Digital meets Culture

2 thematic workshops, one about IPR and a technical one, will take place in March 2015. Register Now!

E-Space thematic workshops 2015

Important appointments organized by Europeana Space project in March 2015!

The objective of Europeana Space is to increase and enhance the creative industries’ safe use of digital cultural content available in online repositories, by delivering a range of resources to support their engagement. This will help unlocking the business potential of digital cultural heritage.

Both events are free entrance upon registration and stakeholders representing European creative industries, technology-based enterprises, the cultural heritage sector and higher education are warmly invited to join.

IPR WORKSHOP: 2nd March 2015, Coventry (UK)

www.europeana-space.eu/ipr-workshop/

Confirmed Speakers: Sarah Whatley (Coventry University, project’s coordinator), Charlotte Waelde (University of Exeter), Prodromos Tsiavos (Postscriptum), Frederik Temmermans, Peter Schelkens, Ann Dooms (iMinds).

A workshop focused on IPR that considers content rights in a non traditional way. Rather than only focussing on different licensing models, this workshop aims to make content providers aware of technical frameworks and advances that support better management of licenses.

The workshop is planned h. 9.30 – 17.30, including business lunch and an evening reception with networking session h. 18.00 – 19.30.

PDF flyer of the event

TECHNICAL WORKSHOP: 23 March 2015, Brussels (Belgium)

www.europeana-space.eu/technical-workshop/

Confirmed Speakers: Antonella Fresa (Promoter srl, Technical Coordinator), Nasos Drosopoulos (National Technical University of Athens).

In this technical workshop it will be presented the architecture and implementation choices for the Technical Space, specifically:

The Data Infrastructure that includes the retrieval and storage layers for content and metadata from available sources.
The Metadata Processing Unit that integrates available services for the management and manipulation of metadata resources.
The Access APIs that constitute a set of interfaces that will be made available for the delivery of resources and the creation of applications.

Discussion and interaction with invited stakeholders will focus on validating and expanding the specification of functional and non functional requirements of the Technical Space in order to fulfil the needs of a wide user base.

The workshop opens with a public session including lunch/networking, on the 23rd March 2015 h. 9.30 – 14.00. The second part of the workshop, which continues until the 24th March is on invitation.

PDF flyer of the event

Learn More about Europeana Space: www.europeana-space.eu

To look for new possibilities and funding to exploit the results of the two projects

Joint cooperation between PREFORMA and APARSEN

A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between PREFORMA and APARSEN to look for new possibilities and funding to exploit the results of the two projects in joint initiatives, at European and national level, around the theme of digital preservation.

PREFORMA is a Pre-Commercial Procurement project co-funded by the European Commission within the framework of the FP7 ICT Programme with the aim to address the challenge of implementing good quality standardised file formats for preserving data content in the long term and to give memory institutions full control of the process of the conformity tests of files to be ingested into archives.

APARSEN is a Network of Excellence that brings together an extremely diverse set of practitioner organizations and researchers in order to bring coherence, cohesion and continuity to research into barriers to the long-term accessibility and usability of digital information and data, exploiting our diversity by building a long-lived Virtual Centre of Digital Preservation Excellence.

impressive progress for Europeana Space pilot about smart television, and a hackathon is happening soon!

“Rewind” prototype for EuropeanaTV pilot created

Rewind app design, VBOT.TV, CC-BY-NC

by Kelly Mostert, Sound & Vision (NISV)

On the 19th of November 2014 the EuropeanaTV pilot members took part in an interactive workshop to create a SmartTV application that lets you travel back to historical events. The workshop took place in the offices of Noterik in Amsterdam, where the pilot members tried to develop a basic core app much in the spirit of an actual hackathon. The resulting prototype app called “Rewind” was pitched at Waag Society on the last day, which started off a fruitful meeting with partners Waag Society and Culture Label to discuss hackathon strategy.

Present at the workshop were Daniel Ockeloen from Noterik, Marco Rendina of Cinecitta Luce, Bartek Czerwinski of Proton Labs, Alexandros Chortaras of the National Technical University of Athens and Kelly Mostert and Lizzy Komen of Sound & Vision.

