Building a semantic network in the database of the National Museum and Institute of Theatre History

Abstract

One of the most important digital developments in Hungarian museums was the creation of a new portal for the Hungarian Theatre Museum and Institute (OSZMI – PIM), within the research project entitled “Preservation of the memories of Hungarian theatres”. The main purpose of the project was to publish the collections of the museum, with a wide range of digital items on theatre history, which are of interest for a wide audience. The new portal was designed to provide multi-faceted search and browsing possibilities for experts and the public. The application is based on an integrated collection management system. The implementation of the Qulto Integrated Collection Management System in the theatre museum was a milestone of the project. This software has been used for more than ten years in the Petőfi Literary Museum (PIM), the institution of which OSZMI has been part since 2017. The separate databases of digital inventories of the theatre museum had to be migrated and integrated into a single Huntéka database. During the work, through the conversion, data cleaning and data integration a semantic network of theatre history information was created from the records in the databases. The paper shows the steps of the work and the evolution of the system plan. The integration resulted in a so called “hybrid system”, having attributes of both digital library catalogues and museum inventories. The data structure is prepared for being enriched from external sources and for sending information to other databases, even to the National Namespace.