 A Guide to Good Practice in Collaborative Working Methods and New Media Tools Creation Chapter 19 - Digital Heritage and Cultural Content This paper is designed to provide the reader with the key references concerning issues on new technologies and cultural heritage. As such it has two basic objectives. The first is to provide a factual guide to achievements of the European Commission's Information Society Technologies (IST) research programme in the field of digital heritage and cultural content. This will cover the calls issued and some basic information on research projects and clusters presently funded. Information concerning the European Commissions new research programme for the coming five years will also be provided. The second objective concerns information on eEurope, and specifically one action relating to the coordination of EU Member State digitisation programmes. eEurope 2005 will be briefly presented. The Fifth Framework Programme(1998-2002) The European Commission's Fifth Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development, 1998-2002 was divided into five thematic and three horizontal programmes. The Information Society Technologies (IST) programme was the largest of the thematic research and development programmes, with a global budget of 3,600 million euro. The main focus of the IST programme during the period 1998-2002 was on enhancing the user friendliness of the Information Society. The focus was thus on improving the accessibility, relevance and quality of public-services, especially for the disabled and elderly; empowering citizens as employees, entrepreneurs and customers; facilitating creativity and access to learning; helping to develop a multi-lingual and multi-cultural information society; ensuring universally available access and the intuitiveness of next-generation interfaces; and encouraging design for all. Multimedia content held a central role in the IST programme. The objective here was to confirm Europe as a leading force in this field and enable it to realise the potential of its creativity and culture. The Information Society Technologies Programme The IST Programme brought together and extended the past ACTS, Esprit and Telematics Applications programmes. It provided a single and integrated programme that reflected the convergence of information processing, communications and media technologies. The IST work programme consisted of activities divided up into four IST Key Actions, each playing a key role in achieving the overall objective of a user-friendly Information Society. The four Key Actions and their budgets for the five-year programme were: I. Systems and services for the citizen (budget 646 euro) In this context the focus of this paper is on cultural heritage in Key Action III. Key Action III - MultimediaContent and Tools TThis Key Action aimed to improve the functionality, usability and acceptability of future information products and services, to enable linguistic and cultural diversity and contribute to the valorisation and exploitation of Europe's cultural patrimony, to stimulate creativity, and to enhance education and training systems for lifelong learning. Work covered new models, methods, technologies and systems for creating, processing, managing, networking, accessing and exploiting digital content, including audio-visual content. This Key Action integrated both applications-oriented research, focusing on publishing, audio-visual, culture, education and training, and generic research in language and content technologies for all applications areas. Digital heritage and cultural content was one of the five main areas for research and technological development, and the aim was to expand the contribution of libraries, museums and archives to the emerging culture economy, thus encompassing all aspects of economic, scientific and technological development. This work built on achievements under the Fourth Framework Programme that addressed libraries, museums, archives and other related institutions. One key objective was to encourage convergence in technical approaches and applications for the various cultural institutions and networked services. These activities are still co-ordinated by the European Commission's Cultural Heritage Applications Unit D2 in the Directorate General Information Society, in Luxembourg. The Annual Work Programmes for Cultural and Scientific Heritage The IST programme provided a flexible framework where focus was developed within distinctive annual work plans. With respect to the Key Action on Multimedia and Tools this resulted in a total of 43 action lines issued over eight different call periods. For the 1999 work plan, the research priorities were taken up in two main types of action: 1999 Access to scientific and cultural heritage The objective of this first call was to select research projects that would improve access by citizens and by professionals to Europe's science and culture knowledge base. This was expected to involve developing advanced systems and services supporting large-scale distributed, multi-disciplinary collections of cultural and scientific multi-media resources. The technological focus was on rich representations, powerful immersive features such as 3D visualisation, real-time virtual object manipulation and group interactivity, whether for multimedia retrieval, virtual galleries, mass media events or audio-visual distribution. The projects were expected to develop new mixed-economy models for exploitation, repackaging and re-use, as well as address interoperable access to distributed resources, whether through cross-domain resource discovery, interfaces or new architectures and standards, or whether through digital archives integrating library and museum objects. A good example: ETB is the European Schools Treasury Browser. This project is building a web educational resource, Metadata Networking Infrastructure, for European schools. It links together existing national repositories and aims to allow students and teachers to find well-structured and quality resources within a Europe-wide SchoolNet Information Space. 