Setup of the workshop

The workshop was split up in two tracks: the design track and the development track. This was specifically done to give the developer (Noterik) time to work with the EuropeanaTV toolkit and test what could realistically be programmed in two days.

[Show as slideshow]

The activities planned out over the two day workshop were as follows:

Day 1

#1 Go over the use case and discuss core features to be developed in 2 days: what can realistically be coded in the next 4-8 hours? What is the basic technology of the app?

#2 While developer starts coding, design group further fleshes out the use case for prototyping: which foreground/design features are needed to enhance the viewer experience? Which background processes need to occur for the technology to work and be smart?

#3 Creating an elevator pitch (5 slides) to summarize the core innovation of the app; addressing the target usergroup, which new experience are we creating?

Day 2

#1 Brainstorming on interaction design and wireframes – using flip-overs and paper sheets: what do we want it to look like? What goes where?

#2 Creating the design document: Statement of goals and project, Functional description, User interface & Milestones

Results

At the end of the pilot workshop we had three things produced: a basic core app with working functionality, evocative wireframes showing the user interface of the prototype app, and a design document with an extensive description of “Rewind” – a full-fleshed EuropeanaTV prototype! The app lets you travel back to historical events, such as the Olympics of 1962. Now it was time to take our idea to the market, which we proudly did the next day in a meeting with Culture Label and Waag.

Watch our elevator pitch slides:

From prototype to incubation phase: EuropeanaTV hackathon strategy

Having experienced our own mini hackathon, it was time to discuss official hackathon plans with Christine van den Horn of Waag Society and Simon Cronshaw of Culture Label. Activities were planned in terms of selecting participants, stakeholders, sponsors, creating a communication strategy and ideas to assemble and incentivize teams. We are excited to announce the EuropeanaTV hackathon on the 8th, 9th, and 10th of May at Waag Society in Amsterdam with inspiring pre-events on March 25th and April 8th.

More information on the hackathon soon to follow – stay tuned!

Paris, 21-22 January 2015

Museum Expressions launches Museum Connections!

To celebrate its 20th Edition Museum Expressions, the gift and cultural marking trade show, launched Museum Connections, an innovative conference programme focusing on innovation in Museums which gathered key museum and cultural heritage actors from around the world.

The event gave to the attendees the opportunity to meet museum professionals, gain new ideas and best practices to be applied in their institution and be inspired by those who build the Museum of the Future. Through various projects, thanks to innovative and connected marketing, they have changed the way to connect Art to the public. Branding social media, crowdfunding, audience development, loyalty programmes, e-shop and a new way of visiting museums…

For more information visit http://www.museumconnections.com/

Milan, 21-23 January 2015

MeLa final event: Envisioning 21st Century Museums

MeLa project – European Museums in an age of migrations concluded its four-year research programme with a three-day event, aimed at providing a critical overview on the main findings ensuing from its investigations and a forward-looking discussion about the future of European museums.

In adopting the concept of “migration” as paradigm of modernity, the MeLa project investigated the role of museums within the contemporary socio-cultural context, in order to identify new practises, tools and ways of representation and consumption able to foster an updated idea of museum, as space for dialogue and social cohesion in a transcultural Europe.

During the project final event, held at Politecnico di Milano on 21-23 January 2015, a highly interdisciplinary panel of scholars and policy makers from all over the world triggered a multi-perspective debate, bringing together the latest insights on museums’ challenges and chances in the framework of the contemporary global and multi-cultural scenario. The initiative was conceived as an occasion for going on and nurturing the debate on the transformation of the contemporary museums, for starting new reflections and opening new prospects.

The event opened on 21 January, with the inauguration of an exhibition showing the results and products of the research, and continued on 22 January with a seminar based on the interventions by four key-note speakers.

23 January’s programme was particularly rich: in the morning, the main research managers of MeLa led a critical dialogue around the topic “European Museums in an Age of Migrations”; in the afternoon, a round table involved European Commission representatives, experts of the museum sector, members of the international scientific community and policy makers with the aim of stimulating a multidisciplinary debate on the theme “European Museums for Reflective Societies” and reflecting upon the issues, challenges and opportunities today influencing the relationship between people and museums.

