Invitation and preliminary agenda for the upcoming 10th meeting of the CIDOC Special Interest Group (SIG) and ISO/TC46/SC4/WG9 in Nuremberg, Germany.

Interested participants please contact Dr. Siegfried Krause, IT- Department of GNM,
Tel.: ++49(+911)1331-162
Fax: ++49(+911)1331-193

Fees: 0.00€ Participants: facilities are restricted to 50 Persons Registration: Please register by email until 25th of November 2004. Language: Englisch Main Topic: Do Ontologies have an Influence on Scholarly Thinking in Cultural Sciences Sub Topic: Information Integration and Information Mapping
Contributions:	Presentations could be proposed until 20th of November. 30 minutes time for presentations. Presentations will be published on the CIDOC-CRM Website.

Introduction

Most attempts to explain the CIDOC-CRM start with the statement: 'The CIDOC - CRM is an 'ontology'. Marking the CIDOC-CRM as an 'ontology' emphasizes the different nature between an object oriented ontology like the CIDOC-CRM and other information modeling techniques like ER-modeling. But what are expressions of this different nature?

One constantly cited argument for the use of the CIDOC-CRM states that the CIDOC-CRM simplifies the understanding between information technology experts and their counterparts within the different cultural domains by providing a "common language". If this is true then the CIDOC-CRM like other ontologies could be seen not only as a "common language" tool. Ontologies could play the role of polydisciplinary scholarly mediators between and within disciplines by connecting currently separated concepts of methodological structures of 'knowledge'. Clear indications in this direction were given e.g. in the 'typological discussion' in the Monterey SIG meeting 2002 between the archaeological and biological classification processes, which were identified as being partly the same 'stuff'. Could ontologies really play the role of scientific glue?
Even though the CIDOC-CRM is currently seen as a tool for documentation and information specialists, it is not difficult to foresee that ontologies as knowledge representation tools will have a strong impact on methodological questions and research behavior for cultural disciplines like archaeology, history, art history etc.

Does this establish the need for new disciplines like Cultural or Museum Informatics? Or do the old traditional cultural disciplines have to integrate new concepts, new thinking in their methodological repertoire?

The CRM Workshop in Nuremberg held from the 7th December - 10th of December will offer a place for discussing questions and ideas in this direction. Contributions are welcome in form of reports from projects or practical experiences and/or in discussing theoretical research issues from various areas like philosophy, documentation, cultural and natural history and information sciences.

This workshop presents an open platform for a multidisciplinary exchange of new or unexpected ideas from and for people with various interests in the stimulating atmosphere of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.