Integration of Cultural Heritage Collections

Theoretical Foundations for Interoperability

Abstract

This study investigates the theoretical foundations, challenges, and trends of integrating digital collections of cultural heritage, with an emphasis on the conceptual and technological bases that underpin interoperability among libraries, archives, and museums. Starting from the recognition of documentary diversity and the limitations imposed by so-called “institutional silos,” the research offers a critical reflection on the models, standards, and practices that have been adopted internationally, seeking insights for the development of policies and solutions suited to the Brazilian context.

The study is grounded in a narrative literature review combined with content analysis of national and international academic texts and technical documents published between 2009 and 2024. The corpus selection was based on theoretical relevance, thematic diversity, and institutional recognition, prioritizing sources such as indexed journal articles, key reports (Europeana, DPLA, IFLA, WorldFAIR), and case studies of integration in different realities. Content analysis, based on Bardin (2011), was conducted in three stages: preliminary analysis of the material, thematic coding of key concepts (data silos, metadata, interoperability, FAIR, Linked Data, EDM, CIDOC CRM, RDF, etc.), and categorization of findings into analytical axes, enabling a critical interpretation of the main trends and challenges.

The results first reveal consensus in the literature regarding the historical barriers to integrating cultural heritage collections, attributed to institutional fragmentation, the plurality of descriptive standards, and the absence of unified guidelines. This scenario is particularly acute in Brazil, where isolated experiences and locally restricted initiatives prevail, hindering scalability and the articulation of robust national policies. Traditional models of metadata publication—based on standards such as MARC21, Dublin Core, EAD, MODS, and protocols like OAI-PMH—were essential for the initial advances in digitization and data sharing but have become insufficient in the face of contemporary demands for cross-repository discovery, intelligent reuse, and semantic enrichment of collections.

The analysis demonstrates that overcoming “institutional silos” requires a paradigm shift, centered on adopting models and infrastructures compatible with the Semantic Web and Linked Data principles. International initiatives such as Europeana, the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), the Sampo portals (Finland), and models like EDM (Europeana Data Model), CIDOC CRM, BIBFRAME, and IFLA LRM exemplify the emergence of digital ecosystems that combine hybrid metadata schemes with knowledge graphs, fostering resource interlinking, the explicit articulation of semantic relationships, and the integration of heterogeneous sources. The use of sector-specific ontologies, controlled vocabularies, persistent identifiers (URIs), and reconciliation mechanisms has proven central to enabling semantic interoperability, distributed curation, and collaborative data enrichment in the cultural heritage domain.

Another relevant finding concerns the convergence around the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) in the formulation of interoperability policies and data management for cultural heritage. The literature indicates that implementing such guidelines, together with active participation from professional communities and distributed governance, is fundamental for the sustainability, reliability, and social impact of digital memory infrastructures. Although Brazil has notable initiatives such as BBM Digital, Tainacan, and BNDigital, it still lacks consolidated national policies, sustained investment in staff training, and interinstitutional consensus regarding models and standards to be adopted.

The analysis further highlights that digitization initiatives alone are insufficient if not accompanied by robust processes of curation, quality assessment, interoperability, and community participation. Investment in human capital policies, ongoing training for multidisciplinary teams, and the creation of institutional collaboration networks emerge as strategic elements to overcome fragmentation and strengthen integration processes. Moreover, integrating digital cultural heritage collections enhances significant social and educational impacts: by guaranteeing public and democratic access to information, it stimulates innovative teaching, research, and heritage education practices, strengthens citizenship, broadens opportunities for critical appropriation of collective memory, and contributes to informational justice and the recognition of multiple cultural identities. Overcoming institutional silos thus constitutes a fundamental step toward the consolidation of open, collaborative, and sustainable digital ecosystems. The convergence observed in the literature and international experiences indicates that the combination of hybrid metadata schemes with Linked Data technologies, together with the adoption of FAIR principles and persistent identifiers, offers concrete pathways for the development of national interoperability policies and innovation in the heritage field.

Finally, it is emphasized that the feasibility of adapting international models to the Brazilian context depends less on the mere importation of technological solutions and more on the capacity to foster innovation ecosystems anchored in professional protagonism, the strengthening of cooperation networks, and the construction of open, inclusive, and collaborative institutional policies. The future of integrating digital cultural heritage collections necessarily depends on recognizing the strategic value of human capital and articulating consensus around principles of openness, distributed governance, and social responsibility, capable of promoting a more connected, democratic, and sustainable collective memory. As an agenda for future research, empirical studies and applied prototyping are recommended, involving Brazilian and Latin American institutions, to assess the impacts, barriers, and opportunities of different integration arrangements based on knowledge graphs, Linked Data, and FAIR principles.