The Special Interest Group (SIG) of CIDOC CRM is an open, international community responsible for the development, maintenance, and governance of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC CRM), operating under the aegis of ICOM Documentation, a committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM). The SIG brings together institutions and experts engaged in research, documentation, and information integration related to the human past. Through an open, voluntary, and collaborative process, its members contribute to the ongoing development of the ISO standard CIDOC CRM model and its extensions as well as the development of the methods to build, apply and learn semantic modelling methods for cultural heritage information integration using CIDOC CRM and harmonized extensions.
Membership in the SIG is granted on an institutional basis and is open to both public and private organizations involved in the research, documentation, and study of the human past who also have an interest or expertise in the CIDOC CRM, knowledge engineering and/or semantic web-technologies. Institutions becoming members of the SIG engage in this activity in a voluntary capacity and are expected to participate in a non-commercial capacity, contributing to the development of the standard for the greater good of the cultural heritage community.
The SIG warmly invites organizations and institutions worldwide that wish to contribute to the continued development, application and pedagogical training in CIDOC CRM and its extensions. Members are encouraged to participate in a forum for the exchange of knowledge and experience among initiatives that use (or plan to use) the model, and to support an open, international, and community-driven standards process.
Institutions granted membership will appear on the list of member institutions on the CIDOC CRM site. Members are expected to participate in the community according to their means. Participation comes in two chief forms: active attendance in the twice annual CRM SIG meetings and development of the standard through participation in the issues list of the group. Our twice annual meeting is consistently held in a hybrid mode to enable the widest attendance possible. Members are of course welcome to join the meeting in person where time and budget allows. Membership is considered to be in good standing as long as member institutions are involved to some degree in the above activities.
Membership rolls are reviewed on a three year rolling basis and institutions that have become inactive in the group’s work are contacted to confirm their continued engagement or not. Members who are no longer active for one reason or another are moved from the active list of members to the past members list on the SIG website.
How to Apply
Applications for institutional membership require a formal letter of intent from an authorized representative of the applicant institution. The letter should confirm the institution’s wish to join the SIG and designate an official representative. It may also include a brief overview of the institution’s main activities and areas of engagement (such as research, conservation, education, documentation, archiving, or related initiatives), as well as references to any projects relevant to the scope of the SIG. In addition, the letter may outline the expertise the institution would bring to the group and indicate whether additional members are expected to participate in its activities.
As part of our usual practice, we also invite applicant institutions, through their proposed representative, to give a short presentation at a SIG meeting. This presentation typically summarises the main points of the letter of intent and provides an opportunity to introduce the institution's work and team to the wider group, and to engage in discussion with current members.
Applications should be submitted to csa[AT]ics.forth.gr.