Music is everywhere. Files of recorded music are spread all over the web, yet despite the fact that this knowledge is described in detail in the information systems of several cultural and media institutions around the world, nothing is harder today than to find the history of a musical piece, its composer, cultural origins, lyricists and influences, covers and interpretations…
Initiated in late 2014, DOREMUS is a research project based on the semantic web technologies, aiming to develop tools and methods to describe, publish, connect and contextualize music catalogues on the web of data. Its primary objective is to provide common knowledge models and shared multilingual controlled vocabularies.
The data modelling Working Group relies on the cataloguing expertise of three major cultural institutions: Radio France, BnF (French national Library), and Philharmonie de Paris.
FRBRoo was used as a starting point, for its flexibility and its fine description of the Work and Event concepts. The model was extended with classes and properties specific to musical data, and a set of shared multilingual vocabularies.
The result shall enable a fine description of musical works in the fields of traditional and classical music: related musical or creation events, relations to authors, cultural background, interpretations, social functions, etc.