Download the event programme here

MeLa* European Museums in an age of migrations is a four-year Research Project funded by the European Commission (FP7), which aims to delineate new approaches for museums in relation with the conditions posed by the migrations of people, cultures, ideas, information and knowledge in the global world. It aims moreover to evaluate how much these changes can interfere with the organisation, the communication strategies, the physical structures and the architecture of the exhibition places. Its main objectives are to advance knowledge in the field and to support museum communities, practitioners, experts and policymakers in developing new missions and forms of museums and libraries in “an age of migrations”.

Results of last four years’ research activities were widely represented and discussed in the framework of workshops, seminars and international conferences and they are accessible through the MeLa Book Series, including several open-access digital publications.

* “mela” is the Sanskrit word for “gathering” or “meeting.” Today it is referred to intercultural encounters, intended as opportunities for community building.

in November 2014, the last plenary meeting of Europeana Photography before the final big events in Leuven

Europeana Photography – Bratislava plenary meeting

One of the most interesting partners of Europeana Photography is Divadelny Ustav, the national Slovak Theater Institute based in Bratislava. The priority of the Theatre Institute is its scientific and researching activity consisting of research of Slovak drama covering the time from establishing the first permanent professional stage in 1920 until today; it also takes part in other research works, co-operates with its partner institutions in various research activities concerning theatre culture in Slovakia and abroad, it takes part in organizing scientific symposiums, seminars, colloquia and other forms of presentation of their research activity. Divadelny Ustav participates in Europeana Photography as content provider, with an extraordinarly valuable collection of vintage photos about theatre performances and Slovak actors.

Divadelny Ustav was the host of the project’s important meeting in November 2014, during the Slovak month of photography. On the 6th November, the group celebrated the official opening of PHOTOCONSORTIUM, the spin-off association which will build on the legacy of Europeana Photography. In the evening of the 6th, there was the official opening of the exhibition “Teatralny Svet – The Theatrical World 1839-1939“, where the project coordinator prof. Fred Truyen had the possibility to speak about the project and its important role in unveiling bits of history through the photographs.

On the 7th, in the national heritage location of Studio 12, that is the seat of Divadelny Ustav, a plenary meeting of the project took place, the last one before the big events to be organized in Leuven in late January 2015.

Focus of the plenary was the finalization of the +430.000 metadata of early photographs to be provided to Europeana.eu, the European digital library where the images digitizited by the project will be retrievable and accessible to everybody, and the organization of the final conference of the project, which will be joint to the opening of a new edition of the exhibition All Our Yesterdays, with a very special Belgian flavour that was added to the original format of the exhibition (held in Pisa in April-June 2014 for the first time) thanks to the cooperation with the Leuven City Archive.

Learn more on the Leuven events:

International conference website and registration here

All Our Yesterdays in Leuven-Heverlee, official website: http://www.allouryesterdays.be

Great participation by the AICI associates in ‘Cultural Heritage: Recalibrating Relationships’

AICI at the RICHES International Conference

How can cultural institutions renew and remake themselves? How can they foster the shift from traditional hierarchies of Cultural Heritage (CH) to more fluid, decentred practices?

The ISIA Roma poster

Both the RICHES European Consortium and the Association of Italian Cultural Institutions (AICI) are actively engaged in answering this question, central theme of the International Conference “Cultural Heritage: Recalibrating Relationships” held in Pisa, at the Museum of Graphics of Palazzo Lanfranchi, on 4-5 December 2014.

