Project on developing a new dataset as a multilingual linked data ontology and classification for better implementations in the semantic web and available for many types of organizations. Built on the information of the current Finnish medium of performance vocabulary SEKO.
Project title: "Musiikin kulttuuriperinnön yhteentoimivat tietoaineistot" ("Interoperable datasets for musical cultural heritage")
To develop an analyzed dataset to support Finnish music content and instrument description and preservation of cultural heritage in the Finnish organizations. The resulting dataset will be basically a semantic web linked data ontology of musical instruments and ensembles including a Finnish language version of an instrument classification.
Working titles for the dataset:
- "Suomalainen esityskokoonpano-ontologia"
- "Finsk ontologi för musikbesättning"
- "Finnish Medium of Performance Ontology" --> New prefix fmpo:
To provide for the Finnish GLAM network of libraries, archives and museums and any other organisations for their descriptions of music content and instruments an easily accessible, usable, interoperable and reasonably comprehensive controlled vocabulary. Added value is brought with the Swedish and English labels and mappings to the corresponding concepts in international sources such as Wikidata, Library of Congress Medium of Performance Thesaurus for Music LCMPT, YSO-ontology, and the MIMO Thesaurus of musical instrument names.
Specific emphasis will be made to include traditional Finnish musical instruments extensively to support the long term preservation of the Finnish cultural heritage. Incorporating these would transform the information in the Seko vocabulary from a general medium-of-performance list into a dataset providing a definitive linked-data reference for Finnish-Karelian instruments — a unique international contribution that no other national ontology is offering, and one that strongly justifies further investment. The dataset will further provide a basis for music related knowledge graphs, research and music education.
Datamodel
Masterdata structure
New and deprecated concepts in Masterdata
Instrument classification
Project Wiki (guidelines, plans, etc)
Sources for music instruments and their labels
Soitinnimien ohjeluettelo (2017) (copy of archived version of the pevious vocabulary before Seko)
Music museums and instrument collections and music archives
Other music instrument vocabularies and publications
Read this documentation as web pages at https://natlibfi.github.io/SEKO/
2026-09 SEPTEMBER
Week 40
- 2026-09-25: SEKO-vocabulary updates are now working again and eight new concepts were added (banjolele, bell tree, joikaus, kontraforte, laattasoitin, pikkolosello, räppäys, sopranista, vihellys). now the total is 1249. Need to map/match the new ids with the masterdata.
- Started collaboration with the Musical Instrument Museum in Bruxelles and its vocabulary project.
- Attended webinar: Grounding AI - Reasoning Layers and Factual Graphs by Katariina Kari and Ricky Sun.
- Registered the fpmo prefix at purl.archive.org. However seriously considering using w3id instead!
2026-10 OCTOBER
Week 41
- Started planning new funding application and updating the project plans.Re-analyzing research questions and hypotheses. Searching for additional related projects. Focusing on instruments Finnish cultural heritage data, music metadata, interoperability, existing ontologies and datamodels.
- Updated the FMPO identifiers and masterdata records for the corresponding eight new SEKO concepts added to SEKO on 2026-09-25. One new concept "rapping" and one to be checked (ukulele banjo vs. banjolele).
The project process is done in accordance with the Finnish expert group on music metadata (MUUSA) which maintains the current Seko vocabulary.
Specific spatial and cultural information inside the current Seko instrument notes will be extracted and entered as structured linked data using e.g. YSO, YSO time, YSO-places ontologyies, Wikidata or Geospaces, etc. and formed as definitions and scope notes.
The Seko dataset consist currently of some 1240 concepts of musical instruments and ensembles. The classification would be based on the MIMO dataset from 2011 and its addtions in 2018 which will be translated and entered in skos-format with Finnish labels to support browsing the instruments by classification.
Funding applications pending. Contact Jarmo Saarikko if you are interested in joining or sharing your expertise.
- The FMPO datamodel (classes and properties) is currently work in progress. At first, the ontology will be a simple hierarchy, with mappings to other vocabularies and datasets when PIDs are available and to other external sources.
- The hierarchy matches closeoly the Hornboschel-Sachs classification published by the MIMO (Musical Instrument Museums Online network(.
- The datamodel will be documented in SKOS turtle format.
- See the separate Datamodel description page.
During the process we map items in Wikidata with the corresponding SEKO-ID (P10063). To support mappings, see also other identifiers in Wikidata LCMPT ID (P8516) and MIMO instrument ID (P3763), UNIMARC: Medium of Performance ID (P11214), MusicBrainz instrument ID (P1330).
The skos:MappingRelations properties will be used to link to external sources. Preferrably with exactMatch, but also closeMatch, broadMatch and narrowMatch may be used when an exact match is not available.
Current plan is to map to Wikidata and to an external authority file. Wikidata mapping would be considered mandatory. The existing LCMPT mappings are checked and their coverage extended. Possibly map to any vocabulary that Finnish music archives and museums are currently using.
- Primary targets are Wikidata, LCMPT, YSO
- Secondary targets are MIMO instrument vocabulary, Hornboschel-Sachs classification (maintained by MIMO), KOKO.
- Other possible targets are Getty AAT (for instruments)
- Links to other sources describing the instrument and to help in content description may be added with the
rdfs:seeAlsoproperty.
- See the separate document on the use of classifications in the ontology
For content description purposes the appropriate concepts in SEKO3 could be marked as instances of bf:MusicEnsemble or bf:MusicInstrument or bf:MusicMedium.
- Classes
seko:MusicInstrumentandseko:MusicEnsemblewere added in version 0.04 of the datamodel and these were mapped to the corresponding Bibframe classes.
