Digital meets Culture

Contribute to the research! Survey open until 31 July 2014

Context of change for European performance practice

Photo by Nicola Vaughan

The RICHES project is a European Commission funded project that brings together 10 partners from 6 EU countries and Turkey to research the context of change in which European cultural heritage is transmitted, its implications for future cultural heritage practices and the frameworks to be put in place for the benefit of all audiences and communities in the digital age. One of the project tasks is to explore the transformation of Dance and Performance practice as a result of digital technologies within the European context.

This research begins from the premise that while traditional, discipline-specific settings still play a part in how dance and performance is shared with the public, new kinds of spaces, both physical and virtual, are increasingly being exploited as dynamic, interactive and co-created spaces. The study aims, therefore, to analyse the context of change for European performance practice and map themethods and factors that have driven or impacted on these changes. In particular, the study aims to better understand the transaction that takes place between those who make, produce, curate, perform and view/experience performance practices.

If you are a dance and performance practitioner, performer, educator, or researcher and are willing to reflect on how digital technologies have impacted on your experience of performance practice, please share with us your views by completing this survey:

https://www.survey.bris.ac.uk/coventry/performance-riches

You can add your responses by Thursday 31 July 2014.

Your views are very important for the RICHES consortium and this particular study, and they will help evaluate the current state of European performing arts practices within the broad domain of ‘intangible cultural heritage’.

RICHES on Twitter: #richesEU

RICHES on YouTube: www.youtube.com/richesEU

Istanbul, 17-20 September 2014

RICHES at URLA 2014 International Congress

The URLA 2014 Congress’ main theme will be Management of Cultural Heritage and Cultural Memory Institutions.

Today, information technologies are evolving rapidly both locally and globally and having significant impact in many areas. With the progress of globalisation, communities more and more tend to uniform their habits and lifestyles. This can cause a loss of the particular cultural identities.

National and international research plans on the preservation of cultural heritage are created for minimising such risk.

Technological capabilities and tools for the preservation of cultural heritage require an efficient management by cultural heritage institutions such as libraries, archives and museums. URLA 2014 is devoted to analysing these themes.

RICHES partners Hakan Koray Özlük and Hasan Bahadir Aydinonat from KYGM (Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism) will take part in the congress holding a speech – already approved by the URLA scientific committee – on Preservation of Cultural Heritage and EU Projects, which will provide an interesting overview of the two professionals’ year experience and knowledge in research for innovative ways of cultural heritage’s preservation and enjoyment.

The URLA congress aims to: promote dialogue between academicians, practitioners, researchers and organisations which provide services in the field of library and information science, arts, humanities and applied sciences; create a scientific and a social interaction environment; share best practices and experiences about these disciplines. Academicians, practitioners, researchers, service providers and all individuals can participate in the congress.

The University and Research Librarians’ Association in Turkey (URLA) organises annual scientific meetings in Turkey since 1991, in order to raise the awareness of practitioners about information services, information & document management, knowledge economy, information literacy, industrialisation of information and so on. In view of the meetings, scientific and original studies/papers are evaluated by a specific scientific committee, in order to establish a presentation programme. The URLA annual scientific meetings are held in a different university every year and supported by various sponsors and government agencies.

For more information visit: http://unak2014.unak.org.tr/en/

http://www.riches-project.eu/kygm.html

RICHES on Twitter: #richesEU

RICHES on YouTube: www.youtube.com/richesEU

Graz (Austria),14-19 September 2014

DiXiT – XML/TEI for Digital Scholarly Editions – Standards, tools and software

The second DiXiT camp on XML TEI P5 for Digital Scholarly Editions – Standards, tools and software funded by the Digital Scholarly Editions Initial Training Network (DiXiT), and run by the Centre for Information Modelling – Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities (Graz) in collaboration with the University of Oxford, the University of Cologne, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, SynchRO, TEI-C, and Text Grid.

The course will be held at the University of Graz (Karl-Franzens-Universität) from 14th to 19th September 2014.

