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. CAAPT consists of three constituent ontologies: CAAPT-O, CAAPT-UC, and CAAPT-DM. These 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 critical cataloguing actions at the Victoria and Albert Museum. This knowledge graph demonstrates the affordances of the ontologies. 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. Lastly, 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.