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By Jean-Hugues Chenot - October 2000
Jean-Hugues Chenot of the Institut national de l'Audiovisuel, France, presents the BRAVA project [1]. The projects main aims are to significantly enhance the efficiency of film and video-originated archive restoration process and to prepare the restored material for dissemination via multi-resolution digital video broadcasting standards.
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The continuing explosion in the number of
broadcast, satellite and cable channels in operation, coupled
with the current development of video on demand, video and DVD
publishing, and multimedia services, are creating an extensive
and exacting demand for programme material. This demand has made
European broadcasters, archivists and film makers the custodians
of a huge wealth of moving picture archive material. But the
level of exploitation of moving picture archives is currently
limited by the high cost and lengthy processing time required to
restore archive material to meet the expectations of viewers.
Efficient and cost-effective restoration is hence a key to
large-scale exploitation of television archives, such
exploitation being itself necessary to guarantee the continuous
investment in preservation of the audio-visual heritage.
Documents stored as 35mm or 16mm film are very often affected by deterioration due to ageing and/or improper storage and handling conditions. When transferred to 4.2.2 digital video, the full-bandwidth broadcast-quality format, the quality of the copy is very often unsuitable for direct exploitation.
Programmes stored on video tapes are prone to the same problems, but there is the additional complication that the video storage formats have become obsolete. It is generally difficult to maintain the playing equipment in good working order and it is sometimes almost impossible to find replacement parts. In consequence, artefacts resulting from difficulties in playback often affect the programmes.
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In both cases, it is however possible to address these impairments in the video domain, after playback. The ACTS AC072 AURORA project [2] succeeded in proving that it was technically possible to raise the quality and efficiency of the digital restoration of archive programmes. However progress was still needed in the automation and efficiency of the restoration process, extending coverage of the wide range of common defects, improving quality of the results, and including HD video processing.
The BRAVA project aims at developing further the results of the AURORA project, to ensure the widest possible access to valuable archive material by significantly enhancing the efficiency of the video and film programme restoration process and preparing the restored material for dissemination via multi-resolution digital video broadcasting standards. The main project focus will be to develop the prototype of a system to significantly reduce the cost of archive restoration, enabling archive holders and programme makers to open up and exploit a wealth of material not previously affordable. A reduction in restoration time will be achieved through the development of algorithms which are capable of analysing the image and optimising the restoration process by controlling each of the individual stages used in the restoration. The prototype that will replace many of the current manual video restoration processes by providing real-time processing of a wide range of defects and will have automated features to provide restoration at or close to real time operation, hereby meeting the needs of professional archive restorers. This will be realised through the development of new techniques which will be evaluated on a hardware/software test bed. The project will improve picture quality by maintaining greater detail (bandwidth) of original film archives than is currently achieved and ensure that more of the fine detail in the original picture is processed during restoration, providing the required quality for broadcasting. Several hours of programme material will be restored at the Users' sites using the developed system, and a complete evaluation of the performance will be made on this occasion.
The key objectives for the project are :
The BRAVA system will be exploited in a broadcast environment for restoring TV archive programmes. Three different tasks will be made by operators : programme expertise, video restoration, audio restoration. For reasons of efficiency, these three different tasks will be, in principle executed by three different operators, but the system should allow for one operator to execute all of these operation at the same time in a unique environment.
As a general rule, each of these operations will take place linearly, and in real-time. This is strictly required for large programmes durations to be restored at affordable costs.
The operator will play the programme in real-time through analysis or processing equipment, and adjust on-the-fly the parameters. At any time, the operator will be able to stop the operations, come back to a specific point, change a setting or correct a problem, and resume operations.
The system will be built around a central media store. The programmes to be restored, or parts of them, will be stored and visible as files.
A lightweight tool for assisting the expertise, will assist an operator in making an assessment of the programme. This tool will run either directly from the files, or as a slave to a VTR. In both cases, it will run a real-time on-the-fly analysis of the parts of the programme that are played by the operator. The operator will be able to log down comments, take note of specific problems (a choice list will be provided), and navigate freely through the programme. The result of the programme evaluation will be a composite report, with the operator's report, completed by the automated analysis results. This report will be used for deciding on the opportunity and target quality of the restoration.
The central media store will provide Fibre Channel access to the different programmes, or parts of. These files will be visible as video and audio files. The different processes (loading, analysis, real-time restoration, video editing, audio restoration, off-loading), will be able to run independently, on a non-exclusive file access basis.
The video restoration will be split into two processes : the real-time video process will play from the files the video and associated audio into the external Real-Time Restoration Unit (RTRU), and the results will be stored again into results files.
A Non-Linear Editing (NLE) tool will be used to possibly re-edit the programme when real-time processing does not help (several images missing...), to control navigation through the programme, to apply processing plug-ins if necessary, to give access to a paint tool, to execute basic audio/video re-synchronisation.
The results of the analysis, completed by additional analysis done in real-time during the work, will be used to give access to functions such as "go to next/previous shot/problemX/problemY", or "apply setting to current shot". A separate audio editing tool will have access to the audio files and video files, and will allow an in-depth re-synchronisation, will allow audio restoration in real-time through the use of plug-ins.
Architecture
The system will provide for:
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After 8 months, the project has produced the User requirements and System Specifications, and is actively progressing in the detailed specifications of the hardware and software subsystems.
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Jean-Hugues Chenot
Institut national de l'Audiovisuel
France
brava_mgt@ina.fr
<http://www.ina.fr/index.en.html>
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For citation purposes:
Chenot, J. "BRAVA - Broadcast Restoration of Archives through Video Analysis ", Cultivate Interactive, issue
2, 16 October 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue2/brava/>
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By Klaus Reinhardt - October 2000
Klaus Reinhardt reports on the establishment of a new network in the field of cultural heritage applications under the 5th Framework Programme (IST Programme), the new “anchor” for libraries, archives and museums. This is an updated version of an article published in Exploit Interactive, issue 4. [1]
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Under the 3rd and 4th Framework Programme a network of National Focal Points (NFPs) was established in all EU Member States and most of the associated states as part of the Telematics for Libraries Programme. In the 5th Framework Programme the structure has changed. The “old” Telematics Programme is part of the Information Society Technology Programme (IST) and there is no longer a “libraries area”. The only place you can find the word “libraries” (together with archives and museums) in the IST Programme is in Digital Heritage and Cultural Content, a sub area of Key Action III: Multimedia Content and Tools.
CULTIVATE is an answer to the need for a newly structured network supporting the co-operation of archives, libraries and museums under the 5th Framework Programme. It is a pan-European network for the Digital Heritage Community including IT staff, information professionals, researchers, managers, policy makers, galleries, non-profit making organisations etc. This network will have two sub-sections: one for the western part of Europe and another for the 10 accession countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The western part of CULTIVATE begun in February 2000 for a period of 36 months. The eastern part is expected to follow at the beginning of next year. Both activities were planned together and will work in a close co-operation.
CULTIVATE has established to date a European Digital Cultural Heritage Network consisting of 15 partners based in 12 European countries. In addition there are also National Nodes in Denmark, Holland, Iceland and Israel who are associated partners. Russia is planning to become another associated partner. This network will continue the successful and fruitful work carried out by the National Focal Points for the Telematics for Libraries Programme under the 3rd and 4th Framework Programme and will expand to include all memory institutions, namely archives, museums and galleries.
The network intends:
All activities will either be carried out together or shared fairly between all participating partners and countries.
Details of the consortium members are given in the following table.
| Participant name | Participant short name | Country | Status* |
| Ehem. Deutsches Bibliotheksinstiut | EDBI | DE | C |
| The Library Council | CL | IE | P |
| Institute for Learning and Teaching Research Technology, University of Bristol (third partner assistance to CL) | ILRT | UK | A |
| Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries | Resource | UK | P |
| University of Bath / UK Office for Library and Information Networking | UKOLN | UK | P |
| Cultural Service Centre Austria | CSC Austria | AT | P |
| Riksbibliotektjenesten | RBT | NO | P |
| Biblioteca Nacional | BN | ES | P |
| Osservatorio dei programmi internazionali per le biblioteche | OPIB | IT | P |
| Fundo de Fomento Cultural / Conselho Superior de Bibliotecas | FFC | PT | P |
| Kungl.biblioteket | KB | SE | P |
| University of Helsinki / Helsinki University Library | HUL | FI | P |
| Federal Office for Scientific, Technical and Cultural Affairs | OSTC | BE | P |
| Ministry of National Education and Religious Affairs | MINERA | GR | P |
| Subdireccion General de los Archivos Estatales | SGAE | ES | P |
| Subdireccion General de los Museos Estatales | SGME | ES | P |
*C = Co-ordinator
P = Principal contractor
A = Assistant contractor
The national digital cultural heritage networks with representatives from all relevant memory institutions and organisations (in particular from archives, libraries and museums) in each participating country are now established and in working condition. These national networks are interlinked by a common gateway. The dissemination of information is supported by an electronic information service at European level and by the production of sector specific information material in printed and electronic form. The Cultivate Interactive magazine is online to reflect the state-of-the art of cultural heritage applications in Europe as well as to present and to discuss the results achieved. Activities linking European cultural heritage policy and directives to administrative and professional bodies at national level will bridge the gap between the thematic work on European and on national level. All National Nodes are responsible for (EU non-costed) sector specific information days and consultancy tasks for (potential) proposers. An essential part of the measure is a close co-operation between the National Nodes of Western European countries participating in the CULTIVATE-EU consortium and institutions of the 10 CEE accession countries.
The working structure of the accompanying measure guarantees a truly European dimension. The co-ordinating partner is the German Libraries Institute, Berlin (EDBI) and the National Node for Germany, who has already co-ordinated the accompanying measure EXPLOIT under the Telematics for Libraries Programme. All the other partners (excluding UKOLN, UK Office for Library and Information Networking) are the National Nodes for Cultural Heritage Applications in their respective countries and will act as focal point for their related national network: They will also be active in sharing European co-operation. Some of the National Nodes are also the leading partners for other tasks of a European dimension.
The information work is being carried out in the form of six tasks:
A WWW server, which provides links to all national Web pages, has been establishment and is being operated at a European level by the Library Council, Ireland (CL) and the Institute for Learning and Research Technology, University of Bristol UK (ILRT)
One of the most important functions of CULTIVATE is to disseminate information through the CULTIVATE Web site which was launched on July 3rd, 2000 [2]. The main objectives of the Web site are to promote the cultural heritage activities of the Information Society Technologies Programme, (IST) and to disseminate project results. The Web site provides a searchable main site with the additional functionality of cross searching the National Node Web sites and the Web magazine, Cultivate Interactive.
The content of the CULTIVATE Web site includes:
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| Figure 1: CULTIVATE Web Site |
An electronic information service and discussion list at European level is being provided by Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, UK. The Cultivate-list is the e-list for anyone in interested in digital heritage in the IST Programme [3]. It is an open list for discussion and information sharing, the cultivate-list topics include:
The Cultivate-list is administered by the UK National Node, with technical support from UKOLN at the University of Bath. For further information contact Rosalind Johnson, the UK node. [4]
An electronic magazine, produced by UK Office for Library and Information Networking, University of Bath, UK (UKOLN) provides a forum for dissemination and discussion of project results and topics of more general interest for others working in the area of cultural heritage applications. UKOLN already runs the E-Journal Ariadne [5] as well as the Web magazine Exploit Interactive [6].
Cultivate Interactive is a new pan-European Web magazine that forms part of the CULTIVATE network activities. It aims to provide a forum for users to find out more about the Digital Heritage and Cultural Content (DIGICULT) area of the European Commission's Information Society Technologies (IST) Programme, about other EC and non-EC programmes in that area and also about the results of projects. Articles will address the challenges facing the projects and allow the reader to provide feedback or partake in discussions on related issues. Cultivate Interactive provides a valuable opportunity for DIGICULT project holders to disseminate information about their work.
Those interested in writing for Cultivate Interactive should contact the editor [7].
Cultural Service Center, Austria (CSC) are highly information technology literate and are responsible for the development and agreement of standardisation issues for the electronic information services used by project members.
The production of information material from the European Community and national organisations either in printed or electronic form is supported by an XML database, which enables the management of metadata related to the documents. The information on the documents is added using the 15 Dublin Core metadata description fields.
The data is then exported in XML and put through a unified production process. Using XSL-stylesheets for printed and electronic documents supports the production of standard pieces of information to be used for dissemination by all the nodes and by all the other information dissemination services at European level. For public search purposes this standardised information means a fast and easy retrieval of documents located on the Internet or any local server.
The Cultivate Document Server is hosted by Cultural Service Center, Austria, Graz. It can be accessed from the Cultivate International Homepage (Documents) or from the national homepages [8].
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| Figure 2: CULTIVATE Document Server |
A system for policy dissemination in the area of cultural heritage applications is being established and operated by National Office for Research Documentation, Academic and Special Libraries, Norway (RBT) [9] This system links administrative and professional bodies in the EU member states and associated states at national and international level.
The aim is to conduct a survey asking for central bodies in archives, libraries and museums in all the participating countries, and at European and international level. The outcome will be a guide to governmental institutions, as well as national, European and international organisations and associations. It will be used for dissemination of information about possibilities and results in the IST-Programme and act as a help for finding relevant contact points (or partners) in other European countries.
All the partners are involved in this task at national level. RBT is the lead contractor.
Each country participating in the CULTIVATE network at European level has a National Node as head and co-ordinator of their national network in the archives, libraries and museums sector [10].