1999 Digital preservation of cultural heritage Here the objective was to find new ways of representing, analysing, manipulating and managing different kinds of digital cultural objects from different media sources. Special attention was given to surrogates of fragile physical objects. Projects were expected to focus on the sustainable development of valuable digital repositories in Europe's libraries, museums and archives, and to address the technical and organisational problems surrounding the viability of scaleable digital repositories. One approach envisaged was through test-bed creation for long-term preservation and content management in distributed heterogeneous collections (e.g. provenance, authenticity, identification and links). Particular attention was to be paid to long-term accessibility, both by citizens and for scientific analysis, and to quality, affordability and acceptability criteria. A good example: 3D-MURALE concerns the 3D measurement and virtual reconstruction of ancient lost worlds of Europe. The project is developing 3D acquisition systems for archaeological sites. It is also building precise and realistic 3D models of the landscapes, buildings and artefacts in a way that allows archaeologists to analyse the findings and reconstruct the excavated site. It is being tested on the Sagalassos site in the province of Burdur in Turkey. For 2000 there were three different types of actions. 2000 Access to digital collections of cultural and scientific content Here the objective was to continue the work started in 1999 and to select new projects aiming to improve substantially access for citizens and professionals to Europe's repositories of cultural and scientific knowledge. For cultural knowledge the focus was on: The focus for scientific heritage was on the creation of international science collaboratoria that would integrate in a novel way sets of standards, tools and virtual world servers for the collaborative analysis of multi-disciplinary data. The work was expected to contribute to the creation of a sustainable European cultural landscape and address global consensus on common specifications and practices for new data models, architectures, benchmarks and metrics, test suites, meta-data directories and trust infrastructures. A good example: LEAF concerns the linking and exploring of authority files held by archives, museums, libraries, etc. The project proposes to harvest existing authority data and person name/company information and create common authority files with links to the original information. 2000 Trials on new access modes to cultural and scientific content Here the objective was to foster the adoption and introduction of leading edge technologies for access to cultural and scientific content. The focus was on trials using state-of-the-art technologies for memory organisations (archives, libraries, museums, etc) that would add value to collections and associated services. Domains of interest included new navigation tools, wireless access to the Web, improved visualisation of artefacts and collections, community building for thematic collections, etc. In all cases the trials were to be driven by an authentic need as expressed by a well-defined user profile. A good example: TRIS provides support for 25 technology trail projects. Each trail project is a small technology experiment situated in the real world of a cultural institution. TRIS provides a platform for the exchange of experience and a collective dissemination of results. See http://www.trisweb.org/ and the article in http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue6/tris/ for more information. 2000 Virtual representations of cultural and scientific objects The objective of this call was to provide a specific focus for exploring and experimenting with novel ways to create, manipulate, manage and present new classes of intelligent, dynamically adaptive and self-aware digital cultural objects. Such objects were either to be held by memory institutions (archives, libraries, museums, etc) or to directly involve digitally born objects or art forms. The focus was on: - User interaction and models for interactivity with high-quality virtual representations of valuable cultural objects, and - The creation and navigation of virtual cultural and scientific landscapes. The work was expected to focus on and result in the sustainable development of valuable digital repositories in Europe's libraries, museums and archives. This would include models for future virtual collections and guidelines for integrating real and virtual objects and collections. The projects selected were expected to provide examples of how dynamic user interaction with the cultural and scientific content could enhance the user experience. It was expected that projects would address the experiences of learning, exploring and entertaining for the user. A good example: VS means Virtual Showcases and involves a new stereoscopic display system that will augment existing display showcases in museums, etc. The focus is on 3D augmentation and mixes virtual representations and real artefacts within a shared space, providing new ways of merging and exploring real and virtual content. For 2001 there were again two new types of actions. 