Digital meets Culture

The BoB archive for AI

From presence to prominence: how can computer vision widen the evidence base around on-screen representation

Learning on Screen is a UK charity and membership organisation specialised in the use of moving image and sound in education and research.
The organization is exploring the potential in its archive of over 2.4 million television and radio broadcasts as a dataset to train algorithms – the BoB archive – available for research purposes, particularly in the field of Artificial Intelligence. At this purpose, it is currently conducting a pilot project in collaboration with Nesta to investigate the challenges and opportunities related to using the BoB archive to apply machine learning to answer different research queries. The project – led by Raphael Leung and Cath Sleeman (Nesta) – analyses a sample of the BoB archive to explore how computer vision can be used to study diversity and representation on British TV, with a focus on gender inequality.
The three pieces of work in this research series are:
Part one: Gaps in the evidence base
Part two: A framework for measuring on-screen
Part three: An illustrative demo measuring prominence of TV character
The blog series reporting the first findings of the project is available here.
Learning on Screen website.
Creative Industries website.

The world's largest open access digital archive for biodiversity literature

Biodiversity Heritage Library

Text by Caterina Sbrana.

Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is an open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives dedicated to life on Earth.

The curators of the library claim that it is the “world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives”. And with an access to over 240,000 free nature images and more than 58 million pages, we can believe it.

Since its launch in 2006, BHL supported studies and research carried out around the world. The Biodiversity Heritage Library’s goal is to continue in transforming research on a global scale and ensure that everyone, everywhere has the information and tools they need to study, explore and conserve life on Earth, responding in these objectives to a request from scientists who have long considered this lack of access to biodiversity literature as a major impediment to the efficiency of scientific research.

Screenshot of the home page of the Biodiversity Heritage Library; https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org

BHL collects animal sketches, historical diagrams, botanical studies, and various scientific research collected from hundreds of thousands of journals and libraries around the globe. These documents are essential to understand the complexities of swiftly-changing ecosystems in the midst of a major extinction crisis and widespread climate change.

A way to enjoy this extraordinary archive is to enter the home page of the Library and from here directly into the BHL channel on Flickr, from which you can access, as I said above, over 240,000 free nature images from its collection, concerning plants, flowers, insects, birds of prey, fish, reptiles, shells, mushrooms etc. As specified in the Library’s project description (https://about.biodiversitylibrary.org/), through Flickr, BHL provides access to free nature images, enabling greater discovery and expanding its audience to the worlds of art and design. BHL also supports a variety of volunteer projects that encourage the public to help enhance collection data.

Some of the albums you can access from the Flickr platform; https://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/albums/page48

The BHL portal provides free access to hundreds of thousands of volumes, comprising over 58 million pages, from the 15th-21st centuries. 150,000 illustrations are available in the BHL collection for free download and in high-resolution files.

This photo of Scorpaena Gibbosa is in the Journal des Museum Godeffroy. Hamburg; Bd. 2:Heft. 3,5,7,9 (1873-1875); https://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/50667074123/in/album-72157717114877288/

BHL operates as a worldwide consortium of universities, museums, national libraries, botanical gardens, clubs and societies. The aim of the consortium is to work together to digitize the natural history literature held in their collections and at the same time make this cultural heritage freely available for open access.

As described on the website, “The BHL consortium works with the international taxonomic community, publishers, bioinformaticians, and information technology professionals to develop tools and services to facilitate greater access, interoperability, and reuse of content and data. BHL provides a range of services, data exports, and APIs to allow users to download content, harvest source data files, and reuse materials for research purposes. Through taxonomic intelligence tools developed by Global Names Architecture, BHL indexes the taxonomic names throughout the collection, allowing researchers to locate publications about specific taxa”.

Many social media are used by BHL to reach worldwide audiences and allow people to explore thousands of images: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and, as I said, Flickr.

This painting is in the collection “A selection of the birds of Brazil and Mexico”, London: H.G. Bohn, 1841; https://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/5977780242/in/album-72157627284762054

Beyond the extraordinary collections, what has struck me was the reason why the Library was created, which can be read read in depth on its history page (https://about.biodiversitylibrary.org/about/history-of-bhl/): “The Biodiversity Heritage Library was created to address a major obstacle to scientific research: lack of access to natural history literature. This literature underpins the work of researchers around the world by providing species data and descriptions, ecosystem profiles, distribution maps, inter-dependency observations, geological and climatic records, and more. At a 2003 meeting funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, scientists stated that providing free, online access to this literature would greatly improve the efficiency of research worldwide.”

