The CAAPT ontologies: an ontological framework for the representation of museum-based critical cataloguing

This paper introduces CAAPT (Computational Approaches to Addressing Problematic Terminology), an ontological framework for the representation of cultural heritage terminology guidance documents and the decision-making practices involved in this domain as linked open data. The constituent ontologies—CAAPT-O, CAAPT-UC, and CAAPT-DM—are trialed through the instantiation of a knowledge graph populated by the contents of three cultural heritage terminology guidance documents and an institutional record that documents the use of guideline suggestions to make decisions regarding critcal cataloguing actions at the Victoria and Albert Museum. A linked open data vocabulary, CAAPT-V, is also introduced in order to provide a set of reference values to be used in instantiations of the ontological framework. The creation of this knowledge graph demonstrates the affordances of the ontologies and contributes to validation of the methodology developed to create them, which is further evaluated through stakeholder consultation and competency questions. Additionally, this paper proposes a novel approach to ontology engineering that is grounded in critical theory, namely concepts from feminist and queer theories, thus aligning the theoretical framework of the technical development work with that of the domain it is considering.