The Venetian Institute and Ugo and Olga Levi Foundation’s posters

As RICHES official associate partner, AICI brought its valuable contribution to the project event, participating in the conference and related poster session with several representatives from its member institutes. Among them: Carmine Marinucci, AICI Secretary-General, presenting his association and Only Italia Education, innovative project for a modern structure devoted to sharing Italian and European cultural heritage with other cultures in the world; Pasquale Smiraglia, Chair of the National Academic Union, grouping the most important Italian academies as Accademia dei Lincei, Accademia della Crusca and the Venetian Institute for Science, Letters and Arts; Giordano Bruno, Director of ISIA Roma – High Institute for Artistic Industries aimed at the training of highly professional designers as well as the preservation and development of the finest European intellectual and teaching tradition – together with his collaborators Marco Pietrosante, Tommaso Salvatori and Giulia Romiti; the Ugo and Olga Levi Foundation for music studies and the Venetian Institute for Science, Letters and Arts.

The ISIA representatives at the conference

Since 1992, The AICI members are involved in research activities and the promotion and preservation of cultural heritage. AICI holds the heritage of the enterprises, the social and political movements and all the organisations that characterised the modernisation process of Italy.

The archives of the over hundred AICI-afferent cultural institutions are relevant historical sources, preserving the complex Italian identity and telling the birth of a European political culture.

The Institutes cover all the territorial divisions and act as a plural organisation combining the preservation of book and archival goods with the promotion of relevant cultural activities. They are historical sources and tools for the development of the social, political and technical dimension of the Italian and European culture; in the digitisation of cultural heritage, joined with innovative and original forms of dissemination, AICI identifies a strategic and overriding instrument.

Together with RICHES, AICI works for unlocking the social and economic potential of culture.

For more information visit the RICHES conference website and www.aici.it

Brussels, 18 December 2015

PREFORMA presented at the Belgian Federal Scientific Institutions

On 18th of December 2015, Erik Buelinckx from the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage presented the project at the monthly meeting of the follow-up committee of the Belgian Federal Policy digitisation program.

These meetings are organised in the framework of a big digitalisation project (see below). As this project is working to set up a long term preservation platform for memory institutions, the results of PREFORMA and particularly the conformity checker would fit nicely in as a tool to be added to this platform.

A general presentation of PREFORMA, was delivered to representatives from the Federal scientific Institutions. The group consists, among others, of the Royal Library of Belgium, the national archives, some big museums, the royal cinematheque, etc.

The reactions were very good and many questions were raised. In particular, the archives were interested, so this will be followed by a more specific meeting with them.

About the Digitisation Plan

Belgium retains in its federal scientific institutions (FSI’s) an exceptional scientific, cultural, historical and artistic heritage, whose value was estimated in 2002 at 6.2 billion euros. Their collections make up for an important part of the world heritage in many areas and provide valuable support for scientific research.

At the beginning of this millennium, and despite the efforts of several of the FSI’s separately, this heritage remained mainly inaccessible and little exploited, particularly in digital form. The most vulnerable or most damaged pieces threatened to disappear. It was deemed appropriate to respond to the structural dynamics in Europe to digitise cultural and scientific content, a dynamic that led, in particular, to the building up of a virtual and multilingual European Library (Europeana).

The Council of Ministers has taken on July 19, 2001 notice of these problems and given his agreement for a thorough study aimed to find a structural funding for the digitisation and electronic distribution of the collections.

Therefore, a Digitisation Plan for 10 years was launched in April 2004 with the financing of the first phase (2005-2008) of nine targeted priority projects. The aim of these 9 projects was a better dissemination and utilisation of the collections of the FSI and digitisation efforts in the FSI’s increase by seeking synergies and complementarity, taking into account the specific nature of the various institutions. That first phase of the Digitisation Plan was extended until the end of March 2012.

One problem encountered was to address the large-scale digitisation needs (especially in terms of overall vision, resources and deadlines). From this first experience lessons were drawn for the start of a more ambitious second phase.

The new program (2013-2018) is designed so that the digitisation activities of the various institutions involved and the associated resources will not remain fragmented. The aim is a genuine inter-institutional collaboration to establish on the basis of common investment, an industrial-scale infrastructure and joint management of digitised data and activities allowing synergies to be realised. Of course, always with the specific needs of each institution taken into account.

The creation of three different platforms is provided with the necessary interfaces:

a common platform for storage and long-term preservation (LTP)
a digitisation platform (in-situ and external digitisation)
a valorisation platform.