2001 Heritage for all Here the objective was to foster sustainable online communities in creating and documenting the digital record of their societies, including safeguarding its accessibility for the future. Projects were expected to innovative and experiment in creating, manipulating or aggregating local resources and making them sustainable, visible and valid in the global context. One option was digital archiving applications integrating discovery technologies and tools, to provide easy access to the evolving digital record of the peoples of Europe at different levels of complexity and detail. Another option were tools and services that guarantee equality of opportunity and quality of discovery services and resources in support of social and cultural inclusiveness. The projects were expected to take account of ongoing national and regional heritage initiatives and digitisation programmes. They were also expected to promote cooperation between different types of memory and cultural organisations at local/regional level, as well as appropriate public/private sector partnerships. The technical focus was on resource discovery and data fusion, on authentication, integrity of services, on usability and ergonomics, on stable and reusable business models, and on the active participation of end users through new online communities. A new cluster is born: As a result of the above action four new research projects have been recently launched. It is hoped that they will form the basis for a cluster to be developed in future programmes. CHIMER, CIPHER and COINE all address the personal views and interests of ordinary people in order to build a living picture of regional heritage across Europe. The fourth project, MEMORIAL, focuses on digitising a wide variety of paper documents in libraries, museums, libraries and public records offices concerning the Holocaust and developing a methodology and tools for the creation of personal digital memories. See http://www.chimer.org/, http://www.coine.org and http://www.memorialweb.net 2001 Next generation digital collections Here the objective was to improve substantially, both qualitatively and quantitatively, access for citizens and professionals to Europe's repositories of cultural and scientific knowledge. The focus was on advanced digital library applications built on very large-scale distributed collections and innovative systems delivering adaptive and intelligent scientific and cultural content, integrating new economic, business and navigational models, sustainable over time. Concerning virtual heritage this was expected to involve visualisation and VR as new tools/methods for representation and navigation (e.g. of objects, collections and landscapes). The work was expected to contribute to the long-term development of rich ecologies of cultural and scientific content, focusing on advanced networking of archival, museum and library resources. It should address: dynamic, interoperable and contextualised thematic collections; integration of visualisation technologies into next-generation digital libraries; reference and test environments for digital archiving and preservation of dynamic digital content; or user groups/communities, focusing on collaboration, usability, personalisation and delivery of services. These objectives were expected to build on existing collaborative actions and programmes at a member/associate state and international level (e.g. the Digital Libraries programme of the NSF). A good example: ORIEL will provide tools to manage large, complex, multimedia datasets and to navigate through increasingly intricate, complex and potentially confusing information landscapes. The application field is in genomics and bio-informatics and the European Molecular Biology Organisation runs the project. http://www.oriel.org/ 2002 Future research agendas and pioneering research For 2002 a new approach was adopted. This involved a generically specified set of actions valid across the whole of Key Action III. The topics were either aimed at preparing for future research activities, or performing long-term pioneering research. Topics touching on cultural heritage included advanced digital libraries, culture and arts, and digital preservation. The key features of such new projects were to be the specification of future research tasks in the form of a "road-map" and the building of the new research communities that will be needed to address the challenges identified. Laying the foundations for the future: This last call produced a small number of interesting projects that hope to lay the foundations for future integrated actions in their specific domains. One example is Musicnetwork, which will be a new network of excellence to bring together the music industry and content providers. The focus will be on the coding of music - standards, representation, distribution, protection, imaging conversion, etc. It will provide a collaboration platform for several ongoing European and national research projects in the general field of music. An Example of a Cluster of Projects: European Film Heritage The Digital Heritage and Cultural Content of IST has a number of activities in the area of applying new technologies in support of access to and preservation of film heritage. It also follows the DG Education and Culture activities on cinematographic heritage, specifically by participating in the "Groupe de contact patrimoine audiovisuel