OPAL the Oxford-Paris Alexander Project - Transnational Perspectives in a Digital Age

OPAL项目探索链接开放数据和语义网提供的可能性，以保存和提供超越现代民族国家的世界的物质遗产，目前正受到威胁。这本书的重点是亚历山大大帝的铸币，这是一个独特而彻底的变革性现象，横跨了从现代巴尔干半岛到阿富汗和印度的地区。亚历山大发行的硬币和他死后以他的名字命名的硬币如今有数百万枚，散落在世界各地。但它们也是受害者，就像小块贵重金属一样，在它们的来源国遭到肆意破坏和掠夺。OPAL项目将把牛津阿什莫尔博物馆和巴黎法国国家图书馆收藏的5000枚亚历山大硬币放在网上。它将以这样一种方式来实现这一点，即创建一个关联数据资源框架，这将使他们的两个收藏首次几乎统一起来，并将创建一个可扩展的平台，最终将其他国家的数十万枚硬币收藏起来。作为这一大规模国际传播的一部分，它还寻求为美国的一个现有项目提供数据，并与德国的合作者合作。在建立了这个平台之后，该项目还将寻求研究亚历山大铸币的历史和经济影响，并宣传其存在，并以OPAL为案例研究，调查这些举措和技术在保护超越国家的遗产方面的作用。为此，将组织一次为期两天的会议，与会者来自世界各地的博物馆、图书馆和大学。OPAL项目的一个特别优势是，它将国家图书馆的编目和关联数据优势与主要大学的研究文化结合在一起。

The OPAL project explores the possibilities offered by Linked Open Data and the Semantic Web to preserve and make available the physical heritage of a world that transcends the modern nation state and which is currently under threat. It takes as its focus the coinage of Alexander the Great, a unique and utterly transformative phenomenon across an area from the modern Balkans to Afghanistan and India. Coins issued by Alexander and in his name after his death exist today in the millions, scattered in collections across the world. But they are also the victim, as small pieces of precious metal, of wanton destruction and looting in their source countries. The OPAL project will place online a corpus of 5000 coins of Alexander in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. It will do this in such a way as to create a framework of Linked Data resources that will allow their two collections to be virtually united for the first time, and that will create an extensible platform for the eventual incorporation of hundreds of thousands more coins in collections in other countries. As part of this massive, international dissemination it also seeks to contribute data to an existing project based in the United States, and with collaborators in Germany. Having established this platform, the project will also seek both to study the historical and economical impact of the coinage of Alexander and to advertise its existence and, using OPAL as a case-study, to investigate the role of such initiatives and such technology in the preservation of a heritage that transcends the national. To this end a two day conference will be organized with participants from the world of Museums, Libraries and Universities. A particular strength of the OPAL project is that it brings together the cataloguing and Linked Data strengths of a National Library with the research culture of a major University.