The DiXiT camp is open to all students registered for postgraduate and in particular doctoral programs (PhD or equivalent) anywhere in the world with basic experience in scholarly editing. The course will strongly focus on practical exercise and all teaching will be in English. The course offers 25 positions from which twelve are reserved for DiXiT fellows, leaving 13 vacancies for other applicants. Participants will be required to arrange their own accommodation and travel to Graz, but there will be no fee for the course itself. Some bursaries will be available for travel and accommodation in particular for participants from less developed countries and from Eastern Europe.

This intensive course will provide students with theoretical knowledge and practical experience in creating digital editions using the open international encoding standard XML TEI P5. Basics of representing textual phenomena and features for the description, transcription and representation of primary sources will be covered, from data input to publication.

The lectures will be held by experts from the DiXiT partners and will cover the following areas:

• General introduction on XML TEI P5
• Transcription and editorial interventions
• Critical apparatus
• Genetic editing
• Tools for digital editing
• Customization of the TEI schema
• Workflow and solutions to create an online presentation out of TEI
• Metadata standards
• Edition beyond text: image-text-linkage and music editions

Evening lectures on use cases will accompany the morning and afternoon sessions. Besides the Shelly-Godwin Archive (http://shelleygodwinarchive.org), two editing projects from Graz, Hugo von Montfort – the poetic work (http://gams.uni-graz.at/me) and the Moral Weeklies in Romance-speaking Europe (http://gams.uni-graz.at/mws) will serve as examples for different editing scopes.

The application deadline is the 28 July 2014 and early registration is highly recommended.

You can use the Application form and send it to dixit@uni-graz.at.
For more information visit the DiXiT’s website or the website of the University of Graz.

Download some practical information on the DiXiT Camp here

A short article by Bitr. Professor Björn Lundell (Ph.D.), University of Skövde

Long-term sustainability through OSS implementations of open file formats

Long-term sustainability through Open Source software implementations of open file formats

Skövde 24 June, 2014

Bitr. Professor Björn Lundell (Ph.D.), University of Skövde (bjorn.lundell@his.se)

Download PDF

Understanding fundamental challenges relating to lock-in effects and use of different file formats for long-term maintenance of digital assets is an essential component to the success of any memory institution. Research results show that maintenance and support contracts for proprietary licensed software are typically provided for (up to) 10 years. Hence, digital assets (files) outlive proprietary software in any long-term maintenance scenario. Consequently, it is clear that tools used for the initial creation of files will not be available during the complete life-cycle for systems used by memory institutions. Many organisations therefore seek to adopt open file formats and Open Source software (OSS) solutions as a strategy for minimising risks for losing control of their digital assets.

The European Commission published an official communication (COM(2013) 455 final) on 25 June 2013, which recognises the importance of open standards for addressing lock-in. Besides addressing lock-in by making better use of standards in procurement, the associated press release (IP/13/602) reports that open standards would save public sector €1 billion a year. Further, specific countries have developed policies and guidelines for use of open standards when procuring software solutions in order to address digital preservation and lock-in. For example, the U.K. Government undertook a comprehensive review of the evidence for how open standards contribute to achieve a level playing field for open source and proprietary software. Based on this, the U.K. Government provides a detailed policy with motivations and principles for use of open standards. Further, a recent report from the Swedish governmental agency responsible for public sector procurement stresses the importance of using open standards in public procurement (Dnr. 96-40-2013). The report stresses different lock-in effects and highlights the importance of considering long-term digital preservation before adoption, and in so doing addresses migration, interoperability, and lockin challenges.

An open file format is an open standard (see EIFv1 and SOU 2009:86) which can be used as a basis for implementation in a software system that is provided under different proprietary and open source software licenses. In general, open file formats are suitable for use in a scenario when longterm preservation is important, whereas closed file formats (for example, MXF and JPEG2000) are provided under conditions which make such formats inappropriate for use in such scenarios. Hence, for this reason the PREFORMA project utilises open file formats instead of closed file formats. Closed file formats are typically controlled by specific companies or industry consortia and it is not uncommon that there are many patents which impact on the conditions for implementation of such closed formats (e.g. MXF and JPEG2000) in software. For this reason, it is essential to carefully analyse conditions for use of such file formats before implementation in a software system.