et cinematographique" established at the General Assembly on Cinematographic Heritage held in Sintra. Organisations dealing with film heritage face similar challenges to other heritage and memory institutions (archives, libraries, museums), that is mainly: physical restoration and cleaning of their assets; digitisation and digital preservation; building new digital archive models and services, and IPR and copyright. In addition they face unique problems of volume, scale and sustainability over time. RTD projects: To date, around 20 million euro in total costs, with 10 million euro funding from the Commission. Technical research areas: - Automatic restoration of impaired film to HDTV quality. This will result in a high quality product for film restoration. Main issues: - Development of business models for repurposing and reusing archival films. Summary of key projects: BRAVA - digital restoration of film and video to HD quality to improve use and access to impaired materials. Will result in a high-quality engineering product for film restoration, and develop advanced tools for automatic identification and processing of impairments. ECHO - creating a distributed digital library of film collections from national film archives in France, Netherlands and Italy. The aim is to provide better access to the collections and to develop business scenarios for repurposing and use of the materials, e.g. for educational and entertainment industry use. AMICITIA - demonstrator of an asset management system for broadcast materials, both for internal use and for public access. COLLATE - collaboratory to support researchers working on early 20-century film collections, in particular the surrounding censorship and other documentation. stein@darmstadt.gmd.de DELOS - network of excellence bringing together top researchers, technology providers and content owners to develop fora for advancing digital libraries research. http://www.ercim.org/delos List of key actors: Film Archives: Broadcast archives: The latest addition to this cluster of activities is the creation of a network of European historical film libraries (presently under negotiation). The Sixth Framework Programme (2002-2006) In the European Commission's document entitled "Towards a European Research Area", Commissioner Busquin proposes to "... look at how to progress towards a better organisation of research in Europe ...". The idea is to create a European research area. This is not a new idea, but the conditions required to progress towards achieving this now seem to be in place. How should this idea of a European research area be defined? It should embrace in particular the following aspects: - Networking of existing centres of excellence in Europe and the creation of virtual centres through the use of new interactive communication tools. The Sixth Framework Programme will be one of the most important instruments to implement the "European Research Area". This new framework introduces a new approach both in terms of content and instruments. The Sixth Framework Programme will be restructured around three targets: In addition to the presently available instruments, which will certainly undergo some revision and simplification, two new types of instruments are envisaged. The first is the new Network of Excellence designed to strengthen Europe's scientific and technical excellence by integrating existing or emerging national and research capacities. The other is the Integrated Project, which is designed to mobilise a critical mass of research and development effort on a specific and well-defined scientific and technological objective expected to result in new products, processes or services. The work described in this paper is carried out under the Information Society Technologies (IST) programme of the Fifth Framework Programme. IST in the Sixth Framework Programme will be the largest priority thematic area. One of the key objectives of the future programme will be to find solutions for major societal and economic challenges. This will include work on health, security, environment, learning, e-government, etc. and also "preservation of culture heritage". The CORDIS website provides an up-to-date review of progress on the Sixth Framework Programme, and the IST website provides more detailed information on the development of the specific objectives. eEurope: Creating Cooperation for Digitisation "Europe's cultural and scientific knowledge resources are a unique public asset forming the collective and evolving memory of our diverse societies and providing a knowledge basis for the development of our content industries in a sustainable knowledge society." Digitisation and the eEurope Action Plan Digitisation is an absolutely vital element if Europe is to exploit in the new digital world the rich cultural and scientific resources it holds. Equally digitisation contributes to the conservation and preservation of heritage and scientific resources. It creates new educational opportunities; it can be used to encourage tourism; and it provides ways of improving access by the citizen to their heritage. The critical role that it plays was recognised in the eEurope 2002 Action Plan endorsed by the EU Member Sates at the Feira European Council in June 2000. One of the objectives of the Action Plan is to stimulate European content in global networks in order fully to exploit the opportunities created by the advent of digital technologies. One specific action invited member states and the Commission jointly to Why co-ordinate? There is considerable financial and human effort invested in projects and