**AIM AND SCOPE**

Cultural Heritage collections are essential knowledge infrastructures that provide a solid representation of the historical background of human communities. These knowledge infrastructures are constructed from and integrate cultural information derived from diverse memory institutions, mainly libraries, archives and museums. Each individual community has spent a lot of effort in order to develop, support and promote its own metadata as tools for the description and dissemination of cultural information, mainly related to its particular resources and use.

The management of the cultural information has to deal with challenges related to (i) metadata modeling, specification, standardization, extraction, evaluation, mapping, integration and effective use, (ii) knowledge representation as conceptualization to provide the context for unambiguously interpreting metadata, and (iii) information integration from different contexts for the provision of integrated access and advanced services to the users.

At the same time, there are also inter-domain efforts targeted to semantically align data (research data, educational data, public sector information etc.) to cultural information. New challenges are also emerged from the need to incorporate cultural information into the new publication paradigms, where a variety of resources (data, metadata, processes, results, etc) are linked and integrated, providing better shareability and reusability. Currently, Linked (Open) Data, as part of the Semantic Web Technology, is having a major role in modernizing cultural heritage collections. Providing to users the possibility to re-use and integrate data into their own systems is currently more than a need, given that transparency and access to information is a prerequisite. It is also important to note that in the Semantic Web environment there are many opportunities but many challenges as well, while its' complete and accurate establishment in Cultural Heritage institutions needs still a long way to go.

The aim of this Special Track is to maintain a dialogue where researchers and practitioners working on all the aspects of the cultural information will come together and exchange ideas about open issues at all stages of the cultural heritage information life cycle. The track also welcomes works related to semantics and applications for new approaches to cultural information publication and sharing, as well as to interlinking to other datasets published in the Semantic Web universe.

**TOPICS**

The papers in this special track should be original and of high quality, addressing issues in areas such as:

* Cultural heritage metadata models, standards, interoperability, mappings and integration
* Automated metadata extraction
* Ontologies and knowledge representation for the cultural heritage domain
*Extracting semantics, entities, and patterns from Cultural Heritage Collections
* Collection models and item - collection relationships representation
* Collection - level metadata modeling and management
* Linked open data approaches for the cultural heritage domain
* Composite content-discovery and management of components and interrelationships
* Publication, linking and citation of Cultural Heritage information and resources
* Large volume content management - high resolution image data sets
* 3D models-indexing, storage and retrieval approaches
* Federation of repositories/data infrastructures
* Integration of intra or inter disciplinary heterogeneous resources
* Infrastructures for sharing content
* Digital Curation workflows and models
* Preservation metadata for cultural heritage digital objects
* Metadata quality metrics
* Case studies


**Important Dates**

*July 10th 2017: Paper submission deadline (extended)
*July 31st, 2017: Notification of acceptance
*August 27th, 2017: Camera-ready papers due
*November 28th –December 1st, 2017: Conference in Tallinn University, Tallinn (Estonia)


**Paper Submissions**

Interested authors can submit to https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mtsr2017

The following types of presentation are invited:
*Full papers (12 pages) reporting complete research
*Short papers (6 pages) presenting ongoing or preliminary research
*Posters (4 pages)

Papers should be original and not previously submitted to other Conferences or Journals. All submissions will be reviewed on the basis of relevance, originality, importance and clarity following a double-blind peer review process. Submissions associated by any MTSR member (e.g. Chairs and PC members of MTSR or any of its Tracks) will follow a double-blind peer review process by an independent review committee.

Submitted papers have to follow the LNCS proceedings formatting style and guidelines. Authors of accepted papers will be asked to register to the Conference and present their work in the form of either oral presentation or poster presentation. The Conference welcomes Workshops and Tutorial on any issues concerning the main themes of MTSR such as metadata, ontologies, Semantic Web, knowledge management, software engineering and digital libraries.


**Conference Proceedings**

Proceedings will be published by Springer in Vol. 755 of the Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) book series. CCIS is abstracted/indexed in Scopus, SCImago, EI-Compendex, Mathematical Reviews, DBLP, Google Scholar. CCIS volumes are also submitted for the inclusion in ISI Proceedings.


**Other Publication Opportunities**

Selected papers might be considered for a revised and extended version to be published in a range of international journals, including the International Journal of Metadata, Semantics and Ontologies (Inderscience) and Program (Emerald).


**Awards**

There are two types of awards: the Best Paper Award and the Best Student Paper Award, both sponsored by euroCRIS.

*Best paper award: This award will be presented to the authors of the best full research paper submitted and presented at the conference.
*Best student paper award: MTSR sponsors a paper competition to recognize excellence in a conference paper contribution whose primary author is a student (normally at a PhD or MRes level). The student is required to present the paper at the MTSR 2017 conference.
Submissions are evaluated on their originality, scientific merits, structure, and clarity of composition.


**SPECIAL TRACK CHAIRS**

* Michalis Sfakakis, Dept. Archives, Library Science and Museology, Ionian University, Corfu, Greece (sfakakis@ionio.gr)
* Lina Bountouri, Dept. Archives, Library Science and Museology, Ionian University, Corfu, Greece, and EU Publications Office, Luxembourg (boudouri@ionio.gr)


**PROGRAM COMMITTEE**

* Trond Aalberg, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway
* Karin Bredenberg, The National Archives of Sweden, Sweden
* Enrico Fransesconi, EU Publications Office, Luxembourg, and Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Firenze, Italy
* Manolis Gergatsoulis, Ionian University, Greece
* Antoine Isaac, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
* Sarantos Kapidakis, Ionian University, Greece
* Peter McKinney, National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, New Zealand
* Christos Papatheodorou, Ionian University and Digital Curation Unit, IMIS, Athena RC, Greece
* Chrisa Tsinaraki, Joint Research Centre, European Commission, Italy
* Andreas Vlachidis, Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Science, University of South Wales, UK
* Katherine Wisser, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College, USA
* Maja Žumer, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia