Demystifying the CIDOC CRM: a lightweight introduction

Erica Scarpa

«Archeologia e Calcolatori» 2025, 36.1, 481-492; doi: 10.19282/ac.36.1.2025.27

Abstract

This paper provides a concise overview of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC CRM). The CIDOC CRM is a formal ontology initially developed for museums and cultural institutions to describe and organize their data. It serves as the ISO standard for representing museum and cultural heritage knowledge. The paper outlines the model’s core principles, advantages, challenges, and implications for its use, touching upon the CIDOC CRM’s relationship with the Semantic Web and challenges in implementing it with technologies like RDFS and OWL. It also highlights challenges in querying CIDOC-based knowledge graphs and integrating pre-existing heterogeneous data.

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