The National Nodes aim to
Each National Node
<http://www.nat.cultivate-eu.org>
e.g. <http://www.uk.cultivate-eu.org>
CULTIVATE follows the path started on by the National Focal Points and the accompanying measure EXPLOIT under the Telematics for Libraries Programme. The National Nodes offer a wide range of support for proposers in the IST Programme area of digital heritage and cultural content. Additionally there are several services provided at European level. The activities at national and European level are interconnected and feed the different needs of people interested in the area.
with
this text in the body of the message: subscribe cultivate-list
(your email address).
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Klaus Reinhardt
Ehem. Deutsches Bibliotheksinstitut
German Libraries Institute Berlin
Head of International Libraries Co-operation Unit
Kurt-Schumacher-Damm 12-16
13405 Berlin
Germany
reinhardt@dbi-berlin.de
<http://www.dbi-berlin.de/bib_wes/dbi_euro/eurohome.htm>
Klaus Reinhardt is the co-ordinator of the accompanying measures EXPLOIT and CULTIVATE-EU. He was the secretary of the National Focal Point Germany under the Telematics for Libraries Programme and member of the EU working party Education and Training, Libraries, Research in the Telematics Applications Programme. He is now also the secretary of the German node in CULTIVATE and member of the new EU National Expert Group for key action III of the IST Programme (Interactive Publishing; Digital Content and Cultural Heritage; Education and Training; Human Language Technologies; Information Access, Filtering, Analysis and Handling).
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For citation purposes:
Reinhardt, K. "CULTIVATE - A New Network for Digital Cultural Heritage in Europe", Cultivate Interactive, issue
2, 16 October 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue2/cultivate/>
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By Panos E. Trahanias - July 2000
TOURBOT, the acronym of a project entitled "Interactive Museum Tele-presence Through Robotic Avatrs", represents a research and technological development activity funded by the Information Society Technologies (IST) Programme of the European Commission. TOURBOT aims at developing alternative ways for interactive museum tele-presence, employing the novel approach of site viewing through the ‘eyes’ of robotic avatars [1]. Panos E. Trahanias introduces the project.
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The TOURBOT project is conducted by a consortium that comprises of an ideal blend of technical partners (Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas, Greece; University of Bonn, Germany; THEON Mobile Platforms, Greece; University of Freiburg, Germany), brokers of technology to museums (Foundation of the Hellenic World, Greece), and end users (Foundation of the Hellenic World; Deutsches Museum Bonn, Germany; Byzantine and Christian Museum of Athens, Greece).
The goal of this project is the development of an interactive TOUr-guide RoBOT (TOURBOT) able to provide individual access to museums' exhibits and cultural heritage over the Internet. TOURBOT operates as the user's avatar in a museum by accepting commands over the Web that direct it to move in its workspace and visit specific exhibits. The communication network is, thus, effectively extended by the introduction of interactive, mobile robotic platforms as terminal nodes. The imaged scene of the museum and the exhibits is communicated over the Internet to a remote visitor. As a result the user enjoys a personalized tele-presence to the museum, being able to choose the exhibits to visit, as well as the preferred viewing conditions (point of view, distance to the exhibit, resolution, etc). At the same time, TOURBOT is able to guide on-site museum visitors providing either group or personalized tours.
In order to realise the TOURBOT system, a multimedia Web interface will allow people to interact with the tour-guide system over the Internet [2]. Furthermore, an on-board interface will facilitate interaction with on-site visitors of the museum. Using the Web interface, people all over the world will be able to tele-control the robot and to specify target positions for the TOURBOT system. Camera controls will be used to choose the part of the exhibition the user wants to inspect in more detail. The robotic tour-guide will possess a multimedia information base providing a variety of information about the exhibition at various levels of detail. Thus, the TOURBOT system will serve as an interactive and remotely controllable tour-guide, which provides personalized access to exhibits with a large amount of additional information.
A tele-operated interactive tour-guide robot requires a high degree of autonomy since it operates in a populated environment in which humans are also present. Therefore, the project includes the development of a safe and reliable navigation system for TOURBOT [3],[4],[5],[6]. The robotic avatar will be equipped with a series of state-of-the-art sensors that allow it to acquire information about its environment. The navigation system uses this sensory information to adapt the robot's internal model of the environment and to plan the robot actions.
The TOURBOT project introduces a new paradigm in providing access to cultural heritage exhibits [7]. Through the introduction of museum visiting via a robotic avatar, it facilitates immersive tele-presence with advanced visualization capabilities. Full access to cultural exhibits is granted to the user, in the sense that the latter is able to choose the exhibits to visit, as well as the preferred viewing specification (point of view, distance to the exhibit, resolution, etc). The approach employed in the current project introduces a novel model of augmented environments, in that it allows human interaction with and workspace exploration of remote sites by means of a robotic avatar.
As a unified service to remote users, TOURBOT extends current communication networks by allowing mobile robots to be part of the overall structure. Such a mobile agent acts as the user’s avatar, operating in a physical environment that is perceived by the user through the robot’s sensors. Therefore, TOURBOT results contribute towards the seamless integration of networks and mobile agents for providing full user access to exhibitions.
The Internet is a very fast evolving technology that electronically connects distant sites; however, up to now, electronic networks serve mainly to exchange and acquire information. In some cases this information is pictorial by means of images taken in "real time" with a stationary Web-camera. To take full advantage of a network such as the Internet, it would be desirable to get real physical interaction with the remote site being visited. Robots, and especially mobile platforms, can extend the Internet towards an interactive platform that allows actions to be carried out and dynamic information to be exchanged between distant sites. The TOURBOT project implements exactly the above concept for the particular case of museums as remote sites. In other words, it augments current networks by substituting a terminal node with a mobile platform.
The TOURBOT project addresses the development of a robotic avatar, able to provide individual access to museums’ exhibits over the Internet. Such mobile agents allow virtual tele-presence in physical environments, effectively supplementing existent network infrastructure by allowing mobile avatars to replace network terminal nodes. Early experiments prior to TOURBOT have been conducted at the Deutsches Museum Bonn with RHINO, as illustrated in Figure1.
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| Figure 1: The Robot RHINO in the Deutsches Museum Bonn. |
A preliminary architecture of the TOURBOT system is illustrated in Figure 2. It shows the various system modules and the communication links that interconect them. As can be observed, there are two basic system components: (a) the mobile platform, including the sensors, navigation SW and processing & control unit and, (b) the off-board workstation that has access to the information base and also administers the internet connection to remote users.
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| Figure 2: TOURBOT system architecture. |
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Prof. Panos
Trahanias
TOURBOT Co-ordinator
Institute of Computer Science
Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas
71110 Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
Phone: +30-81-391 715
Fax: +30-81-391 601
trahania@ics.forth.gr
<http://www.ics.forth.gr/tourbot/>
Panos Trahanias is an Associate Professor with the Dept. of Computer Science, University of Crete, Greece and ICS-FORTH. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the National Technical Univ. of Athens, Greece, in 1988. He has been a Research Associate at the Inst. of Informatics & Telecomm., National Center for Scientific Research "Demokritos", Athens, Greece. From 1991 to 1993 he was with the Dept. of Electrical & Computer Eng., Univ. of Toronto, Canada, as a Research Associate. He has participated in many RTD programs in image processing and analysis at Univ. of Toronto and has been a consultant to SPAR Aerospace Ltd., Toronto.
Since 1993 he has been with the Univ. of Crete and ICS-FORTH. Currently, he is the supervisor of the Computer Vision & Robotics Lab. at ICS-FORTH where he is engaged in research and RTD programs in vision-based robot navigation.
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For citation purposes:
Trahanias, P.E. "TOURBOT - Interactive Museum Tele-presence Through Robotic Avatars", Cultivate Interactive, issue
2, 16 October 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue2/tourbot/>
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By Serge Van Sint Jan - July 2000
Serge Van Sint Jan reports on the new source of data on human kinematics created by the IST project VAKHUM. The project aims to develop an interactive database for industrial, educational and research purposes. Users will access the database through a virtual interface and be able to download high-quality data for their own applications, or take a class on Functional Anatomy. The data collection procedure used to collect the above data must solve theoretical problems, which are currently being tackled by the consortium.
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The study of the Human Kinematics is an exciting field, and
many unknowns remain to be determined and explored.
Currently very little accurate data on Human Kinematics and Bone
morphology is readily available. Therefore both industrial and
fundamental researchers need reliable data for their own
applications. One of the main goals of the VAKHUM project is to
produce high-quality data according to a well-defined protocol,
and to make this data available to users. Full documentation
about the data's accuracy will also be available.
Kinematics is a typical 3D phenomenon yet textbooks can describe it only in a 2D way. Useful information is then lost for the students (pre- or -post- graduate). The VAKHUM project will use the above data to develop tutorials on Functional Anatomy. These tutorials will be integrated into a virtual reality environment accessible through the Internet.
The potential fields-of-application are numerous:
Morphological data of human bones is collected from medical imaging, mainly by computerised tomodensitometry (CT-Scan). The latter allows the construction of very accurate 3D bone models (Figure 1).
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| Figure 1: 3D Bone models of the iliac
bone. Left: surface models using tiling techniques. Right: finite elements model. |
Several kinds of data will be available from the VAKHUM database. Not only raw data, but also both surface and finite-element models will be included. Surface models are useful for, for example, 3D animations and/or education. Finite elements meshes are used to simulate the deformation and the mechanical stresses induced within living tissues by different motor tasks. They are essential in research, but also in clinical applications such as the evaluation of the risk of bone fracture, or the planning of complex musculo-skeletal surgery. Finite elements simulations are also useful to teach musculo-skeletal biomechanics.
VAKHUM will also perform a pilot study on muscle modelling for further research, which will serve to improve understanding of both muscle function and morphology (Figure 2).
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| Figure 2: 3D Models of the upper part of the lower limb, together with the surface model of the sartorius muscle. Anatomical axes are displayed to illustrate the muscle functions on both hip and knee joints. |
Kinematics is the study of motion. As part of the VAKHUM project, the motion of the human lower limb will be studied during several normal activities (walking, running, stair climbing). Several techniques can be used to study a motion, each of them having its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, electrogoniometry can collect very accurate kinematics data at joint level both in vivo and in vitro, further information about electrogoniometry can be found on the ULB Web site [1]. This data, associated to medical imaging, can bring new information on human kinematics (Figure 3). Unfortunately, electrogoniometry is difficult to use to study full-limb motion.
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| Figure 3: Joint kinematics. Left: hip joint during a motion of flexion; right: knee joint flexion. Helical axes of motion are displayed as well. |
Conversely, other systems like motion-capture-devices using stereophotogrammetry (e.g. video cameras) allows us to study the relative angular displacement of the joints of a particular limb by tracking skin markers attached to a volunteer or patient during some activities (Figure 4).
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| Figure 4. Left: anatomical calibration of skin markers for gait analysis. Right: kinematics analysis of stair climbing |
Therefore, combining both electrogoniometry and stereophotogrammetry to animate 3D models collected from medical imaging will result in several innovative features. Initially, once the theoretical details are taken care of, the new techniques will allow not only a combination of different data sources, but also a comparison of results obtained from different protocols, which currently poses an accuracy problem in biomechanics due to a lack in standardisation. Furthermore, the 3D models produced by VAKHUM will be fully documented and established according the available guidelines from the International Society of Biomechanics (ISB). This should be a guarantee that the VAKHUM data will be widely accepted.
We also expect that, thanks to the newly developed methodologies, that new knowledge on joint functions will be collected as well. This knowledge will be made directly available through tutorials.
Several partners within the consortium are responsible for the Anatomy classes in their respective institutions. VAKHUM will produce interactive tutorials from the data collected during the project. Different tutorials on Functional Anatomy will be written for both medical and bioengineering students. The new knowledge will also be attractive to post-graduate professionals for re-training. The tutorials will be downloadable from the database in several European languages.
One of the VAKHUM partners is involved in the numerical simulation of car-crash testing. This partner will exploit the data produced to integrate realistic virtual dummies into its virtual car. Constraints on the dummies will be then analysed to help to improve car safety (Figure 5). Another aspect to be prospected is the simulation of a collision between cars and virtual pedestrians.
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| Figure 5: Simulation of airbag effect on car passenger using the PAM-SAFE ® system. |
As demonstrated above, the field of research of the VAKHUM project is actually multidisciplinary. A variety of different skills and aptitudes are necessary to solve the numerous theoretical and practical problems that must be tackled by the consortium.
The Department of Human Anatomy and Embryology of ULB is mainly in charge of the project coordination, collecting and pre-processing the medical imaging data sets, collecting the kinematics data at joint level and developing the tutorials [1].
Istituti Ortopedici Rizzoli (IOR) - Italy
Two IOR departments are involved in VAKHUM. The Laboratorio di Tecnologia medica is responsible for the generation of finite element models of bone segments derived from the medical imaging data sets. The Laboratorio di Analisi del Movimento also collects data from stereo-photogrammetry (i.e. motion tracking devices using ultra-performant video systems) which will be combined with data from ULB. IOR is also involved in the tutorial writing [2].
Università degli Studi di Sassari (UNISS) - Italy
The Section of Physiology & Bioengineering of Man of the UNISS Department of Biomedical Sciences is in charge of solving the theoretical problems related to the combination of kinematics data from several origins. UNISS is also leading the tutorials writing [3].
De Montfort University (DMU) – United Kingdom.
The Computer Graphics and Modelling Group of the DMU Department of Computer & Information Sciences has vast experience in the modelling of humans in virtual environments. DMU's role is to develop the user interface, which allows a user to access the database created by the VAKHUM project through the Internet. This group will also investigate the dynamic modelling of muscles [4].