These drawings are in the album Types du règne animal. Buffon en estampes; https://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/50353484827/in/album-72157716009448326/

I agree with the idea of scientists to provide free, online access, believing that scientific information should not be prerogative of researchers or even published only in academic journals but should be freely accessible and free of charge. It is thanks to a new idea of scientific communication that many paper-based documents contained in historical archives, to which few people had access, have been digitized and made accessible online. The communication of science is experiencing now a kind of revolution.

https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/

https://about.biodiversitylibrary.org/about/history-of-bhl/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/albums/page48

The history of forced migration in an online exhibition at the Sydney National Maritime Museum

Britain’s children “shipped” since 1860s

Text by Caterina Sbrana.

There is a history of migration involving a large number of Britain’s children who were “shipped” since the 1860s to Canada, Australia and other Commonwealth countries. This fate affected over 100,000 children. I knew the living conditions of English children at the time of industrialization and their exploitation in work in the new factories, but I didn’t know this sad page of history that is well remembered and described in an online exhibition presented by the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney, titled “Britain’s child migrants”.

Screenshot of the “Britain’s child migrants” on line exhibition home page, showing four children with their suitcases; https://www.sea.museum/discover/online-exhibitions/britains-child-migrants

You may wonder why this forced migration. We can read the reasons in the page that introduces the exhibition: “Few were orphans; many came from families who were unable to care for them. With the belief that the lives of these children would improve, charitable and religious organisations sent them overseas. They were supported by governments for which these schemes supplied much needed population and labour”.

The forced migration lasted for almost a century and it is not difficult to understand how for these children the separation from their families was dramatic. “Child migration schemes – as we continue to read in the introduction- received criticism from the outset yet continued until the 1960s. Formal apologies from the Australian Government in 2009 and British Government in 2010 were made but many former child migrants and their families are still coming to terms with their experiences”.

The on line exhibition is organized in six sections: The Departure, Empire and Dominions, The Voyage, New Lands, New Life, Reflection, remembering and reunion, Resources. Each section is presented by one or few images and short texts. It is possible within the individual sections to access subsections through which you can deepen some topics.

This screenshot shows the main sections of the “Britain’s child migrants” on line exhibition; https://www.sea.museum/discover/online-exhibitions/britains-child-migrants

The photographs show the children with their suitcases – often the only luggage they brought with them, along with the feeling of separation. Of some children there are “study sheets”, if we can use this term, in which you can find information about the age they had when they were made migrants, where they came from and what was their destination. And again, thanks to the exhibition you can know the shipping companies and also the name of the ships that were generally used for these forced voyages. The exhibition includes examples of letters sent by child migrants where they describe some of the places they visited and their experiences during their long voyage to Australia.

The Resources section provides links to various other sites for both families who have been affected by child migration, and researchers interested in finding out more about this subject.

The exhibition was made possible thanks to the collaboration between the Australian National Maritime Museum and National Museums Liverpool, Liverpool, UK and is supported by the National Collecting Institutions Touring and Outreach Program, an Australian Government program that aims to improve access to the national collections for all Australians.

https://www.sea.museum/discover/online-exhibitions/britains-child-migrants

Join the Europa Nostra launch webinar, register now!

“Putting Europe’s shared heritage at the heart of the European Green Deal” The European Cultural Heritage Green Paper

The upcoming webinar is devoted to present the green book on European Cultural Heritage. The Paper highlights the key rule of cultural heritage for achieving the ambitious goals targeted by the European Green Deal, designed to face the climate and environmental challenges representing the main tasks of this generation. The future of Europe’s cultural heritage depends on its success. At the same time, Europe’s shared values and common heritage offer undeniable potential to help accomplish the Green Deal’s mission. This is why cultural heritage is essential to the success of the European Green Deal. The European Cultural Heritage Green Paper aims to integrate cultural heritage into climate action and inspire the mobilisation of the heritage community for transformative climate action. The paper correlates the capacities of cultural heritage to all key areas of the European Green Deal, including Clean Energy, Circular Economy, Renovation Wave, Smart Mobility, Farm to Fork, Green Finance and a Just Transition, Research and Innovation, Education and Training, as well as Green Deal Diplomacy. Potential conflicts between heritage safeguarding and European Green Deal action are also identified as well as win-win strategies of overcoming these conflicts. The Paper proposes a series of recommendations both for policy-makers and for cultural heritage stakeholders.
The European Cultural Heritage Green Paper is produced by Europa Nostra in close cooperation with ICOMOS and the Climate Heritage Network, with the input of members of the European Heritage Alliance and with the support of the European Investment Bank Institute.
The webinar will be introduced by Hermann Parzinger, Executive President of Europa Nostra, and Francisco de Paula Coelho, Dean of the European Investment Bank.
The Green paper will be present by Andrew Potts (ICOMOS, Coordinator of the Climate Change and Heritage Working Group), project manager and lead author.
The webinar will count on the participation of Mariya Gabriel, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth and Ambroise Fayolle, Vice-President of the European Investment Bank responsible for Climate Action, will intervene in video message. The webinar will be moderated by Sneška Quaedvlieg-Mihailović, Secretary General of Europa Nostra.
IMPORTANT: Participation is free but registration is mandatory.
Read more about the Launch webinar here.

