A knowledge model for supporting digital exploration of historical industrial archives

Business archives are of utmost importance for the cultural development of a country and represent valued sources for historical research; however, their preservation and access remain a challenge to be faced. The archive content description has to take into account that its understanding might be difficult for users with different cultural background and skill levels. The paper proposes a replicable methodology for the definition of a knowledge model aimed at providing a common understanding of the content of historical industrial archives for a diverse user community. The knowledge model has been formalized in ontology to support tools for data searching.