Libera Università "Campus Bio-Medico" Di Roma (UNICAMPUS) - Italy
UNICAMPUS Medical Informatics Laboratory integrates the expertise of both Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Engineering (biomedical courses). For many years, it gained experience of streaming video technologies applied to medical imaging and Internet-based software. “Campus Bio-Medico” will be involved in the development of the VAKHUM tutorials [5].
Neurosoft S.A. (NS) - Greece
This company is charge of developing the structure of the 3D database, including raw data, 3D models, tutorials and virtual user interface [6].
Engineering Systems International S.A. (ESI) - France
This company will demonstrate the use of the data produced by VAKHUM by integrating it into its world-leading PAM-SAFE system for virtual car crash testing. One of the aims of ESI is to help improving the safety of car passengers [7].
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and
<http://www.ior.it.movlab/>
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Serge Van Sint Jan
Department of Anatomy
Faculty of Medicine
University of Brussels (ULB)
808 Lennik Street
1070 Brussels
Belgium
sintjans@ulb.ac.be
<http://www.ulb.ac.be/project/vakhum/>
Serge Van Sint Jan is employed at ULB. His responsibilities include both administrative and scientific coordination of the VAKHUM project and teaching human anatomy to medical students. His fields of interest are the use of medical imaging for educational and biomechanical purposes, data processing and virtual simulation of animated anatomical systems.
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For citation purposes:
Van Sint Jan, S. "The VAKHUM Project: Virtual Animation of the Kinematics of the Human", Cultivate Interactive, issue
2, 16 October 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue2/vakhum/>
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By Gregory Crane, Brian Fuchs, Amy C. Smith and Clifford E. Wulfman - October 2000
The Perseus Digital Library [1] [2] already enjoys strong affinities with many projects being developed in Europe today. Mirror sites for Perseus have been maintained in Oxford and Berlin for several years, and we have worked extensively with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin [3] since 1998. Most recently, we have begun to collaborate with the Center for the Study of Ancient Documents and the Beazley Archive at Oxford University as well as with the team at Cambridge now writing a new intermediate Greek Lexicon. European collaborations are natural for us; while most of the technical research in digital libraries being done in the US is readily applicable to European efforts, the Perseus Digital Library Project is unusual in that, technology aside, its efforts to date have focused on a cultural heritage shared by the US and Europe alike. Given the magnitude of the task before us all, such US/European partnerships are essential, and we are eager to expand our ties to colleagues in Europe. We are therefore grateful for the opportunity to contribute to Cultivate Interactive.
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Perseus’s goals are twofold. First, we seek to contribute to the growing set of materials available in electronic form, and we are committed to providing access not only for scholars but for the widest possible audience. For us, electronic media provide powerful tools with which humanists can reach beyond the academy and democratize access to the shared cultural heritage of humanity [4]. Second, we are struggling to understand how best to structure information for electronic environments. Simple word-processed or HTML representations of traditional documents are only a first step towards true electronic publication. Not only must we develop protocols for radically new kinds of documents (e.g., archaeological reports that include databases and virtual-reality reconstructions); we must also rethink many of the humanist’s traditional tools: for example, what is the relationship between new research lexica and such non-hierarchical, semantically organized databases as EuroWordNet [5]? Our larger goals, and those of the international community of scholars and researchers in humanities computing, must be broader, however. Ultimately, we believe that digital libraries have the potential to revolutionize intellectual life across the world, but only if humanists vigilantly monitor the rush of technological change. The World Wide Web has already begun to realize the dazzling potentials of richly networked electronic resources, but the success of the WWW also highlights its limitations: its content is uneven, its organization is poor, and its overall interoperability is rough and fragile. Even more than their colleagues in the sciences, humanists must assimilate the implications of new technologies, for during the next few years a new electronic infrastructure — both technical and institutional — will take shape, one that will very likely constrain what we can and cannot do for a generation.
By building concrete electronic collections and by working with humanists from many different disciplines and countries, we seek to help the humanities influence this new developing infrastructure. Until we know how to organize and create documents that will be useful over the long term, we lavish work on projects that will not conform to shifting best practices and that will become prematurely obsolete. Publications in some fields — particularly in the scientific disciplines — rapidly become outdated because the field’s information infrastructure — its current “best wisdom” — is in constant flux. The "hotter" a discipline and the more resources its technological infrastructure attracts, the shorter its chronological horizon. Intellectual work in the humanities typically enjoys a longer productive life, however. We develop editions, reference works, and other documents that are often designed to serve for generations. As we contemplate the staggering task of converting the record of humanity into digital form, we need to design an infrastructure that can grow and evolve with technology and create documents that will exploit the capacities of systems and uses that none of us can yet anticipate. Humanists thus must themselves take the lead as they peer toward a receding horizon.
Even where the technology is available and its utility clear, scholarly practice lags. Most photographs collected by field archaeologists today, for example, are obsolete before they are developed. With today’s digital technology, we can easily stitch pictures into 360-degree panoramas that give viewers a radically different sense of a building’s contextual space than isolated snapshots of structures and commanding views can provide. To create such panoramas, however, we need many different views — ideally at least twelve wide-angle photos shot from a tripod-mounted camera — and few slide collections taken before the advent of technologies such as Quick Time Virtual Reality (QTVR) contain such depth of coverage. Furthermore, many of the most useful images provide overviews of terrain — surveys of a plain or a site from a hill or some neighboring point. In May 2000, the US government removed its restrictions on satellite data and allowed inexpensive hand-held Global Positioning System units to provide data accurate to within ten meters. By using such GPS units, archaeologists can now "geo-reference" any outdoor image that they take, allowing the images to be plotted on a map so that those who subsequently use them can study the terrain with much greater precision. Yet although archaeologists visited thousands of sites around the world in the summer of 2000, virtually none of them systematically collected images that were geo-referenced or suitable for panoramas. It will not always be practical to drag a tripod to a remote site and we may not even geo-reference every picture, but the scholarly community needs to reevaluate the costs and benefits and to rethink its "best practices."
Abstract extrapolation only carries us so far, however. We can build a digital environment that mirrors and indeed replicates many of the limitations of print (many on-line collections currently do so), but the new environment is — or should be — a radical step beyond print standards. In our experience, the best method forward is to develop solid collections that serve real communities and then evaluate not only how these new collections support preexisting needs but how they open up new modes of inquiry. Even the most basic features of an electronic environment (text searching, for example, or the presence of very high resolution images) may well over time have a profound impact on the questions that we ask. At Perseus, we seek to develop collections that exploit at least some element of the electronic environment and that attract real use from students in the field. We can then study the real-world usage to determine what does and does not work, thus refining our models and guiding redesign of the collection. And while we have created an integrated digital library environment [6], we remain focussed on the back-end structures by which the data is organized. Systems, however elaborate, are ephemeral: they evolve and can be replaced much more easily than massive and expanding contents.
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Figure 1: The standalone Perseus CD-ROMs.
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From the beginning of our research, the Perseus Project has been interested primarily in the interplay between technology and intellectual inquiry: already in the mid 1980s it was clear, first, that we could represent in digital form every category of data that was available in a library and, second, that the electronic environment would influence the questions that individuals posed. Our initial focus was on the ancient Greek world: we were able to develop a critical mass of heterogeneous information, including source texts, modern translations, linguistic analysis tools, lexica, and commentaries, site plans and geospatial data, thousands of new catalogue entries for objects and sites, and tens of thousands of images. These materials were published together in several CD ROMs: Perseus 1.0 in 1992, Perseus 2.0 in 1996, and Platform Independent Perseus in 1999. Support from the US National Endowment for the Humanties allowed us to begin expanding into the Roman world in 1997. Roman and additional resources have been published on our Web sites, which served 300,000 pages for 30,000 individual sessions within peak twenty-four hour periods in spring 2000.
While our work on Greco-Roman civilization continues, major government support from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities under the Digital Library Initiative Phase II [7] has allowed us to approach the broader issues confronting digital libraries in the humanities. Our method has been to collaborate with experts in various subsets of the humanities, capitalizing on and then expanding our existing expertise. We concentrate in particular on coherent but heterogeneous collections, where automatically generated cross-references and links create an interactive environment supporting new modes of data discovery and visualization. We have just completed the first of five years of support under the DLI-2. Since the DLI-2 does not support the development of collections per se, our efforts under this program are analytical: these collections serve as tools with which we can study the organization and use of digital libraries. We are also, however, eager to work with those who are creating new content. Working with the Modern Language Association of America [8] and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin we have, for example, been able to create substantial new digital content. Over the next year we will bring into production new collections on the History of Mechanics, the Histories of London [9] and the United States, the archaeology of Giza (Egypt), and works of Shakespeare, each of which should appeal to a different disciplinary audience and will confront different technical challenges. Our collaborative project with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, on their excavation materials from the ancient necropolis at Giza, for example, must integrate traditional documents, such as field notebooks, with the photographic record of the excavation. We would welcome collaboration with other projects to which our expertise could contribute and that are dedicated to making their materials available to the widest possible audience.
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Figure 2: Perseus Digital Library on the Web
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From this roster of new activities, it is clear that our development is both incremental and opportunistic. The technologies that we developed for managing Latin and Greek, for example, gave us immediate leverage with early modern European materials, many of which either are in Latin or cite passages in classical languages: we thus began projects on electronic editions of Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare and on early modern scientific texts. Our experience integrating textual and geospatial materials helped us design a digital library on the history and topography of London and its environs, and our work on archaeological sites led us to explore the possibilities of extensive documentation for the Roman port city of Ostia and virtual reconstructions of tombs at Giza. These projects currently cluster around the following topics:
Well structured digital libraries make it possible for individuals to extend their intellectual range: computational tools that link source texts to lexica, translations, and so on allow non-specialists to make much more effective use of limited linguistic training. Indeed, if the tools are sufficiently powerful they can enable those with no knowledge of a particular language to identify key terms and linguistic structures. Such tools, however, require documents that are extensively structured, and scholarly labor is often much more abundant than the technical expertise needed to apply a complex tagging scheme or to create a document that integrates many different databases. We are working closely with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, helping them to develop a working environment for a team studying the history of mechanics from antiquity through the early modern period. Though focused, this project, called the Archimedes Project, still requires direct analysis in texts from more languages (including Greek, Latin, and Arabic) than most professional scholars could ever master. We are working with our colleagues at the Institute so that nontechnically-minded scholars, without extensive training or support, will be able to add a wide range of data to Archimedes' corpus of documents. A specialist in Arabic, for example, will be able to structure Arabic texts on the history of mechanics so that they can be used by those with no knowledge of Arabic; the Arabic specialist can, however, then use similarly prepared documents in Greek or Latin. Each member of the team will thus help others extend their range while benefiting him- or herself in the same way. Mutual enrichment is the focus of the project in another way as well, in that, unlike many digital libraries, it is built on the notion that its content will be continually deepened by the commentaries of scholars working on the texts in the corpus. Metadata generated by scholars will become available to users in the form of visualizations, which will in turn become the starting point for new investigations or even the subject of commentary themselves. In this way a rich superstructure of metadata will be encouraged to grow up around the source text, without the kind of prior determination of content or direction that is inevitably the result of digital encoding projects that begin by drawing up exhaustive DTDs. The challenge here has been to design a working environment that allows for the continual addition of heterogeneous and sometimes even contradictory metadata without forfeiting its heterogeneity. The project hopes that this experimentation with open-ended data formats will contribute to an expansion of the existing functionality of digital libraries.
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Figure 3: Comparing versions of Christopher Marlowe's Dr. Faustus
in Perseus. |
Building on our experience with creating an electronic edition of the complete works of Christopher Marlowe, we are harnessing Perseus's chief strength — the ability to create, automatically, interconnecting cross-references among texts, commentaries, maps, timelines, and other information sources — to build a comprehensive textual resource for scholars of Shakespeare. As a part of this more general effort, we are working with the Modern Language Association of America to establish an electronic format for the massive New Variorum Shakespeare, a series of critical editions of Shakespeare's texts and important scholarship. Shakespeare is an attractive choice for several reasons: besides providing a high-profile subject with broad readerly and scholarly appeal, building the resource poses several interesting technical difficulties with which to challenge our methods and practices. How, for example, does one transform a self-standing book into an interactive electronic document while maintaining the contours of its traditional form? In our view, so-called “new media” should not break with “old media” but rather become a natural extension of it. Because the New Variorum Shakespeare will exist in both codex and electronic forms, it is important to maintain interoperability. Readers of one medium should be able to work easily with the other, so we must carry over the conventions of the print form of the New Variorum Shakespeare to the electronic edition while extending it to include global searches, hypertext linking, coordination of multimedia resources, and other functionality available only in an electronic resource.
Another challenge lies in developing new methods of structuring a large heterogeneous body of scholarly resources. The New Variorum Shakespeare will contain, in addition to critical editions of the primary texts, an extensive selection of important Shakespearean scholarship which will, in turn, refer to the massive body of scholarship on Shakespeare and the early modern period. While Perseus has long had the capacity to build links between primary texts and extratextual resources (commentaries, maps, images, and so on), we will need to build new tools to support links among the secondary materials themselves, both within the digital library and in the wider universe of scholarly discourse. Online archives of scholarly writing, such as JSTOR [10], Project Muse [11], and others, for example, might contain articles that are referenced by secondary materials in the Variorum Shakespeare; these articles could easily be retrieved and displayed in a networked system. References to materials not available online in full-text form may still exist citationally in online catalogues and other indices; users of the digital library should be able to link directly to these citations as a first step to retrieving the materials by traditional means. Thus the New Variorum Shakespeare project will, like other Perseus projects, pose questions about the design and distribution of academic resources in an open environment.
