Developing an ontology schema for enriching and linking digital media assets

Abstract

The abundance of digital media information coming from different sources, completely redefines approaches to media content production management and distribution for all contexts (i.e. technical, business and operational). Such content includes descriptive information (i.e. metadata) about an asset (e.g. a movie, song or game), as well as playable media (e.g. audio or video files). Metadata is organised following a variety of inconsistent structures and formats that are supplied by various content providers. Some challenges have been addressed in terms of standardising and enriching media assets metadata from a semantic perspective. Well known examples include Europeana and DBpedia. Nevertheless, due to the ongoing variability and evolution of digital contents, constant support and creation of new semantic representations are necessary. This article presents an ontology schema covering the requirements of users (content providers and content consumers) involved in the overall life cycle of a digital media asset, which has been designed and developed for a real scenario. The construction of this schema has been documented and evaluated following a methodology supported by quantitative and qualitative metrics. As part of the tangible results, the following outcomes were produced: (i) an RDF/XML schema available via Zenodo and GitHub; (ii) competence questions used for validation are published at GitHub; (iii) an exemplary ontology repository; and (iv) CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) technologies for managing semantic repositories based on such schema. These results form an active part of the framework of a European project and other ongoing research initiatives.