An example of preservation conducted under the aegis of the British Library in London

Digitisation of the endangered monastic archive at May Wäyni, Ethiopia

Text by Caterina Sbrana.

I have already spoken in my blogs about the importance of the digitisation of historical documents in order to enable them to be used and disseminated worldwide through the Internet. There is another reason why digitisation is important and this is the preservation of endangered documents. The term ‘endangered’ is related to those historical materials, documents, manuscripts, paintings that for various causes are at risk of being destroyed and are located in countries where resources and opportunities to preserve them are lacking or limited. An example of this work is conducted by the British Library in London through the Endangered Archives Programme (EAP), with the financial support of the Arcadia Fund, a charitable fund established by Dr Lisbet Rausing and Professor Peter Baldwin.

Within the EAP, the project team consisting of Professor Michael Gervers (University of Toronto), Professor Ewa Balicka-Witakowska (Uppsala University), Professor Jan Retsö (Göteborg University) and Dr. Jacek Tomaszewski (Institute of Oriental Art, Warsaw) worked on the digitisation of the 91 manuscripts belonging to May Wäyni monastery, in the region of Tigray, in northern Ethiopia. Other drawings as well as miniatures have been independently digitised.

Screenshot of the home page of EAP, regarding the May Wayni manuscripts. We can see three priests who show the ancient manuscripts; https://eap.bl.uk/project/EAP526

In the introductory page of the project it is possible to read the primary objective of this work: “Since the old church of May Wäyni and its storage facility recently collapsed, and the construction of the new church has stopped due to lack of funds, the manuscripts are presently stored in a primitive hut, lying on the floor or on rough benches. Regularly used liturgical books reside in the altar unit in the unfinished sanctuary. Types of damage include accumulation of mould, ravages of mice, male caterpillar holes, water damage, burning, and detached and torn folios. […] The collection at May Wäyni contains numerous specimens of high interest to scholars working on Ethiopian literature and ecclesiastical history. It is threatened, however, by minimal protection in a roughly built structure suffering from near collapse. To prevent further damage to the manuscripts, the monks have distributed those not used during the daily services (including the old biblical texts) among the monks and villagers. This arrangement is particularly unfortunate as it is leading to the increased dispersal of the manuscripts, many of which will find their way to the market place before their content has been recorded. The collection of manuscripts will be cleaned and placed in improved storage conditions. Digital copies will be deposited with local and international institutions.”

The Archival records are divided into some sections such as “File”, “Manuscript” “Ge’ez” the ancient Ethiopic, a subdivision that allows the researcher to immediately access the documents and informations.

By clicking on “View archives from this project” we find different sections and we can select our search; https://eap.bl.uk/project/EAP526/search

On the website you can read an open access article entitled: “Technological aspects of the monastic manuscript collection at May Wäyni, Ethiopia”, which is signed by Jacek Tomaszewski and Michael Gervers. This study is part of the book From Dust to Digital and can be also downloaded free of charge as a Pdf. Its use is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Non-derivative 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Therefore it is possible to share, copy, distribute and transmit for personal and non-commercial use providing author attribution is clearly stated.
The article presents the monastic site where the manuscripts are kept, describes the collection and its state of conservation. Some manuscripts are in bad condition and many pages are eaten by rodents and bacteria. The study also notes that most of the damage is found mainly in the margins of the pages.
The publication contains the list of manuscripts, the material with which the cover is made, describes the images, the state of preservation and illustrates the reasons of the destruction.