In building databases of sites and architectural monuments for Perseus’s initial coverage of ancient Greek civilization, it quickly became apparent that to be effective, a digital library should have an organization that is scalable. In a scalable system, the wealth of information and materials available for larger, well excavated and/or well documented sites could be presented at whichever level each user required for his/her purposes, rather than being artificially restricted to the scale at which smaller sites were covered. Perseus’s initial coverage of archaeological sites, for example, comprised extensive hyperlinked catalog entries on the individual sites, many of the buildings on each site, some of the other monuments found therein, and linked plans and other images, but such a system is unwieldy for larger sites, such as Delphi and Olynthus, not to mention cities such as the ancient port of Ostia or nineteenth-century London. Not only do the sizes and chronological spans of each of these places vary, but the materials that pertain to each of them — whether materials found in them or materials documenting them — differ greatly from site to site. The necropolis, or cemetery of Giza, for example, is like a city in that it comprises many architectural monuments that may be represented in still photographs or in QTVR walkthroughs, which in turn should be linked to other images, QTVR files, and text descriptions of objects found within those monuments. For the bigger picture, one must also provide a geospatial reference for each building, so that users may understand how monuments relate to each other, to the city plan as a whole, and in turn to the location of the city in relation to the world around it.
In this vein, our initial work on London has necessitated our building tools with which various information pertaining to any city or citylike complex, modern or ancient, might be approached through a variety of digital media. In addition to constructing an atlas that allows a user to view the whole city or to zoom into a particular building, we are building three-dimensional walkthroughs which are based on 18th century drawings and maps of city streets. With these tools, a user may access the maps in either 3D or 2D format and then follow links to still images of the streets and buildings as they appear today. Perseus’s architecture also enables users to follow links between literary references to urban artifacts and their visual representations.
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Figure 4: Hadrianic Capitolium |
Whereas our virtual 19th-century London is based primarily on archival data, supplemented with contemporary images, we have approached Ostia from quite the opposite perspective. A massive photographic campaign garnered 10,000 new images of the site as it appears today, including at least a hundred QTVR walkthroughs. When sufficiently documented and linked to a detailed georeferenced plan of this city, this body of photographic information — comprising, like the London materials, both 2D and 3D formats — will allow users, whether scholars, students, or mere passers by, to visit the archaeological site of Ostia from anywhere in the world. Eventually, as with all of the cities covered in the Perseus Digital Library, detailed virtual reconstructions of some architectural complexes will further allow users to flesh-out the architectural spaces that might not be actually reconstructed: complex political, environmental, and structural issues, as well as the prohibitive costs, combine to leave most archaeological monuments as heaps of rubble.
Although the above discussion concentrates on architectural complexes, the wealth of catalog entries in the Perseus Project relate to individual art works (ca. 1500 coins, 1800 sculptures, and 2000 vases). In most cases these materials may not be georeferenced, per se, but many have known findspots — either particular cities or, more informatively, the actual tombs, rooms, or buildings in which they were found. These findspots may be integrated with our city- or site-level documentation, both to enhance the inherent interest in the city or site and to expand ones appreciation of each art work itself. It is access to a wealth of supporting information that makes the Perseus Digital Library an attractive content partner for the Beazley Archive’s pottery database [12], while the Beazley Archive, with its database of more than 65,000 known vases in what aims to be a complete database of Attic painted pottery from the Archaic and Classical periods, adds breadth to Perseus’s depth of coverage. Both teams have welcomed the technological opportunity to maintain two databases that are distinct in appearance as well as function but may be searched as one.
3D models, which serve as databases of geographic and architectural information in their own right, may also serve as the underpinning for a contextual presentation of architectural and freestanding sculptures. We are taking a first step with coverage of the lavishly decorated pan-Hellenic sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, where the greatest challenge is in integrating text and 2D photographic documentation with 3D reconstructions. Projects such as ARCHEOGUIDE [13] push such limits of interactive technology; current bandwidth limitations with the WWW make the large-scale superimposition of 3D images on top of 3D reconstructions impossible. We are investigating the more tractable solution of providing links to QTVR movies of selected objects that are only shown from one side in conventional publications. The visual placement of each artwork in its known findspot and/or original location would of course enlarge the user’s understanding of the purpose of these art works, but even more intriguingly, 3D models might also allow us to glimpse the monuments of antiquity that have been long lost not only from their original locations but entirely from the world and are now known only through copies at best. The 3D photographic scanning technique invented by Marc Levoy and the Michelangelo Project at Stanford [14] reported in Science Daily Magazine [15] and elsewhere is an incipient technology that might be useful in reconstructing these lost works while presenting them faithfully. Recently Levoy’s team has worked on ancient materials such as the Laocoon in the Vatican Museums and the Forma Urbis Romae or Severan marble plan [16]. Although the Stanford scientists have worked on recreating these objects in digital media, it is up to scholars to make use of them and to disseminate them for use in research and teaching, through digital libraries.
While all these projects differ substantially, they are united by our consistent effort to study the ways in which documents which are distinct in print libraries begin to merge with one another in a digital library, dissolving their individual structures and supporting new patterns of intellectual inquiry.
Digital libraries integrate many different kinds of data, and they involve many different aspects of system design. The back-end data structure affect the features that the front-end system can support. Experts in a discipline need to ponder the interaction between system and data structures. Research on a wide range of topics can contribute to our understanding of what digital libraries can or could do to support various audiences. For us at Perseus, the following topics stand out as areas of particular interest and collaboration:
The development of new integrated collections: This might include federating existing resources (e.g., a text corpus and a lexicon, or museum collections and archaeological records) related to materials in Perseus or entirely new projects. This may entail integration of new data into the Perseus Digital Library Interface or looser federation with separate collections. We are particularly interested in architectures for intensive back-end transactions that seamlessly integrate data from geographically separate digital libraries: a user on a relatively slow connection might call up a page that required hundreds of transactions between servers linked on a high speed connection.
The cognitive effects of digital libraries: What happens when we can link historical maps, modern GIS data, images, and texts? Can we change the role that geographic structures play? How do links between source texts and dictionaries affect text comprehension? How do patterns of information discovery change as large collections become public? How do the intellectual lives of various communities — specialists, interdisciplinary researchers, students at various levels and the general public — change?
Integration of modern computational linguistic techniques (e.g., machine translation, cross-language information retrieval) to historically significant languages: Natural Language Processing remains a dynamic subject, with theories in rapid flux and data structures constantly being redefined. Nevertheless, we can now begin to identify structures of persistent value that would be suitable foundations for long term reference tools in the humanities. EuroWordNet, for example, builds upon WordNet, which masterfully balances theoretical insight with practicality. Machine translation systems may come and go, but bilingual corpora are likely to remain valuable parts of any language analysis system. A relatively modest investment (e.g., 3-5 years of labor) would allow us to bring Latin and Greek to a point where they could exploit a wide range of computational linguistic techniques. Other languages could follow suit and share much of the same infrastructure.
Information Extraction and Visualization: We have done substantial work automatically extracting dates and placenames both from database records and from text, as well as readily identifiable features such as money. Our research has focused on the problem of disambiguation (e.g., does "Wellington" refer to a person or a place; if a place, which Wellington is meant?) and then on visualization. We have been developing automatically generated timelines and maps to help users grasp at a glance the chronological and geographic coverage of a single document or a collection. We are looking to extend our capabilities for both back-end feature extraction and front end display.
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Gregory Crane
Perseus Digital Library Project
Tufts University
124 Eaton Hall
Medford, MA 02155
USA
Gcrane@tufts.edu
<http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/>
Phone: (617) 627-3830
Fax: (617) 627-3032
Brian Fuchs
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
Amy C. Smith
Department of Classics
University of Reading
Clifford E. Wulfman
Perseus Project
Tufts University
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For citation purposes:
Crane, G., Fuchs, B., Smith,A.C. and Wulfman, C.E. "The Symbiosis Between Content and Technology in the Perseus Digital Library", Cultivate Interactive, issue
2, 16 October 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue2/perseus/>
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By Cèsar Carreras Monfort - October 2000
Cèsar Carreras Monfort reports on the current evaluation by Group Òliba, based at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, into how virtual exhibitions, exhibitions that are on-line, may improve the possibilities that museums have. This article describes the group’s main focus of research and the initial theoretical background proposed. It also discusses some of the exhibitions already set up by the group.
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These days it is imperative for museum collections to be digitalised in order to preserve original documents and cultural objects and make them accessible to the public and specialists. The organisation Group Òliba specialises in the long-term preservation of digital documents (image, video and audio) through the development and implementation of standard formats. Group Òliba believe that an on-line museum should not simply be a catalogue. They are approaching new ways of presenting the information in distributed collections whilst keeping in mind the need for a versatile simulated physical lay-out.
The research organisation Group Òliba, which means owl in English, was set up by the Department of Humanities of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya with the aim of evaluating the potential of new technologies for the dissemination and documentation of museums and cultural heritage. Their initial proposal was to test how virtual exhibitions could enhance the potential of “real” exhibitions in terms of more information access, public awareness and visits to the Museums.
The present research project covers four stages, beginning with an analysis of the theories behind Web museums then leading on to methodological and practical analysis of previous experiences of digitalisation in Museums in Europe and States. The third and most original part involves developing pilot experiences of virtual exhibitions together with local and regional museums from Barcelona and Catalonia [1].
The fourth and final stage evaluates the actual experience of virtual exhibitions in order to define standards for museum Web sites. These Web sites will act as a complementary platform for museum didactics and dissemination and analyse how people interact with different elements (3-D reconstructions, quizzes etc.) This stage looks at the technical advantages and potential for the museums.
Virtual exhibitions are referred to in this context as a complementary part of the real exhibitions, offering only a small part of what people can enjoy by visiting the real physical museum. The virtual platforms will give a taste of what people can see at the physical site, and will focus on displaying objects, information and images which cannot be accessed in the museum. Virtual exhibitions, as we understand them, should never compete with the real museums but work alongside them in a collaboratory role.
For the general public some cultural documents and objects can be obscured in meaning and need to be fully explained by providing background and context, that is, they need to be presented in a didactic way. Hypertext and Virtual Reality are two excellent tools for creating didactic contexts for our cultural heritage, similar to the ones employed in course materials of distance learning universities [2]. Both tools provide interactive environments for learning by experience, which can be adapted for a diverse type of users. For specialists, the hypertextual information provides access to all museum documentation.
The idea is that museum are a communicative medium and new technologies contribute in enhancing this idea. Therefore the use of Web resources and their effect on people’s attitude towards museum facilities should be another focus of the present research, using the methodology to evaluate programmes and exhibits in museums. Users’ itineraries through the Web will be evaluated, involving statistical analysis of users, time spent, geographic origin, particular interests and visitors profile. These statistical results from the user's navigation can then be compared with information provided by virtual and “real” questionnaires (both quantitative and qualitative) related to specific exhibitions.
One of the principle aims of the research is to define different kinds of museums and exhibitions, according to the way they display their collections and educate the general public. Museums in the future will have a more outstanding role in non-formal further education for diverse age groups, so didactics will have to be placed in the core of museums’ policies. Following G. Hein’s (1998) [3] model, educational theory applied to museums is also studied in the present project.
Virtual platforms can overcome the physical barriers that make it impossible to visit museum collections or particular exhibitions. They also break the constraints and limitations of display space available because objects can be digitalised and the incorporated into an exhibition as virtual elements. These days most museums have problems with lack of space in which to display objects from their collections, digitalising can be a solution. It is has been calculated that on average 80% of a collection in any museum remains in store without being displayed. Virtual platforms for museums allow people with diverse interests access to particular items in collections as well as to interact with exhibitions at different levels. Museum exhibitions can therefore be easily adapted to suit a wide variety of user's needs by using multilevel navigation to fulfil a myriad of requirements and providing access to all of a museum’s collections.
This research project represents a real innovation in terms of diffusion of cultural heritage to a wide range of the public as well as to specialists in particular subjects. The applications being developed on the Web aim to enhance the role of museums in leisure time hopefully increasing museums visits. The museum Web platform will usually complement an exhibition visit in most cases. Web contents should help to prepare the visit (i.e. background for exhibitions) or fill the gaps left after it (i.e. give more details about the original information). The museum Web therefore opens up new possibilities to cultural heritage diffusion and documentation.
With regard to the didactic potential of Web resources, new virtual environments may improve communication and the teaching of different topics. The project attempts to analyse how 3-D images, virtual objets, video or audio may enhance knowledge and the learning process of individual museum’s users.
The technological field is probably one of the most challenging aspects of this project. The research will be linked to the future developments of the telecom infrastructure since all the developed applications will be for on-line delivery. The project aims to test some of the conclusions obtained from the usage of multimedia content development (MHEG, MPEG, JPEG, XML [4]). Alongside other possible technological applications in networks the present project also will attempt to develop digital formats (video, image, audio, animation, 3-D etc.) as mean of on-line museum collection documentation. All documentation made accessible to users will therefore have to conform to a minimum quality standards.
For example 2-D and 3-D images should maintain high quality definition when zooming, without getting pixelisation effects [5]. The new generation of computer software seems to provide this high quality and the research project will test it out. With regard to 3-D images it is believed that interactive panoramic views that allow 360º navigation may be the best alternative. There have been a series of preliminary experiments using commercial software such as Live Picture and Quick Time Virtual Reality which have produced excellent outcomes so far. In this project, Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) will be combined with JAVA programming language (External Authoring Interface) to enable dynamic changes at very short notice therefore avoiding long delays in loading VRML files on-line. 3-D environments will be created where visitors can interact with each other (chats, forums) as well as add information to the original Website.