In order to minimise risks for memory institutions and for long-term sustainability and flexibility reasons, PREFORMA will use two specific Open Source software licenses. All developed software will be provided on an open platform (e.g. GitHub or equivalent) under the two specific licenses: “GPLv3 or later” and “MPLv2 or later”. As considerations concerning legal and licensing conditions for implementation of different file formats in software solutions under specific Open Source licenses may impose specific questions which require legal expertise the PREFORMA project provides contact information for seven legal experts on Open Source, which all have been informally briefed concerning the PREFORMA challenges. However, it should be noted that PREFORMA is neutral with respect to the legal contacts and has no formal relationship with any of these legal experts. Hence, any legal advise concerning issues related to PREFORMA can, of course, be sought from any legal expert.

For information, we provide the following contacts to legal experts in several European countries (in alphabetical order): Malcolm Bain (id law partners, Spain); Amanda Brock (Origin Ltd., U.K.); Martin von Haller Groenbaeks (Bird & Bird, Denmark); Till Jaeger (JBB Rechtsanwälte, Germany); Andrew Katz (Moorcrofts LLP, U.K.); Carlo Piana (Array, Italy); Martin von Willebrand (HH Partners Attorneys at Law Ltd., Finland).

Since memory institutions have requirements for very long life-cycles of digital assets it is necessary to establish sustainable communities related to each Open Source software (OSS) solution in which open file formats are implemented. Previous research shows complex relationships (with mutual influences) between a technical specification of a file format and its implementation in software. For this reason it is important to establish effective processes for promotion of quality in both evolving versions of a technical specification of a file format and also in evolved versions of a software solution in which the specification is implemented. Previous research shows that technical specifications of file formats and their implementation in software are inherently incorrect, vague, and incomplete. Hence, over time, a long-term process needs to be established which contributes to improved quality in both file formats and software. For this reason, an important R&D dimension for PREFORMA is to contribute to such a long-term goal.

For memory institutions, it is essential to ensure that conditions for use of specific file formats allow implementation in software which provide full control of digital assets through preservation in open file formats and sustainable Open Source software. Finally, if an organisation is interested in using a specific file format for implementation in software in the context of PREFORMA and if there are specific questions related to licensing and legal issues, we would like to suggest contacting legal expertise. The above mentioned legal experts are all briefed about the objective for PREFORMA and we would welcome further feedback from other legal experts interested in the project.

Contact: Björn Lundell (bjorn.lundell@his.se)

For further information about PREFORMA, please see: http://www.preforma-project.eu

Some references:

EIF: European Interoperability Framework for Pan-European eGovernment Services, European Commission, Version 1.0, http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Docd552.pdf?id=19529

European Commission: Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions Against lock-in: building open ICT systems by making better use of standards in public procurement, COM(2013) 455 final, European Commission, Brussels, 25 June 2013. http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/cf/dae/document.cfm?doc_id=2327

European Commission: Press Release, Digital Agenda: Open standards would save public sector €1 billion a year, Brussels, 25 June 2013 http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-13-602_en.htm

Kammarkollegiet: Programvaror och tjänster 2013, Statens Inköpscentral vid Kammarkollegiet, Dnr. 96-40-2013, 5 February 2014, https://www.avropa.se/upload/F%c3%b6rstudie%20Programvaror%20och%20tj%c3%a4nster%202013.pdf

SOU 2009:86: Strategi för myndigheternas arbete med e-förvaltning, Statens Offentliga Utredningar, SOU 2009:86, E-delegationen, 19 November 2009, ISBN 978-91-38-23302-3 , http://www.regeringen.se/download/1dc00905.pdf?major=1&minor=133813&cn=attachmentPublDuplicator_0_attachment

U.K. Government: Open Standards principles: For software interoperability, data and document formats in government IT specifications, 1 November 2012, https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/78892/Open-Standards-Principles-FINAL.pdf

U.K. Government: Open Standards in Government IT: A Review of the Evidence, 1 November 2012, https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/78891/Review-ofthe-Evidence_CIPPM.pdf

Webinar, 26 June 2014

Tools for uncovering preservation risks in large repositories

Thursday 26 June at 14:00 BST / 15:00 CET

Session Lead: Luis Faria from KEEP SOLUTIONS

Registration at: https://scout-webinar.eventbrite.co.uk.

