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Cultural and heritage preserving organisations such as museums are rapidly digitising their collections, and at the same time migrating digitised collections to the Web. Through the Web, these institutions can reach large masses of people, with intentions varying from increasing visibility (and hence visitors) to acquiring user-generated content.

The physical artefacts preserved by the institutions have some basic information such as title, dimensions, information about materials and techniques used to create the artefact etc.. This list of information about the artefacts vary in their completeness and various institutions gather and store different aspects of information which they deem relevant to physically store and retrieve the artefacts in their collection. The digitisation process involves photographing the artefacts and storing their relevant information in an online system of the cultural heritage institutions. Digitisations has also helped manage the limitations of physical space, conservation, location and opening hours that previously affected access to collections [85]. Cultural institutions use different models such as the Digital Content Life Cycle Model 1 which encapsulates the main activities carried out by cultural heritage organisations, from selecting to creating, managing, discovering, using and reusing (including licensing) as well as preservation. In order to facilitate archiving and retrieval operations on the Web, collections must be described by high-quality information that cover physical properties (eg dimensions, material), provenance (eg creator, previous owners) and subject matter (eg what is represented) of the artworks. The process is called …