The Digital Library of the Arquidiócesis of Mérida (Venezuela) and its metadata model: a proposal for the dissemination of the Catholic Church’s cultural heritage in the web

Abstract

The Digital Library of the Mérida’s Archdiocese in Venezuela will incorporate for its diffusion all of the cultural heritage of the Church in this region. The proposal is developed in two stages. First, defining a data/metadata model that allows describing all of the different items and relations established among them. The objective of this stage is to guarantee the contextual conservation of the cultural heritage of the Mérida’s Archdiocese, and to propose the use metadata standards that assure the interoperability of the Digital Library and assure the access, in the future, to the information and knowledge of the cultural belongings of the Venezuelan Church that are in both digital and no digital formats. The second stage will consist in selecting and classifying the services that the Church will provide to its community, depending on particular relations (i. e. Government, private organizations, education and research), as well as the design of the graphical interface that concur with the image of the Church, the selection and adaptation of the technological infrastructure, and the preservation and diffusion of the Church’s patrimony.