eCHASE project was a European (FP6) research project. It used semantic web technologies to integrate art and cultural heritage multimedia resources so they could be more easily found and used. See the EU's research focus for context.
The content providers include two photo libraries (Fratelli Alinari and Getty Images), a publisher (De Agostini) and a television broadcaster (ORF). This provided a rich mix of materials and real-world needs.
The ontology was used to describe and hence integrate the information. We also built a "Media Engine" which provided search based on image appearance. This helped us produce our open source project .
For more information see our ESWC paper:
The is a we made to summarise related work in ECS and a promotional video (27MB).