The common platform for long-term preservation (LTP) needs to bring a solution for the huge archiving problem of the storage, conservation and management of the digitised objects, the FSI’s cannot solve alone.

The FSI’s wish to ensure through the LTP platform that existing digital objects and the new digitised objects will still be accessible in the future, and for a very long time (over 10 years) remain intact, clearly longer than the lifetime of current specific storage systems and technologies.

The sizes and dimensions of preserving digital objects are very diverse (especially PDF, TIFF, WAV, JPEG, JPEG2000, MOV, AVI, MXF, TAR, DPX, ranging from a few Kb to 4 TB). The total data volume is today one PB and can reach more than 12 PB end of 2018.
This platform should ensure at all times the integrity, authenticity and availability of such data. The LTP platform should support as much as possible by the industry accepted open standards, protocols and components. The data and metadata have to be stored in such a way that they can be recovered through open standard protocols. This protects users against an eventual “vendor lock-in” or against any disappearance of a software or a specific vendor. The medium in which the data is stored should be as standard as possible and accessible through open systems. The data and metadata may under no circumstances leave the Belgian territory.

The platform will be installed in the data centers of the federal government. All FSI’s have direct access to high bandwidth on the Belnet network.

The 10 Federal Scientific Institutions are:

Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA)
Royal Museums for Art and History (KMKG-MRAH)
Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (RMFAB)
State Archives (ARA-AGR)
Royal Library of Belgium (KBR)
Center for Historical Research and Documentation on War and Contemporary Society (SOMA-CEGES)
Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (KBIN-IRSNB)
Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA)
Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB)
Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (KMI-IRM)
Royal Observatory of Belgium and Planetarium (ROB)

An additional Belgian federal institution with a rich cultural heritage was added to this project:

Royal Belgian Film Archive (Cinematek)

Open access and EUDAT License Wizard

EUDAT News bullettin – November / December 2014

In this issue we introduce the EUDAT License Wizard and ask what researchers think about open data, before having a look back at some of the achievements over the course of the year. On behalf of the EUDAT team, we’d like to wish you the very best for the holiday season and we look forward to working with you in 2015.

Get B2Sharing during the season of goodwill with EUDAT’s License Wizard

We’re delighted to announce that a new version of the EUDAT service B2SHARE has just been released. If you’d like to use B2SHARE to deposit data or software but you’re unsure as to which licence you should use, the EUDAT License Wizard is the answer to your problems. This user-friendly tool guides you step by step through the bewildering array of licences, helping you choose the right one for your dataset or software. Try out the demo version which is available online now and let us know what you think.

Open access: What communities really think

Trailed at the September Conference, EUDAT’s study of our communities’ attitudes to open access to data will be published early in the New Year. In the meantime, a summary of the findings will appear shortly in the December/January edition of European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) News.

The Cultural Heritage in the Digital Era

INNOVA Master’s Degree in Virtual Cultural Heritage

How do you prepare a professional in Cultural Heritage in the digital age? How the University can solve the gap between Science and Humanities? Is the current University ready to deal with education in Cultural Heritage? Are then Humanities a good professional option?

The INNOVA MASTER’s Degree in Virtual Heritage: The Cultural Heritage in the Digital Era is a degree from INNOVA (Virtual Archaeology International Network) and SEAV (Spanish Society of Virtula Archaeology). Specialists from 36 Institutions, research centers and international companies across 12 countries have developed the degree consisting of 60 ECTs credits. The degree has three mandatory modules to be undertaken by the student throughout 62 teaching weees, with corresponding holiday periods over Christmas, Easter and Summer.
The programme is taught entirely online through the virtual classroom of the International Campus SEAV TRAINING, with personalised access and weekly advice of expert tutors.
The course covers theoretical topics, practical activities and includes objective test to be graded for each chapter.
Student literature, resources and certain software will be provided to the student for the completion of the proposed activities. Three reviews will be conducted during the course that will result in a final grade.
At its completion, the student will receive the title INNOVA MASTER’s Degree in Virtual Heritage: The Cultural Heritage in the Digital Era