In the future video will also be a potential format as soon as the telecom infrastructure permits an increase in the volume of transmission (band width, ADSL technology or optic cable). Another technological focus of the research will be the development of sophisticated databases accessible on-line (related or object-oriented database), which should help in the management of museum collections as well as in remote access by users.
In the last year the Group Òliba have created three virtual exhibitions in collaboration with different local institutions. Despite the fact that it is still too early for a full evaluation of these experiences an initial account is described below.
This itinerant exhibition, funded by La Caixa Sa Nostra, began on the 9th December 1999 and travelled over all the Balearic islands (Mallorca, Menorca, Eivissa and Formentera) as well as a short stay in Barcelona [6]. The exhibition aimed to display the way Balearic people wish to preserve their signs of identity, maintaining some traditions and natural landscape without renouncing their economic development, which is mainly based in tourism.
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| Figure 1: The Eivissa and Formentera-forever Web site |
The virtual platform was ordered only one month before the real exhibition, so it was quite difficult to implement the Web page in such a short span of time. Nevertheless, the final virtual exhibition fulfilled the aims of the organizers, who wanted a complete dissemination of the exhibition contents to other Spanish people and foreigners (see figure 1).
With regards to design, the virtual exhibition is an exact reproduction of the real one, except for a small number of illustrations and a new virtual reality section. In this particular case the virtual exhibition was not really complementary to the real one, therefore not representing the desirable model. The navigation structure was kept as simple as possible, allowing a direct access to any section from any point in the site. However, some minor problems were detected due to the hierarchical structure of the exhibition (i.e. architecture, natural environment) which denied direct entry.
Comments by users suggested that the virtual exhibition was a good alternative for people who could not visit the real site and also a useful after visit resource. The response was, on the whole, positive, although there were also some suggestions for improvement. For example, clearer icons were desired to mark every single section and more animations were desired to make some screens more attractive. There were some complaints about the secondary level where the virtual reality was located. One of the problems not anticipated was font configuration depending on visitor, this was easily solved with dynamic HTML (.css files). The virtual reality section had an aesthetic effect on users, but failed to use its didactic potential; this was further attempted in other projects. Few visitors answered the virtual questionnaires, more participation was expected than occurred.
With regard to the content, no extra information was created apart from the virtual reality formatting. It was decided that perhaps a series of transversal sections may have fostered the hypertext potential, making available alternative navigation through the diverse pages. Interactive sections such as Archduke and Casa Schmela, which included clickable maps, were rated highly by visitors. The virtual reality reproduction shows how the temporary exhibition may become a definitive collection in a public space, such as the well known octagonal market of the city of Eivissa.
The dissemination of this exhibition provides quite interesting data. First of all, there have been 1788 accesses to this page up to the 15th June 2000, despite limited announcement of its existence. The virtual exhibition was announced in the local Balearic press, as well as the local Internet gateways such as Terra and VilaWeb. While the URL was in the local press a high number of visits were received, afterwards a downshift in visits was detected (see figure 2).
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| Figure 2: Access statistics for the Eivissa and Formentera-forever Web site |
People complain about how they can access virtual display since there are no specific gateways that are updated on museums and temporary exhibitions, except the Spanish version of museums WWW [7]. The only way to be aware these gateways is by the traditional press, museum information, the Catalunya University home page [8] or by word of mouth. Hopefully in the future, the matter will be overcome by creating an up-to-date museum gateway.
Most people who visited the Web site were of course Spanish
(more than 60%), though there were users from other countries.
Amongst them, United Kingdom stands out with 7%, USA with a 5%
and Germany 3%; the site was in three languages (English,
Spanish, Catalan).
The exhibition started on the 10th April 2000 and closed on the 6th June 2000, but the virtual display is still available on-line [9]. The Frederic Marès museum request for a Web site was given three months before the opening which provided ideal working conditions. The Group Òliba was therefore able to create a complementary exhibition, which is so far the best model. The exhibition showed a selection of Catalan books of collectionists, some of them very old, with wonderful illustrations, which are not even available in permanent museums collections.
Prior to the exhibition it was arranged with the museum staff which material could not be in the real display and therefore would only be available on-line. The potential audience was also considered and visitors who did not have any background in illustration techniques kept in mind. A preliminary section introducing Illustration techniques was developed as a complementary part to the exhibition. Two other transversal sections were created too, one provided information on illustrators and the other recommended Internet links referring to the same subject.
The navigation layout was kept as simple as possible with two frames for different menu levels. At the first level, the virtual reality area was incorporated, and at the second level, the diverse sections of the exhibition as well as the new transversal sections were added. The iconography used seemed to have pleased users and problems of fonts and screen configuration encountered in the previous exhibition were overcome.
One of the most useful things in the virtual exhibition was the possibility of digitalising all the books’ illustrations, since the displayed books were in closed cases allowing only one of the illustrations to be seen. It was decided to digitalise all the illustrations of a 10 book sample in two sizes (i.e. small and full screen), and then, one or two images from the remaining books. This digitalisation added a complementary role to the exhibition, its function was appreciated not only by the users but the organizers and curators as well.
Another complementary and didactic element was the virtual reality section, which in this case was a reconstruction of a XIXth century illustration workshop. The reconstruction on-line shows how the diverse machines (i.e. presses) work and links to the techniques section. After the virtual exhibition came out, a second version of this virtual reality section was added which included human beings in order to explain the illustration techniques in more detail [10].
Despite the positive comments about this virtual exhibition, people demanded more dynamic and interactive elements in the Web site. They also asked for more animations in some sections of the display.
With regard to the content, the virtual replica is an excellent complement to the real exhibition with new sections, which provide a minimum background previous to the visit as well as a resource for the after visit. The navigation structure allows an easy access to any book illustration, and also users can jump to other transversal sections. It is believed that this Web site took full advantage of the hypertextual format for no-linear access to information.
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| Figure 3: Visitors by country for the Aureum Web site |
The exhibition had a wide dissemination thanks to the local press as well as the University, ICUB and Instituto Cervantes gateways. Unfortunately, the international dissemination was again lacking since specialized museum gateways do not seem to attract many visitors. From the 10th April to 20th June, 1202 people had consulted the Web site, a daily average of 20 people (see figure 3).
This exhibition organized by the museum d’Art de Girona is focused on the history of letters and the way people communicate by mail [11]. It started on the 27th May 2000 and will close in October this year. The working conditions of this display were also difficult as the textual and image material arrived only two weeks before the opening. Neither the design nor content were fully elaborated, since there was never enough time.
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| Figure 4: M'escriuràs una carta? Web site |
A series of complementary sections were created, which include biographies of characters mentioned in the text as well as some recommended links on the subject. A few virtual reality clips were defined as an introduction to the diverse exhibition sections. In this case, the virtual reality section did not have a didactic function, but acted only as an illustration and alternative navigation menu.
One innovative aspect of this Web site is the employment of animations (created with Dreamweaver) for the main entrances of the diverse sections and the main page. These dynamic images have been received enthusiastically by the users, although they only have an aesthetic function.
With regards to dissemination, the Web site has a serious handicap because it is only available in Catalan as desired by the organisers. This means that it is chiefly used by local public. The Group Òliba believes that this was a mistake because Internet allows access to a wide number of people most of whom do not speak Catalan. The site is therefore unavailable for global access due to language and technical obstacles. So far more than 700 people have accessed to the Web site, however 95% of them are Catalan.
The Group Òliba now has some new on-line exhibitions under way in which they hope to apply knowledge learned from these previous experiences. The key points include:
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Cèsar Carreras Monfort
Group Òliba
Department of Humanitites
Universitat Oberta de
Catalunya
C/ Diputació, 219
08011 Barcelona
Spain
ccarreras@campus.uoc.es
<http://www.uoc.es/humfil/>
Phone: +34 93 2532426
Cèsar Carreras Monfort is lecturer in Archaeology and Computing applied to Humanities in the Department of Humanities at UOC. He is one of the directors of the research group Òliba, which evaluates how new technologies may improve dissemination and documentation of cultural heritage.
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For citation purposes:
Carreras Monfort, C. "Virtual Exhibitions: Extending Museum Potential", Cultivate Interactive, issue
2, 16 October 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue2/virtual/>
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By Martin Wassermair - October 2000
Since 1994, Public Netbase t0, based in the Museumsquartier of Vienna, has developed from a small, active cultural project into one of Europe's most respected media-culture institutions. Subsequently the Public Netbase t0 team has been doing pioneering work related to providing skills and competence in media. It promotes the artistic use of digital media and as a non-profit Internet service provider supports a number of artists and cultural initiatives with its technical expertise, storage capacity, and Internet accounts.
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Embedded in a tight Austrian and European network, Public Netbase t0 focuses on work that lies on the cutting edge of technology and art. This is shown through successful activities, projects and events in the Museumsquartier as well as throughout Europe.
Public Netbase t0 has succeeded in establishing a connection between popular culture and advanced art theory and in attracting a broad, young public to Net culture with exhibitions, discussions, and art exchange projects. Among the most successful events of the past few years have been the exhibitions "Robotronika hypermatic:automagic" [1] and "Synworld playwork:hyperspace" [2]. "World-Information.Org“ [3] was Public Netbase t0's contribution to the media project of the European cultural capital Brussels in 2000.
Net art initiatives such as Public Netbase t0 are early pioneers to fuse culture and the arts with digital media in manifold ways, thus enabling free speech and diversity of opinion in the Austrian public space. It is self-evident that culture and the arts greatly contribute to new ways of digital communication and interaction in society and between people.
One of the most important tasks Public Netbase t0 has is to raise public awareness on the interconnectivity of digital networks with a democratic, participating and socially balanced cultural development. Its work appeals to political responsibility to enable and guarantee a pluralistic and democratic Information Society for all.
Net art is an important component of democratic opinion formation in today's Information Society. It contributes to cohesion and innovation in society by stimulating critique and by offering objective information and creativity away from the mainstream of commercial pressures. It believes that public policy is responsible for creating a stimulating legal and financial framework. The initiatives' main objective is to guarantee a pluralistic Information Society, firmly rooted in regional and local networks, unlimited diversity of opinion, and diverse artistic and cultural content produced and distributed by independent media.
The new right-of-centre coalition government between the conservative People's Party (ÖVP) and the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) represented by the new State Secretary for Media and the Arts, Mr. Morak, has now stepped back from all funding promises for 2000. This drastically threatens the realisation of the goals and the socio-political missions of Public Netbase t0. Konrad Becker, one of the founders of Public Netbase, says his organisation is only one of many cultural institutions to face closure because they are judged by the government, which includes Jörg Haider's far-right Freedom Party, to be on the wrong side of the political tracks.
The interventions of the ruling government aim at undermining cultural promotion for critical organizations and institutions as well as destroying their structures. The strategy is manifold: termination of rental contracts for federal, provincial or community property, cancellation of subsidies, increased postage rates for newsletters, donation mailing campaigns and program folders. The government reserves the right to subsidise the postage charges for individual organizations and thereby intends, according to the chairman of the ÖVP, Andreas Khol, "to separate the wolves from the sheep."
Already, in April of this year, Public Netbase has had to notification that the lease for its premises in the Museumsquartier will be terminated in 2001. This action threatens to bring an end to the internationally successful achievements of one of Europe's most respected media-culture institutions.
"That is because, in Austria, the clock ticks with a different beat", Konrad Becker declares. In Europe, development and expertise in the field of new media receives a broad base of support. But here in Austria, Public Netbase - a successful model of expertise, skill and mediation - is nearly at its end after years of successful work and achievement; after serving as a provider in 1, 200 important art and cultural projects.
The step taken by the Museumsquartier Errichtungs- und Betriebsges.m.b.H threatens any further development of an important, innovative cultural center in Vienna. Moreover, it confirms all of the fears and criticism that have been expressed about the Museumsquartier since its own beginning.
Austrian cultural policy and administration obviously has no interest in creating or securing conditions for free and active cultural activities and development. Despite - or perhaps even because of ? - the indisputable international, and even national, recognition of Public Netbase t0, the existence of all organisations like ours is under serious threat. In general Austrian artists, journalists and intellectuals describe a climate of fear and intimidation that they believe is part of a government attempt to silence opposition to the coalition government that has become the pariah of European politics.
Becker has given up hope of receiving any more public funding for Public Netbase t0 by the Austrian government, and as he watches its progress he believes that he underestimated the threat to free speech.
"At the beginning, we were all quite happy to see a mobilisation of the public and it was very impressive to see so many people on the streets", Becker says. "But I'm very much afraid if this goes on for a long time. Austria doesn't have a very big tradition of dissenting democratic structures, and I'm very worried about the consequences".
For further information about Public Netbase t0's new campaign see free.netbase.org [4].
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Martin Wassermair
Public Netbase t0
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For citation purposes:
Wassermair, M. "'In Austria, the Clock Ticks with a Different Beat': Short Story of Public Netbase t0, its International Success and Recent Political Struggles", Cultivate Interactive, issue
2, 16 October 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue2/netbase/>
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By David Anderson - October 2000
David Anderson, Director of Learning and Visitor Services at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, talks about how museums can contribute to the Learning Age by taking on a user-focussed approach. This article was first given as a presentation to the EVA Conference, Edinburgh, as part of the 'Open Access to Cultural Heritage Using Information Systems' Programme.