Overview

An important part of digital preservation is analysing content to uncover the risks that hinder its preservation. This analysis entails answering diverse questions, for example: Which file formats do I have? Are there any invalid files? Are there any files violating my defined policies?; and many others.

The threats to preserving content come from many distinct domains, from technological to organizational, economical and political, and can relate to the content holder, the producers or to the target communities to which the content is primarily destined for.

Scout, the preservation watch system, centralizes all the necessary knowledge on the same platform, cross-referencing this knowledge to uncover all preservation risks. Scout automatically fetches information from several sources to populate its knowledge base. For example, Scout integrates with C3PO to get large-scale characterization profiles of content. Furthermore, Scout aims to be a knowledge exchange platform, to allow the community to bring together all the necessary information into the system. The sharing of information opens new opportunities for joining forces against common problems.

This webminar demonstrates how to identify preservation risks in your content and, at the same time, share your content profile information with others to open new opportunities.

Learning outcomes

In this webinar you will learn how to:

characterise collections and use C3PO to easily inspect the content characteristics
integrate C3PO with Scout and publish content profiles online
use Scout to automatically monitor your content profile
monitor preservation risks by cross referencing your content profile with policies, information from the world, and even content profiles from peerS

There are 23 places available which will be allocated on a first come, first serve basis. Once you have registered we will send you the link to the WebEx meeting space.

The webinar will also be recorded in case you cannot attend at this time.

Rebecca McGuinness
SCAPE Training Work package Lead

A review journal for digital editions and resources

IDE launches Review Journal for Digital Editions

In the past decades, many digital scholarly edition projects have been published and are available, often for free, online. Most of these editions are arguably the best editions of their documents or texts available, and many of them offer features enhancing research in the respective fields to a considerable degree.

Despite these facts, digital editions are often neglected by the established review institutions. This neglect has a number of consequences: digital editions are somewhat outside the established peer-control process; digital editors in spe cannot rely on criticisms that projects similar to their own have received; the methodology of digital editions not only needs to incorporate traditional issues of textual criticism but also has to be thoughtful of the closely related technical and methodologic issues.

In order to address these issues, the Institute for Documentology and Scholarly Editing (IDE) launched of a new review journal, RIDE, dedicated to digital editions and resources. Partner within the DiXiT network, IDE aims to make digital editions and resources more visible and to provide a forum in which expert peers can evaluate and discuss the efforts of digital editors in order to improve current practices and advance future developments. It will do so by asking its reviewers to pay attention not only to the traditional virtues and vices of any edition, but also to the evolving methodology and its technical implications.

RIDE has been created by a team of young scholars united under the roof of the Institute of Documentology and Scholarly Editing (hence its acronym RIDE: Review Journal of the IDE). The IDE has been an active part of the digital editing community for several years: it has guided and advised editors, organised a number of acclaimed summers schools on digital editing and contributed to the ongoing methodological debate by a series of publications.

You can access all reviews at: http://ride.i-d-e.de

You can find out more about the ideas behind RIDE, methods and intentions, in the Editorial at: http://ride.i-d-e.de/about/editorial/

RIDE is also looking for contributions. Please see: http://ride.i-d-e.de/reviewers/

Analysis of the current situation and of future needs and requirements

Digital Preservation at Cultural Heritage Institutions in Sweden

Digisam is a secretariat for National coordination of digitisation, digital preservation and digital access to cultural heritage, established by Swedish Government to coordinate the continued development work on digitisation issues and organised as a department of the National Archives in Sweden. One of the main tasks of Digisam is connected to a proposal on how coordinated and cost-effective preservation of digital cultural heritage information at Swedish state cultural heritage institutions that collect, preserve, and provide access to cultural heritage material, should be designed.