The volumes digitized may all be classified as ecclesiastical literature. One of the manuscript, catalogued as MW041, contains an inserted miniature of the Virgin Mary and Child, dating from the 15th century. All manuscripts are written in ancient Ethiopic, known as Ge’ez.

The importance of the digitisation project can be found not only in its ability to preserve manuscripts and enable them to be read worldwide, but also to know the history of Ethiopian and Eastern Christian monasticism, the history of Ethiopia, the history of the manuscript book, and Ethiopian art history in the context of Byzantine and Christian Oriental artistic traditions.

Another aspect that I believe is essential in the EAP, the project of safeguarding endangered documents, is the idea that the manuscripts have to be protected in situ, in their place of origin. Different measures were applied under the direction of a conservator and they are well described in the Outcomes paragraph: “placing protective cotton inserts (as per Ethiopian tradition) over folios containing miniatures and other decorative elements, securing loose manuscript covers and the original protective boxes, placing the most valuable and damaged pieces in appropriately sized protective, acid-free boxes, examining loose folios wherever they are found and placing them in numerated folders, instructing Ethiopian ecclesiastics (especially the qes gäbäz, who is the keeper of church possessions) and civil authorities on how to protect the manuscripts under existing circumstances. […] Digitisation was carried out in the presence of the conservator and the ecclesiastics responsible for the manuscripts, who were instructed in how to care for them.”

Copies of the entire archive have been deposited with:
The Library of The Monastery of May Wäyni (Tigray), The Ethiopian Liturgical Library (Addis Ababa),The Office of Tourism and Culture, Makele (Tigray),The Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa,The British Library,The Library of the University of Toronto Scarborough.

https://eap.bl.uk/project/EAP526

https://eap.bl.uk/project/EAP526/search

TownsWeb Archiving offers support and resources to CHIs appying for fundings

Free funding resource pack available for download

TownsWeb Archiving have just released a FREE Funding Resource Pack that will no doubt appeal to holders of archive collections. Embarking on a digitisation project comes at a cost and securing adequate funding is often where most projects fail to get started, hence the annual TWA Digitisation Grant.

In addition to this grant, TWA have now created a bank of free funding focused resources, which you can access by following the link below. You will be immediately directed to industry expert and Manager of PCN, Debbie Cooper’s successfully tried and tested advice on ‘How to Write When You’ve Got a Need’.

You will also receive, direct to your email:

A comprehensive list of funding organisations
Expert advice about how to apply for HLF funding
Expert Top Tips on how to complete that all-important funding bid

And over the proceeding weeks you will continue to receive funding focused resources and tools.

Grants are a really practical way of overcoming what has become one of the most significant barriers to digitisation. We hope the above will help to make the process more accessible through sharing the guidance of those who have themselves achieved success, and gathering tips, information, advice and tools into one place.

To access all of this, please follow the link below:

https://blog.townswebarchiving.com/2021/03/digitisation-funding-resource-pack-download

a session organized by CitizenHeritage at Open Belgium 2021 online event

Open Cultural Data in Citizen Science

text by Mariana Ziku.

The workshop “Open Cultural Data in Citizen Science” was successfully hosted at the Open Belgium 2021 on March 17, as part of the publication activities of the CitizenHeritage project (2020-2023), organised by Web2Learn with speakers Katerina Zourou, Mariana Ziku, Frederik Truyen, Susanna Ånäs and mediator Susan Hazan. The workshop discussed citizen science practices in the cultural heritage field, in light of open science, through presentations and a roundtable discussion.

Katerina Zourou, Ph.D., director of Web2Learn introduced the workshop with an overview of the expected results of the CitizenHeritage study conducted by Web2Learn. Mariana Ziku, PhD candidate, research associate at Web2Learn, presented “a review of practices of Higher Education engagement in citizen enhanced open science in the area of cultural heritage”. This is the first output of the CitizenHeritage project, outlined here, which will be fully released in July 2021.

Professor Frederik Truyen, Professor at KU Leuven, discussed the “user requirements, guidelines and methodologies for cultural heritage institutions and universities”, presenting citizen science initiatives related to Europeana.

Susanna Ånäs, project director at Open Knowledge Finland, presented the “Hack4OpenGLAM initiative” and invited the public to take part in the survey for the next event, to be found here.

Finally, Dr Susan Hazan, Emeritus, Senior Curator of New Media and Head of the Internet Office at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Chair of the European Network Association (ENA), moderated the roundtable, initiating the discussion with her personal citizen science experience as a participant in the Europeana Collection Days.