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To link the word “museums” with “learning” is itself an act of optimism, when only half of UK museums appear to make any structured provision for learning, and the number who do so seriously and in a consistent and integrated way throughout the whole institution is really very small. One of the difficulties – philosophically and practically - is the sector’s persistence in believing that its role is to provide information, to an information society, in an information age. The economy of developed societies today is about as dependent upon information as that of Switzerland is dependent upon cuckoo clocks. Successful societies in the current century rely upon the added value provided by learning and creativity, and upon clear understanding of the difference between (in ascending order) data, information, knowledge, learning and wisdom – each of which implies a different role for citizens/users. When we hear the words “information society” or “information age” when referring to culture, we should reach (metaphorically) for our revolvers.
We live now in a time of changing paradigms : from communicating to [that is, at] the public, to inviting their contribution; from a concept of excellence that is focussed on product [that is, the object] to excellence of process and experience as well as product; from giving prominence to “cool”, intellectual spaces to mixing “hot” lived as well as “cool” spaces; from directing to enabling; from linearity to multiplicity; from concern with the profession to concern with the public; from what’s wanted to what’s needed; from site to network; from the conceived to the experienced; from public passivity to public creativity; from data and information to learning.
For museums, the change of paradigm can be summarised as a switch from the object-focussed institution to one that is user-focussed. In the object-focussed museum, knowledge and expertise is perceived to be “in here”, and the audience “out there”. In a user-focussed museum, the expertise of professional staff (such as curators) is only a small part of – and dependent upon – the wider expertise of the whole community; the audience therefore must be “in here” as well as “out there” if the institution is to develop successfully. And in a user-focussed museum, there is a need for expertise of many kinds – for example, about how people can learn, create, make meanings for themselves and enjoy, as well as about objects. The user-focussed approach really does represent a very different philosophy of knowledge, and its implications for museums are significant.
It is often said that the new digital technologies are, or could be, a force for democratic change in society. But it is not the technologies themselves, or information, that will do this, but the development of the skills and opportunities that people need if they are to participate in cultural life of communities, that will provide the democratic foundations for use of new media. Our society does not, and will not, need more information. What it does need is to learn to use digital cultural resources creatively, and to ensure that this opportunity is open to groups that the market alone cannot reach. It is here that the real responsibilities of any publicity-funded museum lie. This is a much more demanding - and intellectually challenging – task than simply churning out existing object data. It is also a function that museums – like flightless birds on remote islands, isolated from evolutionary change – are currently ill–equipped, as a result of their neglect of their educational responsibilities, to deliver.
For this is the learning age. Over 90% of adults say they believe they learn every day of their lives. They say they mainly learn through the cultural sector – the media boardcasting, libraries and museums – rather than formal educational institutions such as colleges. Most say they prefer to learn independently and self-directly, pursuing areas of their own interest, often socially, with like minded people, rather than formally in a classroom where they are taught. And the great majority say they enjoy learning. So why does the museums sector have such difficulty in saying that its primary purpose is public learning? Where is the democratic accountability in this? It is what our users want and expect.
This is also the creative age, and museums should contribute to the development of the creative society in a variety of ways. We can be centres for public creativity, encouraging all of our visitors to experiment with being creative. Projects such as Going Graphic at the V&A [1] – where everyone visiting the museum over a two week period was encouraged to borrow a digital camera and use images they took in the galleries to design posters for the museum – demonstrate that when given the chance anyone can produce exhilarating creative ideas. Learning is our purpose and creativity – informal, social, pleasurable – is our medium.
The future, undoubtedly, is distributed. The BBC’s new corporate strategy is based on the concept of the “learning journey” – that is, the reality that people will move from the screen to the internet to the college to the community centre to the local society to the library to the museum, and back. It is us in museums who often still work in relatively isolated “sectors”, not the public. What we have to do is to help them join up the bits. It is not a new idea. Back in the 19th century museums, through the Government’s Department of Science and Art, were an integral part of the education system. Now technology – as well as government policy – is joining again what neglect, and lack of vision and direction on the part of museums, had left separated. Local and regional cultural policies are forcing museums to see themselves as part of the bigger picture. Hybrid institutions – part museums, part library, part media centre, part arts centre – will become more common.
The age of the monodisciplinary institution – and the monodisciplinary specialist – is over. In future the key to success will be integration and ambiguity – within a local community for a local museum, at a UK and international level for major regional and national museums – that is, a presence, with partners, everywhere that people are. Networked systems, such as those the BBC is already developing – and secure identification - will mean that we will soon no longer need to carry out technology with us as we move. Provided we can prove who we are – now a relatively easy matter – we can become largely independent of individual bits of equipment. All users will need to carry is their identity, perhaps literally on the tips of their fingers, or in their eyes, in order to continue to use museum and other resources, wherever they happen to be. The museum will always be only one click away.
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David Anderson
Director of Learning and Visitor Services
Victoria and Albert Museum
Cromwell Road
South Kensington
London
SW7 2RL
d.anderson@vam.ac.uk
Phone: (44) 20 – 7942 2188
Fax: (44) 20 – 7942 2193
David Anderson is Director of Learning and Visitor Services at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland he studied Irish history at the University of Edinburgh before training as a teacher and teaching history in a state comprehensive school in Sussex. In 1979 was appointed Education Officer at the Royal Pavilion, Art Gallery and Museums, Brighton, then moved in 1985 the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, where he developed interactive history exhibitions, Armada Discovery and Bounty Discovery, associated with major temporary exhibitions, and was author of two children’s books.
Since 1990 when, as Head of Education, he moved to the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Education Department has expanded its services to include a wide range of adult and community programmes and schools services, and has been actively involved in development of the new British Galleries, to open in November 2001.
David Anderson has written extensively on museology and museum education. He served on the Content Working Group for the Library and Information Report, Building the New Library Network, Library and Information Commission (1998) and is co-author of A Netful of Jewels : New Museums in the Learning Age Conference of National Museum Directors (1999) on development of the digital dimension of museums. He is also author of the national report for Government on museum education, A Common Wealth: Museums and Learning in the United Kingdom (Department of National Heritage, 1997) republished by DCMS in a second edition as A Common Wealth: Museums in the Learning Age (The Stationery Office, London, 1999). He was awarded an OBE for services to museums and education in 1999.
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For citation purposes:
Anderson, D. "Networked Museums In The Learning Age", Cultivate Interactive, issue
2, 16 October 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue2/networked/>
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By Marieke Napier - October 2000
Research into Machine Translation (MT) has already celebrated its fiftieth birthday, yet understanding of its successes and failures is still minimal. Even the increase in availability of Machine Translation software due to the globalisation of the Internet has had little impact. User's knowledge of the complexities behind translating remains limited and judgements are based on one off personal experiences. This article aims to bring forth into the arena some of the questions behind Machine Translation and the issues that surround them. Understanding these particular questions is the only way researchers can move closer to their dream of a society no longer hindered by language barriers.
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The European Association for Machine Translation gives the following definition for MT: "Machine translation (MT) is the application of computers to the task of translating texts from one natural language to another " [1]. It is the automation of translation.
One of MT's main problems is that such a definition, although correct, oversimplifies the process involved. This oversimplification has been a constant thorn in MT's side causing its defeats to appear even greater when contrasted against people's high expectations.
The type of MT which this article will concentrate on is that of the 'text to text' variety. MT can be divided into two types, Unassisted MT and Assisted MT. Unassisted MT takes pieces of text and translates them into output for immediate use with no human involvement. The result is unpolished text and gives only a gist of the source, hence the term 'gisting'. The ultimate aim of this type of MT is sometimes known as Fully Automatic High Quality Translation (FAHQT), perfect translation created solely by a computer. Examples of this form of MT include IBM alphaworks native search [2], Babel Fish 2020 [3], Worldlingo [4] and Dragon systems [5].
Assisted MT uses a human translator to clean up after, and sometimes before, translation in order to get better quality results. Usually the process is improved by limiting the vocabulary through use of a dictionary and the types of sentences/grammar allowed. The use of a 'controlled language' has been fairly successful. Some systems have also been set up to learn from corrections. Assisted MT can be divided into Human Aided Machine Translation (HAMT), a machine that uses human help, and Machine Aided Human Translation (MAHT), a human that uses machine help. Computer Aided Translation (CAT) is a more recent form of MAHT. Another area of MT that is worth mentioning here is Natural Language Processing (NLP). NLP parses sentences and determines their underlying meaning in order for databases to answer SQL queries entered in the form of a question. For further information on the structure of MT systems see the recent special report on the future of translation featured in Wired magazine [6].
The structure of MT systems can vary but all use some sort of transfer component. This component is specialised so that a pair of languages can produce a target sentence. The transfer component has a correspondence lexicon, which is a comprehensive list of the source-language patterns and phrases mapped to a target language. Some MT systems use systematic transfer systems, which apply software parsers to analyse the source language sentences. This type of transfer system means that for every two languages that translation is required between a new a correspondence lexicon must be created.
An alternate to the transfer component is an Interlingua, a type of intermediate language. A translation is made from the source language into the Interlingua and then into the target language. The benefits of using an Interlingua are that only one part is required for each language and therefore further languages can be added easily. See figure 1. Unfortunately the majority of work to date relies on comparative information about the specific pair languages. Arnold et al argue that use of an Interlingua could cause loss of information. They believe "different languages 'carve the world up' differently, so settling the choices of vocabulary for the Interlingua will involve either (i) some apparently arbitrary decisions about which language's conceptualisation to take as basic, or (ii) 'multiplying out' all the distinctions found in any language" [7]. Despite these problem areas a number of organisations have used this transfer method in building systems including ATLAS II by Fujitsu [8], and the Distributed Language Translation (DLT) system by Buro voor Systeemontwikkeling (BSO), a Dutch company, which uses Esperanto as its Interlingua [9].
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| Figure 1: A comparison of a Standard Transfer Component versus an Interlingua |
You may already be wondering why MT is so important, and as this article carries on and the difficulties with MT are discussed you may argue that research into MT does not make economic sense. There are people who would agree with you. However before making such a judgement it is important to understand the underlying issues surrounding language and MT which have interested mankind for many years.
Many researchers are interested in MT because of the philosophical questions it touches upon. Each culture and religion has a different answer behind why we do not speak the same language. The Old Testament of the Bible used by the Christian religion tells how originally "The whole earth was of one language, and of one speech" but the people in the world were greedy and wanted everything. They even wanted to be able to reach heaven and so they built a tower up as high as they could. Naturally God caught them and was very angry. "So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth" [10]. It is clear that most religions and cultures view Language as a strange and curious phenomenon. This has led in the past to questions such as is there a universal language? If so is this language still around today, for example in the form of Hebrew? Is the multiplicity of language a bad thing that should be overcome? Is language integral to a people and culture? Is English the new Interlingua or cyberlanguage, after all this Web magazine, like so many others, is in English? Or is this new universal language Esperanto? These questions and some attempts to answer them are given on the Language Futures Web site [11]. MT also prompts researchers to ask whether in the future it will be possible to automate human knowledge? Will computers ever be able to think? There is no denying these are all interesting questions and to be able to answer them would not only make you rich but very famous. The philosophical implications of this type of language study also effect a whole range of sciences. MT impacts on at the very least computer science, Natural Language Processing, artificial intelligence, neural networks, and linguistics.
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| Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525/30-1569 Brussels)
The Tower of Babel, Wood, H 114 cm, W 155 cm, Inv.no. 1026. Image reprinted courtesy of Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. URL: <http://www.khm.at/>
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On a more practical level there are also important political factors in the search for good quality MT. Those of us who live in places where more than one language is spoken will understand the importance of translation. There are issues, in Europe especially, over whether it is politically correct to continually use one language as the master tongue. This dominance of one language, notably English in the western world, puts other language speakers at a disadvantage. Is this dominance a bad thing? Will the enforcement of one language have propagandistic implications by not allowing people to express themselves fully? For example in George Orwell's 1984 with the use of Newspeak [12]. Does a country's loss of language in turn mean their loss of a culture? The European perspective is discussed later on in this article but it is fair to say that in Europe multilinguism is a fact of life, which makes translation necessary for communication. However translation is time consuming and continues to be expensive so MT could be a financial blessing. Reports show that soon the number of non-English web sites will out number the new sites in English. The total number of non-English-speaking online users is currently 165 million people; this will soon surpass the number of English speakers online worldwide and grow to two-thirds of the online world by 2005 [13]. There is definitely a growing financial need for some form of automated translation.
It is probably worth mentioning here that there is a fear that MT will result in millions of translators being left without jobs. In reality this is unlikely to happen. Most MT systems allow draft translation to be done then passed on to professional translators. Batch draft translation can be tedious to do anyway and translators will be given more time to spend on the more interesting intricacies of their trade.
As mentioned previously, the reality is that achieving MT is difficult. We only need to look at English, a language of puns, innuendo and double entendre, to see that there are many factors that make automated translation arduous. A really comprehensive assessment of the issues behind MT and popular misconceptions is given in Arnold et al's text 'Machine Translation: An Introductory Guide' [7]. Firstly there are words with multiple or ambiguous meaning (e.g. light); then there are sentences with complex grammatical structures; and finally, to make matters worse, there are idioms. These factors all contribute to mistranslation so that we often end up with sentences as odd as the title of this article. The title is a French to English mistranslation of "Les soldats sont dans le café" which should actually read "The Soldiers are in the Café". This type of mistranslation, the French word café means both coffee and café in English, are amusing yet very easy to make. For more examples of bad translations have a look at the Fortune City Web site [14]. The article writers at Fortune City believe so strongly that accurate MT will only ever be a pipe dream that they have renamed it "Mad Translation" [15].
