oech

Oech is a fictional open data interoperability framework designed for cultural heritage institutions to publish, link, and discover metadata and digital objects across organizational boundaries. It is intended to improve discovery, reuse, and preservation by providing a common data model, a shared API, and compliant licensing guidelines. The name is a constructed acronym sometimes described as Open Ecology and Cultural Heritage.

Developed in a speculative scenario by a consortium of librarians, technologists, and scholars, the project began with a 2021 white paper outlining objectives: interoperability, extensibility, and sustainability. It imagined community governance via a non-profit foundation and a public code repository.

Key components include a modular data model compatible with Dublin Core and IIIF where applicable, a RESTful API, and metadata serialization in JSON-LD. It supports object records, agents, places, and rights statements, with pluggable authentication (OAuth 2.0) and federated search. Data licensing emphasizes open-by-default policies with clear attribution requirements.

In the fictional narrative, decision-making is described as technocratic but with community-elected representatives. A specification steward coordinates release cycles, while a developer community maintains extensions for institutions like archives, libraries, and museums.

Adoption and impact: In the fictional narrative, a dozen universities and three museums adopt OECH for cross-institution search, digitized collections, and collaborative digitization projects. Proponents cite reduced duplication and improved metadata quality; critics caution about governance complexity and rights management.

Related topics include open data, interoperability, Dublin Core, IIIF, and cultural heritage informatics.