Building knowledge society in Lithuania - towards 'heritage-aware' national information infrastructure

This work is aimed at critical investigation of the role of standards in the development of informational society and economy in general, and cultural heritage information infrastructures in particular. Using exploratory literature review and two case studies we attempt to shed light on the intricate link between data (resources), tools and services as seen through the prism of standards as a foundation for the development of the new informational economy. We argue that in the context of cultural heritage information infrastructure, standards can be seen as enablers of different dimensions of interoperability: between reality and information system; of several information systems; of information within the information system; of the information system and user. The derived interoperability forms the foundation for creation of the maximum surplus value for 'heritage-aware' information infrastructures. The foundation of informational infrastructure in general, and the effective work of heritage-aware informational resources in particular, requires a more elaborate understanding of standards and interoperability, which they either produce or hamper. Three main obstacles to data interoperability were identified: 1) pure linguistic multilingualism, 2) cultural multilingualism and 3) historical multilingualism. This research lays foundation for the future development of systemic solutions to interoperable, consistent heritage-aware information infrastructures, arguments being provided that special attention must be paid to the development of standardized multilingual, semantic thesauri, ontologies and their introduction in heritage and humanities information systems. Reprinted by permission of Vilnius University, Brno University of Technology, and University of Latvia