The EUreka3D project addresses the growing need of enabling the digital transformation of the Cultural Heritage sector. It is a 24 months project funded in the Digital Europe Programme of the European Union.
The digital transformation comes from a decades-long process of digitization of cultural collections for the purpose of sharing this heritage online; however, not all Cultural Heritage Institutions have achieved the same level of maturity towards the new digital environment they need to embrace, and much work still needs to be done to keep the pace with fast improving technology and changing users needs.
3D model of Asinou Church, courtesy of CUT Cyprus University of Technology
Museums, galleries, libraries, archives and archaeological sites need to review and modernise, if not to create from scratch, their internal digital transformation processes, from digital capture to end-user access and re-use. They need to re-train their personnel to cope with the new digital responsibilities and roles; to review their infrastructure capacity, in particular with regard to the ability to process 3D contents; to generate a novel holistic documentation of the digital objects.
The vision of a European Data Space for Cultural Heritage as a participatory playfield for all the actors involved (cultural institutions, technology partners, multidisciplinary experts, creative industry, scientific researchers, end-users) moves in this direction, and requires CHIs of any size to enter the challenge of advanced digitization (especially 3D digitization in high-quality), holistic representation of CH information and re-use approaches. The existing services of the Europeana platform is a good starting point to support sharing and re-use, but an integration with more advanced, powerful and safe services is needed to answer to the demand of small institutions, as well as modern workflows and increased digital capacity are requested on the side of CHIs.
From a technical viewpoint, CHIs need to move away from former ICT generations focussing on a web presence, specialised catalogue databases, isolated digitization processes and showcase of virtual exhibitions, towards a comprehensive, integrated, cloud-based IT-infrastructure that reaches out of the borders of the individual institute and focusses on network services and interoperability, within the European Data Space for Cultural Heritage, crossing also with other Data Spaces that are under construction and evolution.
Nowadays, a museum and any other CHI can no longer do its work alone, in isolation: it needs to be part of a network to keep the pace of the digital transformation and grow competence.
This is what EUreka3D project is about.
Main Work across 24 Months:
Aggregation of a rich variety of new content in Europeana
Capacity building in the area of 3D digitization and holistic documentation of 3D content, according to the recent VIGIE Study on quality in 3D digitisation of tangible cultural heritage
e-infrastructure services development:
- Access to computing and storage resources managed in Europe
- Publication of services on EOSC
- Pilot on authorization and authentication with different levels of interaction with Europeana services.
Europeana editorials and communication.
Coordinator: PHOTOCONSORTIUM
Partners:
- Cyprus University of Technology
- CRDI Ajuntament de Girona
- BIBRACTE
- Museo della Carta
- Europeana
- imec
- EGI Foundation
- Affiliate partner: AGH Cyfronet
