Web based presentation of semantically tagged 3D content for public sculptures and monuments in the UK

The documentation and presentation of 3D digital content is a critical but non-trivial task for the Cultural Heritage Sector. Curators are often faced with the task of cataloguing every piece of heritage and maintaining the resulting information in such a way which is suitable for scholarly research and public dissemination. Hence, the integration of 3D content poses additional challenges. This paper introduces research conducted to integrate semantically tagged 3D content to the catalogue acquired within the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association’s National Recording Project (NRP) in the UK. This research involves the combination of graphical APIs and semantic technologies in order to integrate 3D content with semantic tags in a web browser. Although the initial results are still experimental; it is expected that they will support scholarly research and public dissemination by presenting a variety of integrated documentation on the project website: http://www.publicsculpturesofsussex.co.uk