Other researchers although aware of the problems are more optimistic. Arnold et al believe that to counteract the problems MT systems will face they need to have three types of knowledge [7]. Distinctions between the 3 is not always clear but they can be defined as:
The first two problems here are to do with language however the main problem MT has is not a linguistic one. Good MT is more than a system containing a bilingual dictionary and knowledge of grammar; it is more than word substitution. The main problem for MT is that computers lack real world knowledge. They do not understand the relationships things have with each other or how things fit together. For example a computer will not know that a house is bigger than a telephone, or that April can also be a female name in English. As Arnold et al explain: "Arming a computer with knowledge about syntax, without at the same time telling it something about meaning can be a dangerous thing" [7]. It is giving computers this knowledge that has stumped not just the MT theorists but all those working in the fields of Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence for many years.
In his article, 'Why Can't a Computer Translate More Like a Person?' Melby calls this missing factor 'agency'. He defines agency as "the capacity to make real choices by exercising our will, ethical choices for which we are responsible" [16]. Agency is closely linked to the ability to create meaning. It is almost as if MT sees as a growing child does; without insight, experience and knowledge. One way of dealing with the problem has been use of a semantic net to show relations of things to each other. Words are kept in interlinked groups that relate to other groups. How these groups relate to each other is defined by an external source. This basic concept is similar to the idea of model groups within a mark up language like Standard General Markup Language (SGML).
This lack of understanding of the world means that MT does not work well on literary works. However, such writing is only a small percentage of the translation that needs to be done. MT can work well on text where no world knowledge is needed and there is a controlled language. Even Melby agrees that "On some texts, particularly highly technical texts treating a very narrow topic in a rather dry and monotonous style, computers sometimes do quite well". This controlled language can take the form of a dictionary or thesaurus or even a series of language specifications such as PACE used by the UK Company Perkins engines [17]. PACE specified that users must keep it short and simple, omit redundant words, order sentences logically, make it explicit and use the set dictionary. A number of MT systems using controlled language have been successful and remain in use today. The most cited of these is METEO, based at the Canadian Netreorological Center in Dorval, Montreal. METEO has translated around 45,000 words of weather bulletins everyday since it's main launch in 1990. The SYSTRAN system [18] has also had reasonable success and is the translation engine behind BabelFish. A list of well-known MT packages is given at About.com [19] and at Rivendel.com [20].
It seems that to work at this stage of the game MT systems need to be customised for specific purposes. At the moment good quality translation can really only be obtained by reducing what you are allowed to say.
The inspiration for a machine that translated from one language to another came from the code cracking of World War II. A memo drafted by Warren Weaver in 1949 contained the following lines:
"I have a text in front of me which is written in Russian but I am going to pretend that it is really written in English and that it has been coded in some strange symbols. All I need do is strip off the code in order to retrieve the information contained in the text" [21].
Weaver was the vice-president of the Rockefeller Foundation and director of its Natural Sciences Division. He was an exceptional mathematician; his text co-authored with Claude E. Shannon entitled 'The Mathematical Theory of Communication' is still used in Universities today. As well as mathematics Weaver was also interested in the complexities of language and how language related to science. At a talk given in Seattle, 1966, Warren Weaver asked students not to overestimate science. "Do not think that science is all that there is, do not concentrate so completely on science that there's nobody in this room who is going to spend the next seven days without reading some poetry…. Because if you do not open your minds and open your activities to this range of things, you are going to lead too narrow a life" [21].
Weaver wanted a way to apply his knowledge of science to the world of rhetoric and language. In 1952 the first MT conference was organised by Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, yet by 1960 the same man published a report arguing that fully automated MT was impossible. Initially a great deal was put into MT research but as the promises failed to be fulfilled this money began to be withdrawn.
Nirenburg in his article in 'Knowledge and choices in Machine Translation' stated that "the principal mistake of the early MT workers was that of judgement: the complexity of the conceptual problem of natural language understanding was underestimated" [22]. This lack of judgement cost them dearly. In 1964 the National Academy of Sciences of the United States published the report of its Automatic Language Processing Advisory Committee (ALPAC). The report recommended that most research into MT be stopped immediately due to its failure to produce useful translation. Morale in the MT field plummeted to an all time low and confidence was lost in the vision of building a fully automated MT system. Arnold et al believe that the damning content of this report can only be understood in the "anglo-centric context of cold-war America where the main reason to translate was to gain intelligence about Soviet activity". Whatever the reason for the conclusions arrived at in the report the outcome was a decrease in research in the MT field and a virtual end to all US government funding.
Over the 70s and early 80s researchers moved away from MT and concentrated on understanding language processing. A number of LP systems were set up. In the 1980s there was a revival of MT research, though much of the work was carried out in Japan and not Europe or the US. In Europe the Commission of the European Communities (CEC) did invest in the English-French version of the SYSTRAN. The moves forward that were made were seen as having "had less to do with advances in linguistics and software technology or with the greater size and speed of computers than with a better appreciation of special situations where ingenuity might make a limited success of rudimentary MT" [23]. Even as late as 1995 the METAL project run by Siemens was stopped after more than 30 years of development. Organisations were and still are reluctant to spend money in this area.
In 1997 Altavista adopted BabelFish Translation making it the first real time Systran translation to appear on the Web. Maybe the Internet will the catalyst that MT needs?
In 1958, the Council of the now the European Union declared its first regulation within which it stated that "the official languages of the Member States should be both the official languages of the Community and the working languages of the Community institutions" [24].
The European Union still stick by this belief and one of the main aims of Key Action III, of which Digital Heritage and Cultural Content is a key thematic areas for research, is to enable linguistic and cultural diversity [25]. It seems fairly concurrent that while the European Union is hoping for one currency it is not promoting one language. A news item about the EU's human translator service on the EU Web site states that "Multilingualism is the cornerstone of the EU's democratic credentials. The right of every citizen to be informed and to be heard in his own language is at the very heart of democracy" [26].
At the moment the EU translation service use the Euro-Dictionnaire Automatique (Eurodicautom), a multilingual EU-terminology database, as a translation aid. This database continues to be updated with new terms all the time. The translation service also use Systran software to a certain degree and the TWB (Translator's Work Bench)/Euramis System that holds previously translated pages to ensure work is not duplicated. Collette Flesch from the Translation service states in a recorded interview that while IT has opened up new horizons for multilingualism "the Commission's needs are more at the high-end spectrum of language services, where only human translators can deliver the quality required. [However] Informatics allows the human translator to get translations done better and quicker. He can concentrate on tasks that add value, thereby leaving routine work to the machine" [26].
Since the idea of MT arose the EU or EC as it was then has invested a fair amount of effort in MT research. It views pro language engineering as a means for communication between people when there is no common language. This positive stance for language Engineering is covered in the booklet "Harnessing the power of language".
One of the more successful projects to be funded was the European Translation Programme (EUROTRA) Project, a second Framework research and development project carried out between 1982 and 1993 to create machine translation system of advanced design [27]. The aim of the programme was to create a prototype MT system for use between the primary languages of the European Community, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. The projects main achievement was in the form of detailed and formalised linguistic specification. These specifications were initially going to be lost but have been maintained through the Linguistic Specifications for Future Industrial Standards Project. This project aimed to bring together information from further projects and make it available for use.
More recently during the Fourth Framework Programme (FP4) the European Commission funded a number of Language Engineering (LE) initiatives, some of which are still running. These include ELSNET [28], the European Network of Excellence in Human Language Technologies, which has been funded by the European Commission's ESPRIT and Language Engineering Programme for the last ten years. Its main role is as a co-ordinator of Human Language Technology groups. As part of the User-friendly Information Society initiative, the largest programme in the Fifth Framework Programme (FP5) LE has become Human Language Technologies (HLT) and there have been a number of significant changes. These changes are detailed on the HLT Central Web site [29]. There is more intention to fund Human Language Technologies activities that contribute to 'enhancing usability and accessibility of digital content and services while supporting linguistic diversity in Europe'. Key Action III (KA III) on Multimedia Contents and Tools specifies in its description that it aims to "improve the functionality, usability and acceptability of future information products and services, to enable linguistic and cultural diversity. The work will address both applications-oriented research, focusing on publishing, audio-visual, culture and education and training, and generic research in language and content technologies" [30]. A main area of this is Human Language Technologies. A full list of projects running is available from the Human Language Technologies Web site [31]. Other areas of interest include the adding of multilinguality to new applications such as subject gateways. An article appeared in Exploit Interactive issue 3 that considered how subject gateways can address the language needs of their audiences [32].
Another useful organisations working in the MT field from a European angle is the non-profit European Association for Machine Translation organisation (EAMT) [33]. The EAMT is a third part of a jigsaw that make up the International Association for Machine Translation (IAMT), the other two are Association for Machine Translation in the Americas (AMTA) and the Asian-Pacific Association for Machine Translation (AAMT).
The future of MT remains uncertain but with the growth of international trade and the continuing increase in use of MT technologies on the Web [34] things are looking up. More MT products are coming to market than ever before and a larger number of languages are being tackled.
Recently research has moved into the area of example-based machine translation. This method uses correct translations as a principal source of information for the creation of new ones. There is also a move towards knowledge based MT led by Carnegie Mellon University [35], and the Center for Research in Language at New Mexico State University [36]. Researchers are also continuing to investigate use and creation of an Interlingua, though the current trend is for hybridisations of a number of different techniques. However, among the pessimistic MT professionals there remains a belief that "research in machine translation has developed traditional patterns which will clearly have to be broken if any real progress is to be made" [37]. Some still feel that a fully the idea of a fully automated MT system is unachievable.
For some interesting predictions for the next fifty years in the MT world see Wired magazine's 'Machine Translation's Past and Future' [38].
So after fifty years of research the true art of good quality Machine Translation still remains a mystery. It seems likely though that if man can work out how to get to the moon, create a computer and split the atom then the secret of MT will someday be broken. So will the day of the Babel Fish be soon, and will it solve the answers to the philosophical, political, commercial and scientific questions it raises? When it arrives will MT be all we have hoped for? Douglas Robinson puts it well. He asks whether a machine translation system that can equal the work of a human might not be what we really want. Maybe such a MT will "wake up some morning feeling more like watching a Charlie Chaplin movie than translating a weather report or a business letter" [39].
If you are interested in using MT to translate Web pages then see Brian Kelly's article on how to extend your browser with an automated page translation feature [40].
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Marieke
Napier
Information Officer
UKOLN
University of Bath
Bath
England
BA2 7AY
m.napier@ukoln.ac.uk
<http://www.ukoln.ac.uk>
Marieke Napier is editor of Exploit Interactive and Cultivate Interactive Web magazines.
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For citation purposes:
Napier, M. "The Soldiers are in the Coffee - An Introduction to Machine Translation", Cultivate Interactive, issue
2, 16 October 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue2/mt/>
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By Alastair Lindsay - October 2000
Whilst bearing in mind the arguments surrounding Machine Translation, Alastair Lindsay of Worldlingo.com [1] explains how you can use MT as part of your Internet strategy.
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The accuracy of machine-translated documents has been a much-debated topic in the language industry—a debate that intensifies as machine translation (MT) becomes more prevalent in Internet applications. On one side you have professional translators saying MT will never replace us because it is not accurate. On the other side the scientists thrive on the challenge of perfecting MT and are determined to do so
This debate clouds the true value of MT to your Internet strategy.
First the facts of business:
So what’s the implication for your Internet strategy? - It means big opportunity for your business or research group!!!!
Second the facts of the language industry
So what’s the implication for your Internet strategy? – Use the right tool for the job, both have an important role to play on the Internet.
Until recently, the language industry has been divided into those who provide human translations (HT) and those who provide machine translations. The problem with this division is that neither side has the perfect answer and it is the ecommerce companies that are suffering.
"With the increased focus on the profitability of e-commerce businesses, these old prejudices have to be put aside,” says Phil Scanlan, CEO of Worldlingo.com. “The fact is both MT and HT can make a substantial impact on your profitability if they are integrated appropriately – harnessing the strengths of each.”
Worldlingo.com is leading the way with seamless solutions that integrate the best of human translation and machine translation for maximum effect on your profitability.
"The secret to our success in this area has been our willingness to sit down with clients and discuss their Internet strategy,” says Scanlan. “It is not just a matter of identifying areas for translation, but more importantly working out the financial models that generate real profits from international ecommerce."
Machine translations are used in
a variety of ways by dot.coms, ranging from plug-in browsers to
cut and paste boxes. Worldlingo.com, a recent addition to the
market, believes MT should be used in combination with HT. The
vision behind Worldlingo.com is to provide seamless and
time-efficient international communication on the Internet.
Worldlingo.com uses machine translation to complement its
database of human translators, as is evident in the
company’s email translation service.
Businesses that communicate regularly with foreign language-speaking clients use this email service to automatically translate an incoming message into their own language. With each translated email, the receiver also gets a quote for what it would cost to get the email professionally translated. Therefore, users of Worldlingo.com’s email service can receive a free machine translation that provides them with the gist of their correspondence. From this, they can decide if it is an important message (i.e. potential customer), and if so they can accept Worldlingo.com’s quote for human translation delivered in Internet time. The email translations offered by Worldlingo.com cover 70% of the non-English languages on the Internet. This will allow communication with almost 90% (including English speakers) of Internet users through the medium of email.
