Legacy Projects and Their Preservation

Management: Martin Raspe, Alexander Drummer

Many former projects developed under the auspices of the former directors of the Institute have now been discontinued as research endeavors. While the content of the databases is still valuable for current research and should remain accessible, the software becomes more and more obsolete. Keeping the systems available online constitutes a growing security risk. The migration of the software and/or the archiving of the data is therefore of major importance. Concepts and strategies for preserving these legacy projects are currently and constantly being explored.

ZUCCARO has served as the BHMPI's information system on Italian art and cultural history. Developed since 2005, it is based on innovative concepts like the semantic web and an event-oriented data model. Relationships are time-based and model the historical event as the basic building block of any history-oriented research.

The ZUCCARO concept generalizes (and simplifies in practical respects) the guiding principles of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (the ISO standard for documenting cultural heritage), but it departs from the CIDOC’s artefact-centric view. Other research topics common in Art History, such as social groups, offices, iconography, gestures, techniques, are equally supported. The ZUCCARO data model has proven itself extremely versatile and superior to CIDOC over the years.

ZUCCARO was initially created to store data for two of the Institute's major research projects, especially for the projects “ArsRoma” (directed by former director Sybille Ebert-Schifferer) and “Lineamenta” (directed by former director Elisabeth Kieven). In addition, it contains all the data of the CIPRO maps project (see above), large holdings of illustrations from the digitized rare books the BHMPI’s Library, a considerable amount of information about foreign artists in Rome in the early 19th century and connected to the Schede Noack archive, as well as other data for numerous other subject areas.

The larger goal was to make ZUCCARO the backbone of the digital infrastructure of the BHMPI that would provide unified access to the online library catalog (OPAC), the digital photo collection and its database, and the digitized rare books.

ZUCCARO is currently implemented as a complex Filemaker database, begun by Georg Schelbert in 2005 and enhanced by a web interface in 2008 by Martin Raspe. The current structure was initially intended as a preliminary tool to quickly acquire data while the general concept was being developed. However, the efforts needed to replace the prototype were not feasible while the research projects were active. ZUCCARO suffers from increasing performance and maintenance problems due to software limitations. The prospect of migrating it into the {KG}² system is being implemented on a best-effort basis by the DH Lab personnel, who confront the challenge arising out of the fact that the ZUCCARO content is semantically richer than the core CIDOC model and cannot be simplified without losing core qualities.

Currently, efforts are being made to export and archive the data in an understandable, future-proof format (JSON). One of the avenues being explored is for the project to be possibly revived at the ZI in Munich under Schelbert’s direction.

Other digital projects that are either complete or discontinued will be relocated into so-called Docker containers. In this way, content and software are “frozen” and easily archived. All the same, they remain safely accessible in future IT systems of the BHMPI. These projects include:

The original Digital Rare Books collection and its viewer (so far the scans and the metadata are not incorporated into the current environment)
Schede Noack – A digitized archive of shorthand notes on foreign artists in Rome, mainly concerning the 19th century
Archivio Diagnostico/Corpus Caravaggesco – a database of technical restoration data and analytic images concerning ca. 110 paintings of the period of Caravaggio, assembled by the restoration company “emmeBi”
Several smaller databases on specific topics, as the “Facades of Siena”, the “Galleries of European Courtly Residences”, “Historical Spaces in Flavio Biondo’s Italia illustrata”, and others