The Object Biography in NFDI4Objects

The presentation introduces NFDI4Objects, the consortium of the German Nation Research Data Infrastructure addressing the infrastructural needs of researchers working with the material remains of human and environmental history. Its mission is to build a sustainable, interoperable research data infrastructure capable of integrating the highly heterogeneous datasets produced across archaeology, collections, cultural heritage studies and related disciplines. At the core of this effort lies the concept of the digital object biography, an event-based data model that systematically links information about an object’s origin, use, contextual shifts, actors, places, time spans and sources. Using established standards such as CIDOC CRM and LIDO (Lightweight Information Describing Objects), as well as tools like the NFDI4Objects Knowledge Graph and WissKI, the initiative enables consistent modelling of complex object histories, the documentation of uncertainties, and the interoperability of data across institutional and disciplinary boundaries. The digital object biography functions as a “maximum dataset” that brings together diverse research information—from excavation data and analytical results to provenance records and conservation history—and makes it reusable in a FAIR-compliant way. The Stained Glass use case illustrates how event structures, part–whole relationships and actor involvement can be precisely represented and offers a chance for modeling the information in the context of stained glass as digital object biographies.