Assessing the Value of Semantic Annotation Services for 3D Museum Artefacts

Abstract

This paper describes the 3DSA (3D Semantic Annotation) system developed at the University of Queensland that enables users to attach tags/annotations to points, surface regions or segments of 3D digital artefacts. The 3DSA system is based on a common interoperable annotation model (the Open Annotation Collaboration (OAC) model) and uses ontology-based tags to support further semantic annotation and reasoning across digital heritage collections. By using this common model, we enable annotations to be re-used, migrated and shared - across annotation clients and across different 3D and 2.5D digital representations of a single object. Such flexibility, extensibility and interoperability are essential if cultural institutions are to interact with wide audiences that comprise users with different IT skills, client capabilities and bandwidths. This paper describes the design and functionality of the 3DSA system and evaluates it in the context of capturing community-generated tags and annotations for cultural heritage artefacts in the custody of the UQ Anthropology Museum.