Enriching Digital Cultural Heritage Collections via Annotations: The CULTURA approach

This paper introduces the main characteristics of the CULTURA project and of the IPSA collection, which constitutes one relevant use case presently in use in the CULTURA environment. We describe the innovative annotation features of the CULTURA portal for digital humanities; these features are aimed at improving the interaction of users with digital cultural heritage (CH) content. The annotation functions consist of two modules: the FAST annotation service as back-end and the CAT Web front-end integrated in the CULTURA portal. The annotation service also adds a semantic layer over the managed collections enhancing discoverability and interoperability capabilities of cultural heritage resources. A user-based evaluation of the environment has been carried out.