The objectives of this study is to present the results of the interviews made with some Swedish cultural heritage institutions between April 2013 and March 2014, the conclusions that can be made from the results, and what measures that should be taken in order to facilitate digital preservation in the cultural heritage sector in Sweden.

The new digital resources, in particular the “Web 2.0” and social media, have made it possible for cultural heritage institutions to make their collections available in a new and engaging way. But, in order to do so, the cultural heritage information must also be preserved in a reliable way.

The rapid development of technology decreases the sustainability of computer hardware and software to a few years. Although migration of stored cultural heritage information does not have to be made at the same rate, nevertheless this means that there is a need for continuous observation in order to ensure that measures can be taken in time to secure future access to cultural heritage information.

The amount of information that should be stored/preserved is rapidly growing within the and the institutions are not well prepared for this accumulation of data. The Swedish institutions are less prepared than their European counterparts.

A conclusion is that a roadmap for preservation (like the one that DCH-RP is developing) is of utmost importance for the Swedish CH sector: for defining what institutions should include in the preservation work, for deciding what measures that should be taken for a successful long-term preservation, and for how to proceed in general. Furthermore, common, shared, and preferably centralised resources are needed, both for cost-efficiency and for a higher quality of the information that is stored and preserved.

However, it should not be forgotten that preservation is not the final objective; the real success of the roadmap is fulfilled when citizens, companies, government agencies, scientists and researchers, schools, and developers can easily access and use the digital CHI.

Download here the full report.

Dance as intangible cultural heritage meets digital technologies and the Internet, to be preserved and accessed.

A digital archive about dance: the Siobhan Davies RePlay

Driven by Professor and researcher Sarah Whatley at Coventry University, the digital dance archive of Siobhan Davies was initially funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council resource enhancement programme and launched in 2009; but the initial idea and project began earlier in 2007, with the aim of bringing together all of the materials and documentation associated with Davies’ choreographies into a single collection.

Siobhan Davies is considered one of the leading choreographers in UK for contemporary dance and this is the first online dance archive in the UK. It contains thousands of fully searchable digital records including moving image, still image, audio and text.

Dance represents an important sector of intangible cultural heritage as there is a a close connection between dance and history; for this reason in the digital era it is possible to preserve and make accessible this content and materials via internet for any purpose: research, study, experimentation etc. The first requirement for usability is for the material to be gathered into one place, so that people looking for it can find it easily from anywhere in the world: and a online portal is of course the solution. Issues related to metadata requirements, services, a user-friendly interface were therefore investigated and addressed.

The archive is available at: http://www.siobhandaviesreplay.com/

Many of the objects within the archive collection have been sourced directly from Davies and her collaborators’ personal collections, whilst other items have been kindly lent by institutions and private contributors. Almost all of these objects that would otherwise remain inaccessible and unavailable appear online for the first time, and in many cases represent the first time objects have been viewed by anyone since their original date of creation.

Coventry University is also project coordinator of 2 new projects related to digital cultural heritage: Europeana Space, again with Professor Sarah Whatley, focused on the creative reuse of digital cultural content and including an experimental pilot exactly dedicated to Dance; and RICHES with Professor Neil Forbes, a research project with the aim to investigate on the impact that the digital era has on our culture and evolving society.

Further info:

article about Siobhan Davies’ archive appeared on The Guardian

Europeana Space website: http://www.europeana-space.eu/

RICHES website: http://www.riches-project.eu/

Partner Arbejdermuseet organized a valuable event with expert speakers to discuss about IPR and in particulare about orphan works

Europeana Photography workshop about Orphan Works

Held on 12th June 2014 at the premises of Arbejdermuseet in Copenhagen, this useful workshop saw the participation of many international attendees and was a good moment of discussion about the Orphan Works and related issues.

Arbejdermuseet is one of the partners of Europeana Photography project, providing 25.000 digitized photos that witness the conditions and everyday life of the workers’ and the labour movement’s history.