in a variety of digitisation campaigns across Europe but these activities are heavily fragmented and there are many obstacles to making such initiatives successful, economic and sustainable over time. These hurdles include: Improving the awareness of what is going on in other countries (and within countries) at both policy and project levels is one type of action that can contribute to providing better access to digitised resources and to improving the effectiveness of digitisation initiatives. Other important actions involve the availability of practical guidelines and the identification and understanding of best practices. Another important activity is the promotion of standards that support interoperability. Lund Principles - a shared activity The Cultural Heritage Applications Unit of the Information Society Directorate General has since late 2000 been actively working with member states on how to co-ordinate approaches to digitisation, with the encouragement and support of successive council presidencies. The framework for the actions was launched at an experts' meeting of representatives from all countries, held in Lund on 4 April 2001. The conclusions and recommendations of this meeting were agreed as the "Lund Principles" and developed into an Action Plan. These established an agenda for actions to be carried out by member states, by the Commission, and by member states and Commission jointly. The approach is one of collaborative inputs and shared responsibilities across the different actors involved, ranging from bottom-up involvement of the cultural institutions themselves, for example in determining cases of best practice, to top-down initiatives on policies. Lund Principles - in summary The main conclusions were that the member states could make progress on the eEurope objective if they: The Commission could help achieve the eEurope objectives by: "An Open Method for Benchmarking Digitisation Policies - Objectives, Methodology and Indicators" has been proposed by the European Commission to the member states representatives as a tool to exchange "good practices" and to improve national practices, coordination and investments. Member states have adopted the model, included the benchmarking approach as a basic tool in the Lund Principles and they have established a Benchmarking Workgroup with experts nominated officially by national authorities. National Representatives Group A National Representatives Group (NRG), made up of officially nominated experts from each member state, has been established to act as "a steering group for the activities related to the co-ordination of digitisation policies and programmes, with special emphasis on cultural and scientific resources and on the contribution of public cultural institutions". Its stated mission is to act as guardians of the "Lund Principles" and to monitor progress of the Action Plan. The NRG held its first meeting in Brussels on 11 December 2001, and the second meeting took place in Alicante, Spain on 16-17 May 2002. These meetings will continue to take place every six months under the chair of the current Presidency, for example the next meeting is planned for 10-11 December 2002 under the Danish Presidency. The NRG will share national experiences and create a common platform for cooperation and coordination of national activities across the European Union, as well as for their follow-up at national level. It provides a stable, continuing focus for consensus building between member states, for promoting good practice, and for encouraging initiatives to support the visibility of quality cultural sites. As conclusion of that important meeting an important progress of the digitisation agenda has been reported and "Terms of Reference" have been produced. An evolving agenda Since Lund, work has progressed through a series of meetings, again involving national experts from across the EU and with the aim of putting into place practical co-operation schemes. These are supported by smaller working groups, which have initially focused on national policy profiles, on sharing national inventories and on metadata, on benchmarking, and on quality in cultural websites. Progress is reflected in updates to the Lund Action Plan. Each plenary meeting often further develops a specific focus. For example the Lund meeting paid special attention to policy profiles and to benchmarking and the next meeting held in Brussels on 17 July 2001 introduced the topic of quality and the proposal to develop the Brussels Quality Framework. The meeting held under the Spanish Presidency discussed digital preservation aspects. Further support: comes from MINERVA, a Network of Excellence funded by the IST programme. The network already has an initial of seven ministries or related national bodies, and all 15 EU member states are expected to join in the coming months. MINERVA is a collaborate framework for the executing the Lund Action Plan and organising its working groups. Policies National policy profiles have been created on the basis of an initial common questionnaire and all member states have undertaken to publish these on an appropriate national site to which these pages will link. At European level, these activities have been lent added support from the Council Resolutions of 21 January 2002 on "Culture in the knowledge society" (2002/C 32/01) and "Role of culture in the development of the European Union" (OJ, 2002/C 32/01). Both were published in the Official Journal, 5 February 2002, Series C. More recently the Spanish Presidency (first semester 2002) took on the challenge to create a framework