Volume 28, Issue 2

Background. Multimedia franchises may have a single origin, but over time develop into a network of related creative works in various media formats such as film, novels, animation, and video games. A single entity to represent a whole franchise is often utilized on the Web, but the ability for existing bibliographic models to represent this entity, which we refer to as the Superwork, is unclear.
Objective. This research sought to determine whether entities representing multimedia franchises and the relationships they contain can be accurately portrayed using current models and, if not, how a new entity can be differentiated from the entities in the existing models. It also examines the role of existing franchise-level concepts on the Web and their ability to define properties and boundaries.
Methods. We contrasted the franchise-level concept against official documentation and past research into similar entities (i.e. FRBR Work and FRBR_oo Complex Work). A mapping and analysis of franchise articles on Wikipedia was performed to identify user-created boundaries and relationships between related instances.
Results. The analysis revealed that the concept of a singular entity for a multimedia franchise was not the intended use for existing bibliographic entities, and that users will create such entities to collocate resources belonging to a single franchise. The Wikipedia mapping showed how and where users established relationships between works and media types, and thus what entities the Superwork should be directly connected to.
Contribution. This study builds upon past bibliographic family and transmedia research, and suggests that more effort should be put towards examining existing collocation activities of users.

Background. There are many digital archives in cultural domains, but there is no well-established metadata model which covers both tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Neither is there a well-established metadata model applicable to building digital archives by aggregating existing cultural heritage information.
Objectives. The objective of this study is to develop a metadata model for digital archives of diverse cultural resources and dispersed communities, where metadata aggregation from different sources is required. This paper presents a model called Cultural Heritage in Digital Environment (CHDE) for organizing various digital CHI organized as a digital archive.
Methods. The CHDE model is created as a generalized metadata model. It clearly distinguishes an intangible cultural heritage entity and its instantiation to model digital archives for intangible cultural heritage like those for tangible cultural heritage. The CHDE model is defined using the One-to-One Principle of metadata, and is used to clearly identify the relationships between metadata and the entities described by the metadata. Finally, this paper shows the application of the CHDE with use cases of cultural heritage objects.
Results. CHDE enables the organization of digital cultural heritage information related to tangible and intangible cultural heritage. It identifies the physical and digital information environment of a cultural heritage, and further supports the modeling of digital archives built by aggregating cultural heritage information on the Web.
Contribution.This novel approach will benefit memory institutions which have insufficient resources to create digital resources such as those in South and Southeast Asia. Also, intangible cultural heritage organization through instantiation is a useful approach.