Valuable experts were invited for discussing different themes and for driving question and answer sessions. The participants were from the project consortium and also from other organizations such as the National Archives and the National Museum of Denmark, the Danish Film Institute and LFF Foundation.

AGENDA

Welcome with Louise Skyggebjerg, director at The Workers Museum, Copenhagen

Europeana Photography presentation, by Antonella Fresa, Technical Coordinator (PDF, 2,8 Mb)

Speaker 1: Anders Kildsgaard

Anders Kildsgaard is partner at Riemann law firm and advises clients in the media and entertainment industry. He teaches law and ethics on the Master Degree in Cross Media Communication at CopenhagenUniversity and is co-author of a number of books on internet law, intellectual property rights and privacy law issues.

Orphan works

In February 2014 the U.S. Copyright Office came out with a Notice of Inquiry regarding the issue of orphan works and in 2013 the EU Commission passed a new directive on the subject. Anders Kildsgaard will formulate some key notes on orphan works based on the discussions in the US and EU. One of the main topics of the discussion are extended collective licensing laws, which are already established in Denmark, and which allow collective management organizations to license all works within a category regardless of whether the copyright owner is a member of the collective management organization or not. This policy is not established in the U.S., though many academics consider the Google Books Settlement, which is on appeal, as similar to the collective licensing laws in force in the Scandinavian countries.

Speaker 2: Mette Sandbye

Mette Sandbye is associate professor in modern culture studies and head of the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at CopenhagenUniversity. She is the editor of the first Danish History of Photography and she has published several books and numerous articles on photography. Her current research is about the family photo album in the 1960s and 70s.

Photography’s Other Histories: Amateur photography between private and collective history. From the Kodak heydays to Web 2.0. – and the implications for academic studies

In the now ‘classical’ disciplines of photography history and theory there has been much focus on emphasizing photography as an art form and as a language of semiotically interpretative signs. But what about all the vernacular forms of photography, that does not necessarily fit into aesthetic theory and history? What can they tell us and how do we analyze them? Recently, fields of visual studies and visual anthropology have offered new ways to challenge the theory and the historiography of photography. The aim of this talk is to discuss methodological approaches to the study of family photography inspired by these currents. Why is it interesting to study amateur family photos from the point of view of the academic scholar?

Speaker 3: Thomas Christensen

Thomas Christensen is M.A. in film studies and since 1998 Curator at the Danish Film Institute. He has supervised several full digital restorations and a series of DVD publications. Since 2003 he has been on the FIAF Technical Commission. He has been closely involved in the EU projects European Film Gateway and EFG1914, as well as the current projects Presto4U and FORWARD. Since 2010 he has been Secretary General for the Association des cinémathèques européennes (ACE).

The EU Orphan Works Directive and how it may help cultural heritage institutions unlock heritage and bring it online.

In October 2014 European Union member states will have implemented the orphan works directive, which has been created to bring legal certainty to the online use by non-profit institutions of works in their collections, where no right holder can be located. The EU project FORWARD has been supported to provide best practice for film heritage institutions in the EU, since 20% of film heritage in Europe is thought to be orphan. This presentation is a pragmatic approach to the directive: What are the limitations of the directive? Which types of heritage will typically be relevant to investigate for orphan status? How can non-profit cultural institutions benefit and follow up on the policy agenda that created the directive?

[Show as slideshow]

Coventry (UK), 26 - 30 June 2014

Decoda Summer Dancing Festival

Decoda is an organisation that has grown from the Summer Dancing festivals, initiated in 2007 at Coventry University by Katye Coe. It is an artist led project based in the West Midlands with an international reach.

Decoda creates spaces for conversation, practice and community, offers residencies and curates workshop series, festivals and performance events.

Coventry University, coordinator of Europeana Space project, promoted the project and the Dance pilot in particular during the event.

This years exciting Summer Programme of workshops and activities took place at the end of June. The biennial festival includes workshops, performances, artists residencies and discussions that brings together established artists from the UK and abroad and provides a platform for new and emerging work.