables their knowledge and expertise to become part of the GND. The presentation briefly introduces approaches at four levels: communication, governance, standards and rules development, and technology. By integrating these perspectives, the GND becomes richer and more diverse, evolving across sectors into a widely used tool for knowledge graph construction in the context of digital transformation and the Semantic Web. Its growing significance also enhances its potential in generative AI applications, particularly for ensuring accurate and domain-specific responses. This, in turn, highlights the systemic importance of reliable knowledge organization for safeguarding an open and democratic knowledge society.

Bio

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Bio

Enno Meijes is Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the Netwerk Digitaal Erfgoed (NDE) programme and advisor at the research department at the KB, national library of the Netherlands. In the NDE-program he is responsible for the development of the digital infrastructure for the discovery of digital heritage information within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Interoperability standards and distributed web technologies are core elements for this work. He has a background in Electrical Engineering and Business Informatics and has been working on infrastructures for the cultural heritage and library domain for the past twenty five years.

Abstract

In 2015 the cultural heritage sector in the Netherlands together with the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science formulated the National Digital Heritage Strategy with the goal to increase the social value of cultral heritage information by making their collections more visible, usable and sustainable. The Netwerk Digitaal Erfgoed (NDE) programme was installed for realizing the goals of the National Strategy. The core of the NDE-programme is about standardization and interoperability. Guided by an overarching architecture model (DERA), the NDE programme works on creating a decentralized network infrastructure for the exchange and reuse of digital heritage information. In the past ten years NDE has been working with vendors of collection information systems to create support for working with persistent identifiers, publishing linked data, the use controlled vocabularies and the support of IIIF APIs. Technology is only one part of the challenge for creating an networked ecosystem for sharing and using digital heritage information. Provincial heritage organisations and larger institutions play an important role for supporting the implementation process. As a part of this process digital heritage coaches and data cleaners are employed, data workshops installed and best practices and tutorials are developed to guide cultural heritage professionals and voluntary groups to work with digital heritage.

In my presentation I will give a brief overview of the results and the lessons learned over the past ten years of working on standardizing technology, content and processes within the digital heritage domain in the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Bio

Nastasia Vanderperren is an Expertise Officer at meemoo, Flemish Institute for Archives. She advises GLAM institutions on cultural heritage processes, with a focus on digital preservation, IIIF, and obsolete technologies. As part of the Visual Name Authority project, she was closely involved in, amongst other things, the preparation and import of metadata and photographs, the development
of the minimum viable product, and the testing and integration of it.

Abstract

Descriptive metadata is essential for making digital cultural heritage discoverable, yet manual identification of relevant people in photo, video, and film archives remains labour-intensive and costly. Existing international authorities like Wikidata and VIAF often lack regional coverage, while local institutional lists remain trapped in silos.

To resolve this, meemoo, Flemish Institute for Archives, and 24 partner organisations developed the Visual Name Authority (VNA), an overarching reference hub designed to unify person identification. VNA aggregates biographical data, external links, and facial reference crops extracted from partner collections. Built on open-source Wikibase software, it helps facial recognition and automated metadata enrichment for OCR-processed publications through named entity linking.

Addressing privacy and copyright sensitivities, VNA operates within a strict legal and ethical framework. Sensitive metadata and facial sets are shared exclusively within a secure
partner environment, whereas public figure metadata is published as linked open data with persistent URIs.

Having concluded its third phase, the project delivered a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) managed by meemoo for seamless integration into the upcoming Flemish Term Network.
This presentation outlines VNA’s collaborative methodology, technical architecture, and community governance. It shares practical lessons on balancing privacy with open data ambitions, aligning conflicting datasets across independent institutions, and building sustainable cooperative infrastructure for AI in the cultural heritage sector.

Bio

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Bio

Holding a Master’s degree in Ancient Languages and Literatures, Luc Wanlin has been working for the Archives et Musée de la Littérature (AML) for thirty years. Over the past three decades, he has specialized in the design and technical development of custom IT tools, databases, and digital solutions specifically tailored to user needs and cultural heritage management. His work bridges humanities and technology, transforming complex domain requirements into user-centered digital applications — such as the Scapin performing arts database and a TEI-based manuscript digital publishing pipeline — to process, document, and share literary and performing arts collections.

Abstract

Launched in 2018 at the heart of Belgium’s federal landscape by the AML, SCAPIN was specifically developed for the French-Speaking Community (Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles – FWB) as a shared performing arts platform to overcome major administrative and domain-based divides caused by decentralized cultural policies and the lack of a standardized sector data model. Operating in this complex ecosystem, the platform bridges the gap between institutions whose data collection mandates are often restricted to specific artistic genres or territories, resulting in highly heterogeneous formats, varying granularities, and unnecessary data redundancy.

To achieve seamless integration across the FWB’s cultural ecosystem and beyond, SCAPIN combines an institutional strategy based on cross-sector networking and support with a dedicated technical architecture. At its core, SCAPIN addresses the absence of standard domain ontologies by relying on custom-designed APIs and flexible, interoperable data models. These tools enable smooth data exchange and semantic interlinking among all participating partners, establishing a unified data framework for the performing arts.

Today, this ecosystem faces an emerging digital challenge: the rise of “zero-click” search, where AI-driven overviews answer user queries directly on search engines. While this trend reduces direct website traffic, Scapin’s structured APIs and interoperable architecture ensure that performing arts memory fulfills its core preservation mission. By serving as an authoritative, machine-readable repository, Scapin guarantees that performing arts data remains accurately represented while securing its long-term, sustainable accessibility across evolving digital landscapes.

Bio

Edurne Kugeler grew up in Luxembourg and studied Comparative Literature and Global
History at the University of Vienna. In 2019 she joined the Digitization, Archive and Library
Department at the National Museum in Luxembourg which she leads since September 2023.

Abstract

When the Luxembourg Ministry of Culture’s launched its initiative to advance digitization
within the Cultural Heritage Institutions under its auspices, a competency network was
established to identify collective challenges and solutions. A primary focus emerged: the
need for shared authority data to enhance interoperability and validation. In response, the
LUDAP was developed collaboratively by network members, leveraging semantic web
technologies (e.g., RDF) and conceptual models (e.g., CIDOC-CRM) to ensure data validity
and shareability. Beyond its technical function, LUDAP serves as a laboratory for institutional capacity-building, fostering familiarity with emerging standards while cultivating a cross-
institutional community of digitization specialists. This paper presents the LUDAP’s dual role as both a technical infrastructure and a catalytic space for professional exchange, highlighting its broader impact on collaborative practices in cultural heritage digitization.