All slides can be found also here.

online, 19th March 2021

Cultural heritage and climate change

On March 19, the Fridays For Future Movement and Europeana Climate Action Group organized a meeting to discuss collective climate action with a focus on steps that the cultural heritage sector can take to achieve this.

As a sector, a call to action is needed to fight against climate change, and work together to protect our planet. The programme highlighted and shared the climate action work that has been done by cultural heritage professionals, as well as introduce a Climate Action Map where cultural heritage institutions and organisations can share their climate actions, whether small or large.

[Show as slideshow]

Agenda:

10:00 – 10:10 Welcome by Barbara Fischer
10:10 – 10:20 Your Digital footprint by Patrick Ehlert
10:20 – 10:30 Inspiration on the ‘Museums On the Climate Journey’ roadmap by Diane Drubay
10:30 – 10:40 Museums For Future by Anna Krez
10:40 – 10:50 Culture Declares Emergency by Bridget McKenzie
10:50 -11:00 Presentation of the map by Kathryn Cassidy and Killian Downing
11:00 – 11:20 Debate moderated by Diane Drubay and Killian Downing
11:20 – 11:30 Wrap up by Barbara Fischer

More information can be found in this news piece on Europeana Pro.

online, 17th March 2021

Open Belgium and CitizenHeritage

Citizen Heritage is being presented today in a special session of the Open Belgium online event. Open Belgium is an annual community event, focused on making knowledge open, usable, useful and used.

Join today h. 16.45: https://2021.openbelgium.be/

This roundtable discusses the concept of citizen science as a participatory research methodology in cultural heritage and reviews good practices in creating and communicating open cultural data in citizen science initiatives.

online, 25th March 2021

Crowddreaming: Youth Co-Create Digital Culture conference

Cultural heritage was put in the spotlight in 2018 with European Year of Cultural Heritage that saw thousands of events and millions of people engaged across the European continent. But it didn’t stop there. Successes from 2018 and new policy document (e.g. New European Agenda for Culture) have strengthened other dimensions of cultural policy and also cultural heritage.

Here our story begins. Crowddreaming: Youth Co-Create Digital Culture (CDDC) is an Erasmus+ project that started 2 years ago. We scaled up an Italian good practice and developed a methodology to use digital cultural heritage as a mean for inclusive education and the promotion of European values among youngsters.

The online event will present how more than 1600 students from Croatia, Greece, Italy and Latvia under the mentorship of 90 teachers and support by tutors dived into their local history and explored how it connects to other European nations. The results of their work is a digital monument Europa Square. It hosts 80 digital thankyou scenes created by youngsters. You will not only learn about the Crowddreaming methodology that enabled this but also explore the Europa Square yourself.

To register please click on this link by 23 March. A personal link will be sent to you closer to the event date with the access details to the event platform.

The conference will also bring together representatives of policy makers and representatives of the civil society organisations who will discuss why we need a stronger collaboration between cultural and education sectors and how to ensure it. The tone of the event will be set by aspiring keynotes from two renowned experts in innovation in digital cultural heritage. More information about the speakers is available here.

Programme of the conference:

14:00 – 14:15 Welcome and Introduction to the conference

Achilles Kames, Chair of the Board, ALL DIGITAL aisbl

14:15 – 14:45 Keynotes

Cultural heritage and innovation: What does the future bring?

Matevž Štraus, ID20

Augmented reality, cultural heritage and education

Gunnar Liestøl, Professor, Dept. of Media & Communication, University of Oslo

14:45 – 15:00 Presentation of the CDDC policy recommendations

Borut Cink, CDDC project coordinator, ALL DIGITAL aisbl

15:00 – 16:00 Panel debate: Cultural heritage, education and digitalisation: What lies ahead?

Member of European Parliament (tbc)
Michael Teutsch, Head of unit for schools and Multilingualism, DG EAC, European Commission
Marianna Marcucci, Co-Founder, Invasioni Digitali
Brikena Xhomaqi, Director of Lifelong Learning Platform (LLLP)

Moderator: Altheo Valentini, General Director, EGINA Slrl

16:00 – 16:15 Coffee Break

16:15 – 16:45 Presentation of the project results and introduction to the Europa Square Platform

Paolo Russo, Secretary General, Stati Generali dell’Innovazione

16:45 – 17:15 Europa Square experience

Virtual reality experience of the Europa Square