Preserving contextual information in cultural heritage metadata through multidimensional knowledge graphs

Abstract

Using Knowledge Graphs (KGs) to describe Cultural Heritage Objects (CHOs) supports semantic richness and interoperability. However, standard KGs fail to capture the context-dependent validity of statements. This limitation is critical for cultural heritage metadata, which must often accommodate evolving or conflicting viewpoints, such as colonial versus post-colonial perspectives or shifting scientific consensus. While current knowledge representation methods address basic contextualization via provenance, qualifiers or reification, they lack a unified framework to simultaneously model and query data across multiple social, cultural, and political dimensions. To bridge this gap, we introduce the conceptual foundations of Multi-dimensional Knowledge Graphs (MKGs) and discuss how they preserve complex, multi-layered contexts in CHO metadata.