Position paper on object biography published

Now online on Zenodo!

The concepts of the data lifecycle and object biography form the central conceptual basis of NFDI4Objects. While the data lifecycle, with its phases from data creation to processing, analysis, publication, and archiving, is an established principle in research data management, object biography opens up a new approach to the generation, modeling, and representation of collection data.

Object biography does not view objects as static entities, but rather as dynamic nodes that are linked to different events, actors, places, and meanings throughout their existence. It integrates historical, archaeological, scientific, and museum perspectives, thereby creating an interdisciplinary framework for describing material culture.

As a paradigm for data modeling, object biography goes beyond a purely narrative approach. It enables the semantics of material culture to be systematically transferred into digital knowledge systems and complex object relationships to be mapped in a structured way.

Anja Gerber and Sarah Wagner have presented a position paper on this approach, which was published on Zenodo at the beginning of January. The paper explains the theoretical foundations of object biography and highlights its significance for the further development of collection and research data in the context of NFDI4Objects.

The position paper is available here: https://zenodo.org/records/18221449