In MARC21 data records the labels of SEKO concepts can be used in the 382 field and other fields. The MARC21 source code identifier for the vocabulary is "seko" (subfield $2 value)
See also related presentations about Finnish music vocabularies and content description - Events organized by the Music metadata expert group Muusa and the IAML Finland:
- Finto-palvelun ontologiat ja sanastot musiikinkuvailussa - presentation in Musiikinkuvailutilaisuus 2021
- Musiikkiaineiston YSO-konversio presentation in Musiikkia Melindassa -iltapäivä 26.9.2019
- Musiikin YSO-konversion aikataulu ja toteutus presentation in Musiikin kuvailupäivä 15.5.2019 - Event video available in YOuTube (4 hours).
KOKO incorporates the MAO/TAO ontologies maintaned by the museums. -- A suggestion and an easy solution might be to include the whole FMPO into KOKO as its top conepts are YSO-concepts.
- Museum data is already imported to finna.fi system. The expansion of FMPO into a KOKO-compatible ontology would significantly improve the discoverability and cross-linkability of music-related materials (recordings, sheet music, archival materials and physical museum objects) in, for example, the finna.fi service.
- FMPO masterdata-table is already mapped to YSO-concepts. Thus it could be considered an "YSO-based ontology".
- The Top Concept "esityskokoonpano" is currently not in YSO, BUT the two second level concepts are mapped: yso:p7110 "soittimet", yso:p1289 "esittäjät"
- FMPO will be hierarchical and trilingual. What else would be needed to be able to include FMPO in KOKO?
- https://www.museovirasto.fi/fi/palvelut-ja-ohjeet/museoalan-kehittaminen
- Museovirasto 2015: Suositus museoille ontologioiden, luokitusjärjestelmien ja asiasanastojen käytöstä versio 2.0
- Suositus: Ontologioita suositellaan käytettävän ensisijaisina välineinä museoiden objektien kuvailussa. Keskeisin objektien kuvailussa käytettävä ontologia on suomalaisia ontologioita yhdistävä KOKO-yleiskäsiteontologia ... KOKOn ohella voidaan käyttää myös muita ontologioita.
- Suositus: Suositeltavaa on käyttää laajasti käytettyjä ja tunnettuja kansainvälisiä luokitusjärjestelmiä. Classification systems mentioned: Outline of Cultural materials (OCM), Iconclass - also on finto.fi, IPTC NewsCodes: Subject Codes (for photographs) - all preferrably in ontologized versions.
- Museoiden Finna (Museovirasto)
- FINNA - Ohjeita museoille ja arkistoille
- Many museums are using the YKSA software User Guide
- Specifications of the Common Data Model for the Description of Musical Instruments, ECP-2008-DILI-538013, MIMO proect deliverable D-2.1, 2010-06-30, based on the LIDO data model v0.9.
- Metadata Mapping and OAI-PMH Implementation Guidelines Deliverable D-2.2 2010-11-18
- For data, e.g. check the Finna-LIDO import rules - Finna LIDO profile
The project aims at networking internationally with professionals that are working with metadata and vocabularies related to musical instruments
- IAML International Association of Music Libraries,
- Cataloguing and Metadata Section, Linked Data Hub for Music Vocabularies Study Group
- National section: IAML Finland Musiikkikirjastoyhdistys
- ICOM Music (previously CIMCIM) - International Committee for Museums and Collections of Instruments and Music, and its Working Group Classification of Musical Instruments
- MIMO Musical Instrument Museums Online consortium - 250 instrument collections around the world, but not in Finland, yet.
- Musik- och teaterbiblioteket Swedish leading expert on music metadata and cataloging. Possible contact: music librarian Pär Johansson
- Svenska musikbiblioteksföreningen (IAML Sverige) - Se även https://metadatabyran.kb.se/amnesord-och-genre-form
The source data is is comprised of three datasets that will be worked in parallel and eventually can be combined into an unified interoperable lined data service.
- The current dataset of Seko of 1241 titles.
- The Hornbostel-Sachs classification by MIMO which, when translated in Finnish, can be used as an optional browsing interface to the Seko instrument data as well as serve music and organological research and teaching.
- A vocabulary of the Finnish-Karelian traditional instruments, many of them not currently available in online interoperable voacabularies, but are represented in Finnish collections and research publications and some of them available through finna.fi and Europeana.
Outside of the scope, but it might also be possible to develop this separately as an ontology of folk instruments of the peoples speaking Finnic languages or even a Scandinavian-Baltic-Finnic folk instrument ontology, which might be a valuable resource for research and collections.
- The content and structure of the current monolingual Seko dataset is decided by the Finnish Expert Group on Music Metadata (MUUSA).
- As of 2026-06 the original dataset is maintained as MARC21 Authority files on the national metadata repository Melinda (ALEPH library system) hosted by the National Library of Finland. The data is transformed and exported in SKOS format (RDF) to Finto-data repository at https://github.com/NatLibFi/Finto-data/tree/master/vocabularies/seko. This data is browsable through the Finto service https://finto.fi/seko/en/ (a Skosmos syste,). The latest changes to the data were committed in 2021-09-28 and the metadata of the whole dataset was updated in 2025-05-21. The dataset automatic update process from MARC records in Aleph to SKOS on finto.fi was not working for a while, but it will be fixed during Autumn 2026.
- The editorial unfinished work in progress on the new multilingual FMPO dataset may be viewed "live" in the Google sheets. Occasionally we may take snapshots of this file in CSV format. This dataset is not yet available in RDF format.
- Live view: fmpo-masterdata table (5400+ rows, 37 columns) (updated to fmpo:)