for long-term digital preservation. A Council Resolution was prepared and has been accepted by the EU Ministers of Culture. The resolution, entitled "Preserving Tomorrow's Memory - preserving digital content for future generations", will be published soon in the Official Journal. eEurope 2005: An Information Society for All The European Commission has adopted a new Action Plan entitled "eEurope 2005: An information society for all". The new Action Plan aims to provide a favourable environment for private investment and for the creation of new jobs, to boost productivity, to modernise public services and notably education, and last but not least, to give everyone one the opportunity to participate in the global information society. This is the key message behind this action plan. Whereas the earlier eEurope 2002 Action Plan focuses on extending Internet connectivity across Europe, eEurope 2005 will concentrate on translating this into improved economic productivity and better, more accessible services for all European citizens, underpinned by secure, widely available broadband infrastructure. The Action Plan has two groups of actions that reinforce each other. On the one hand services, applications and content, covering both online public services and e-business. On the other hand the underlying broadband infrastructure and security matters. By 2005 Europe should have: A number of initiatives will address both sides of the "demand and supply" equation simultaneously - actions on e-government, e-health, e-learning and e-business, for example, will foster the development of new services, as will the targeted use of purchasing power by public authorities. On the supply side a number of actions focusing on broadband and security, such as the establishment of a Cyber-Security TaskForce and activities in less favoured regions, should advance the rollout of infrastructure. Concerning culture, the Commission is proposing to introduce an action on modern online public services and e-Government concerning culture and tourism. This action provides for co-operation with member states and the private sector and regional authorities, to define e-services to promote Europe and to offer user-friendly public information. These e-services should be deployed by 2005 and build on interoperable interfaces, use broadband communication, and be accessible from all types of digital terminals. Europe's Memory Institutions: The Way into the Digital Cultural Economy Today, archives, libraries and museums all over Europe face similar challenges as they try to take advantage of information technologies in the emerging digital cultural economy. While the conversion of all sorts of content into bits and bytes opens up totally new opportunities for interoperability and information exchange between the formally separated "memory institutions", it also causes new problems and difficulties. One of the biggest challenges for Europe's archives, libraries and museums in the digital age is to keep abreast of the increasing speed of technological development and to act accordingly. It is for this reason that a major study was commissioned in 2000 entitled "Technological landscapes for tomorrow's cultural economy", or the so-called DigiCult study. This is a strategic study on the state of the art of use, development and research in information and communication technologies for the cultural (and associated) sectors in Europe. The objective is to provide a clear set of action recommendations for cultural institutions Europe-wide. In order to achieve this goal, it provides an in-depth analysis of the state of the art of technologies, content, cultural services and applications as well as (user) demands and policies in the sector. The DigiCult report focuses on four key areas, namely: The results are based upon an online Delphi survey, and a series of 29 in-depth interviews and six workshops. More than 180 international cultural experts, from large to small cultural actors, provided their personal opinions to the study contractors Salzburg Research. The study consortium included also nine highly acknowledged European cultural organisations. In addition, and in order to address the need to understand the new social context of Europe's cultural institutions, a new study will be launched in the coming months. This study, entitled "Social and economic inclusiveness: the role of cultural and memory organisations", will: Results are expected in the second semester of 2003 and can be expected to influence actions to be undertaken in the Sixth Framework Programme. Conclusion This paper has tried to summarise some of the formal aspects of the on-going programme on digital heritage and cultural content. It has not attempted to outline in a systematic way the results obtained so far. However a specific example of a cluster of projects on film heritage has been presented in order to show the type of projects being funded and the nature of the challenges being addressed. The service managing the issues on digital heritage and cultural content issues a newsletter every two months that outlines progress and summarises ongoing initiatives. Along with the website, the newsletter represents the most effective way to remain up to date on calls for proposals, projects being launched and results obtained. With respect to development of the Sixth Framework Programme, the reader is encouraged to consult the website regularly and to subscribe to the newsletter. - continue to 20 - User-Centered Product Creation in Electronic Publishing: Good Practice Models - return to table of contents |