The email system is a prime example of Worldlingo.com’s philosophy towards translation - Machine Translations in combination with Human Translations provide a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Online translation companies who use machine translation engines are not trying to compete against large localization companies such as Berlitz, LionBridge, and SDL. Instead, they are concentrating on smaller Web-based translations, such as Email and Web pages, which traditional translation service providers generally find too small to translate. In-house language translators at large corporations also find their large workloads leave little time for these smaller rush jobs, and find Internet focused translation services like Worldlingo.com’s a useful overflow valve.
The most prominent languages offered by machine translation software are:
An examination of the biggest language growth areas on the Internet indicates that providers of online machine translations will have to put increasing emphasis on providing Asian language translations.
The International Data Corporation [2] predicts that the fasted growth in Internet use will be in Asia, where the number of people using the Internet will grow from 20 Million now to 75 Million by 2003. Newsbytes Asia says that the growth will be even greater than this in the long run. Its recent report found that there are currently 43.6 million online users in Asia and a 62% increase is expected by 2006; which will reach 370 million.
Most of Asia's users are in Japan, however by 2005, China is expected to surpass all other countries in the region of Asia. 37.6% of Asia's online users will be Chinese in 2005; this signifies 85 million users. (Nov. 1999).
As mentioned throughout this article machine translations are not 100% accurate. They are limited by the intricacies and culture of the world’s languages. This is particularly the case with Asian languages. The sentence structure of Asian languages is the opposite of languages such as Latin based English. This means the machine translator has to rearrange the whole sentence as well as translating individual words.
Recently, companies such as Worldlingo.com have provided Asian language machine translations through its Web and email services. While improvements still need to be made, the gist of Asian Web pages can be easily obtained. It is going to be a challenge for MT scientists to work on this area, as Asia clearly is going to be a dominant Web player.
The examples given in this article show that machine translations, despite providing only the gist, are very useful as long as they are used in combination with other translation techniques. The free services provided by Web translators can save businesses money by vetting junk email and other Web communications, and by highlighting whether there is sufficient demand for Web Site localization. The World Wide Web is an International medium, and language differences cannot be avoided. Therefore, Machine Translations will be an integral part of a business’s Internet strategy.
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Alastair Lindsay
alastair@worldlingo.com
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For citation purposes:
Lindsay, A. "Machine Translations - An Important Part of Your Internet Strategy", Cultivate Interactive, issue
2, 16 October 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue2/lingo/>
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By Dmitriy Luchkin - October 2000
The Russian Cultural Heritage Network is an information network which successfully combines separate sources of cultural information by uniform standards in order to provide information about the cultural heritage of Russia. The RCHN is a non-profit organisation, which represents and promotes Russian cultural heritage to the global community, creates a communication environment for Russian museum and art professionals and develops distance learning and cultural tourism technologies in Russia. Dmitriy Luchkin describes the RCHN and explains why the setting up of such a network was imperitive.
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Before the Cultural Heritage Network was set up the initiators' team was faced with a number of difficult tasks. The issues needing consideration included difficulties over how to reconcile the special interests of potential participants, how to embrace the whole of Russia, and how to correctly structure an efficient operational network. The Association on Documentation and New Information Technologies '99 (ADIT) and Electronic Imaging and the Visual Arts '99 (EVA) conferences were appropriate venues for these discussions and workshops were conducted that allowed a trade-off of different cultural heritage institutions' concerns. The creation of the Russian Cultural Heritage Network was in response to decisions made concerned with interactions within the cultural heritage environment. The network works because it constructs flexible and steady communication patterns through rapidly developing communities. Networking stimulates independence, creativity and openness to incentives and nurtures the development of a broader identity. The Network's success rests on its ability to bring together diverse actions and initiatives by relevant gathering, presenting and searching of cultural heritage information. Despite appearances, the network is not a panacea for all Russian cultural networking problems but it has helped. Its setting up was a complex task that involved good organisation of work due to the great scale and quantity of tasks. This was achieved by the management's suggestion to combine human incentives and organisational interests irrespective of their location, institutional specialty and social position.
There were three large obstacles perceived as major constraints influencing the creation of the network and posterior networking. A possible lack of feed-back from the the constituents of the diverse institutions involved, due to subtleties in the law and vagueness in specifications made the complexities of these constraints difficult to see.
The wide range of networking participants (suppliers) targeting a wide range of professionals (users) caused the first constraint. This accumulation of information resulted in poor targeting due to information overload; which in turn failed to obtain synergy. For this reason a system of central and special information management was proposed where two data catalogs are partially overlapped.
The second constraint was due to gaps in legal regulation surrounding information processing, possession, networking activities and ownership in general. For non profit making organisations the current act is fairly conservative and therefore places considerable restrictions on the activities of the network. These difficulties were overcome by execution of statute as well as all Russian legal acts and informal conventions attained among networking participants. Positive outputs of networking could influence positively the policies concerned and the regulations being enacted.
The third problem was due to the limitations imposed on the network's development by the dictatorial control over its activities. This situation meant that some perspectives could be missed and ignored. The network would then end up as a rigid and inflexible structure, a mechanism that only functioned at a proper level in a swiftly emerging turbulent environment. To avoid these problems it was decided to keep the network as open as possible. Ideally the procedure for entry would be as short as possible. The rigidity of the initial structure stems from the original vision and consequently changes the decision making process. That's why the evaluation of general opinion was seen as an important task and fundamental to the future of RCHN. During technical construction of the network the possibility of constant expansion was kept in mind. Those involved also applied the expertise and experience gained when working on the implementation of the All-Russian Museums Registration project [1].
The network is organised into cultural heritage institutions from different regions of Russia. These different institutions work in close cooperation, coordinated under the network. The RCHN encourages discussion and elaboration of the cultural heritage community's opinion in order to influence the policies currently being made in Russia regarding the development of Russian culture and cultural heritage.
The network organises funding for different proposals, participates in the projects and facilitates cooperation with international partners as well as with domestic ones. It also conducts workshops on operative assignments and the issues concerned. The RCHN promotes the cultural heritage of Russia and disseminates special information regarding world-wide cultural heritage. Communications' activities aside the main task of the RCHN is to represent Russian cultural heritage via the Internet. In order to do so it runs a large number of databases containing different types of cultural heritage objects. The technical framework for these activities includes a central database and special databases holding cultural heritage information. The data exchange can be used for both effective presentation and collection and relevant searching (we've named it 'distributive balanced system of networking'). A regional, thematic or other specific feature is used to decide on the content to be held in the databases. The cultural heritage environment presents this information through news service activities and other interactive actions (boards, forums, mailing lists). The coordination of these activities is very important when networking among the regions of a huge country like Russia. The relatively backward infrastructure means that gaps in a the network are quick to emerge. It is also the task of the network to support the infrastructure's development through finding funds, financial aid and consulting. The official structure of organisation is demonstrated by the physical network of the coordination office and regional centres. The regional centres are subsidiaries of the RCHN. Currently there are three regional centres in Izhevsk, Smolensk and Perm, others in Omsk, Kaluga, Oryl, Petrozavodsk, Samara, Novosibirsk are in development. The legal authorities are distributed between the directorate, the advisory board and the constituent assembly.
The main principles of networking that we hope to apply to the RCHN are openness, objectivity, succession, comprehensiveness and integrity. It is hoped that promotion of this cooperation through communication will spread to both the formal and informal leaders in the domain of culture and cultural heritage.
The challenge is to ensure development of the network is established on the triple e-base. So far this triple e-base refers to excellence, experience, expertise. 'Excellence' refers to the intensive development and use of technologies applied due to decisions based on our conceptual ideas. 'Experience' includes the implementation of numerous projects and the level of aptitude that has been reached in the area concerned. 'Expertise' refers to the competent vision and high standard of knowledge of digital culture. Maintaining this triple e-base helps us to keep the team in a rapidly changing ambiance.
In the future the network will incorporate the activities of international organisations and other cultural networks, gaining mutual benefits and advantages. We're ready start partnership with responsible companies. All proposals are welcome.
The RCHN has plans to connect its activities with e-commercial initiatives in the realm of art, design, crafts, architecture, recreation, tourism, etc. However, the main aim for the Russian Cultural Heritage Network is to become major part of Russian Heritage Net. The network would like to put their experience gained and their applications created at the disposal of the Russian Heritage Net. More information on new directions is available from the RCHN Web site [2].
The most developed part of the RCHN is its Web site Russian Museums Online [2]. This relatively large Web resource was planned, positioned and constructed as a core, central part of the Network. That was considered a start up point, currently the Web-site has obtained a positive expected result. It includes a diverse data of different Russian museums and galleries containing texts as well as a huge number of images. The project aims to facilitate access to culture and use of the cultural heritage whereby the new information and communication technologies. It also aims to put on the internet at the disposal of heritage professionals.
The network is organised on the base of cultural heritage institutions allocated among the regions of Russia.
1995 - The concept of the start up project was defined, and a working team was assembled.
1996 - The technology was installed and the preliminary database of museums was created.
1997 - The first part of the “All Russian Museums on Line” project was launched.
1998 - A comprehensive survey of Russian museums was organised, and the information that was collected became the basis for the Russian Museum Register.
1999 - RCHN organised its first educational project.
1999-2000 The regional centres in Izhevsk, Smolensk were set up. Web-page with translated information regarding IST initiatives was created.
Russian Museums Online [3]
The Russian Cultural Heritage Network’s main resource
centre
Launched in May 1996, the site has about 45 000 visitors per month. It is a comprehensive on line database containing 2034 museums with detailed descriptions and images (in total about 9Gb) served by a powerful and easy to use search engine. Russian Museums Online is a powerful guide to cultural Web sites with detailed descriptions and ratings (total 550). Most of the material is presented in both English and Russian. There is a Cultural news section, with information from all regions of Russia, which is updated daily. The weekly electronic magazine “MR-List” has 4200 subscribers.
 |
| Figure 1: Russian Museums Online |
Web Server for Russian Museum Professionals [4]
An information and communication centre for museum
professionals
The server was launched in March 1997. It has links to Russian and international museum and organisations, information about conferences, lectures, reports and laws.
Russian Museums Register [1]
Comprehensive online database of Russian museums and
cultural organisations
The Russian Museums Register started in October 1998. It holds detailed information about Russian museums obtained through the first survey of Russian Museums.
Educational project[5]
The Educational project produced a distance learning centre based on the Web-Server ‘Museums of Russia’. The project uses new technology to enable distance learning and the exchange of educational material. Partners from museums and universities all over the world are now getting involved in the project.
The activities of RCHN are supported by the Russian Federation Ministry of Culture, UNESCO, ICOM of Russia, ADIT (CIDOC of Russia), The Association of Russian Museums, The Association of Museum Professionals, The Association of Russian Libraries. Our activities are also supported by non-government foundations (OSI, RFFI) and commercial organizations (Intel, ORC, Stack Ltd.). RCHN collaborates with several cultural heritage networks.
The RCHN projects have received more than 30 awards from various Russian and foreign associations. The Web-server “All Russian Museums on Line” is one of the 100 most visited Russian internet servers and is listed in the top 100 Russian Web servers. Information about our projects has been frequently published in the Russian mass media. The number of visitors to our Web site has exceeded 1,000,000 (!) in May this year.
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Dmitriy Luchkin
Development and International Cooperation Manager
Russian Cultural Heritage Network
Dept. 110, State Darwin Museum Building
Vavilova Street 57, 117292 Moscow, Russia
Phone: 7 095 135 33 85
Dmitriy Luchkin is the Development and International Cooperation Manager for the Russian Cultural Heritage Network (RCHN). Other initiatives he is involved in include Zoos of Russia [6], Architecture of Russia [7], History of Moscow [8], Culture of Russia [9], Pushkin Fine Art [10], Russian State Library [11].
The RCHN will be a key-participant in the Workshop on Cultural Heritage Networks at Moscow EVA'2000 presenting on 'Cultural Heritage Networking: Practices and Perspectives in EU and Russia'. [12]
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For citation purposes:
Luchkin, D. "Cultural Heritage Networking in Russia: Permanently Upcoming Perspectives", Cultivate Interactive, issue
2, 16 October 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue2/russian/>
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By Suzanne Keene - October 2000
The digital cultural space in the UK is rapidly developing, as large scale government funding is made available for public networks and content. This builds on investment in digitisation sustained over a number of yeas by higher education funding bodies. Political, economic, social, technical and organisational trends are shaping the future space. Museums have multiple stakeholders, and their current expectations need to be appreciated, from the perspective of the kind of electronic content that museums can produce. Possibilities for museums in the future digital space have been set out in the report from the National Museum Directors' Conference, A Netful of Jewels [1]. The content that is already available, however, is imaginative and highly attractive, and shows the potential for museums to take their place in the digital space.
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The UK government is backing the concept of the information society / economy in all its ramifications with policies and substantial funding [2]. There is also strong backing and funding from the European Union.
Government is increasingly driving forward its policies and objectives via funds for specific objectives obtained through competitive bidding. The newly established Resource: the Council for Archives, Museums and Libraries [3], will begin to pick up and drive government policies. It does not control the largest UK cultural institutions: the national museums, the British Library or the Public Record Office, although it can be expected to exercise influence.
The museum sector is also expected to deliver on broader government objectives: education ... social inclusion ... access ... participation ... two way rather than 'us to them'. Many programmes are predicated on producing educational content (sometimes broadly described as lifelong learning), and technical standards are being deliberately pitched towards low-end equipment to assist affordability [4].
Government funding is providing capital investment – through higher and further education bodies for those areas; through the National Lottery for museums, libraries and archives: the Heritage Lottery Fund (the HLF) [5] and the New Opportunities Fund (the NOF) [6]. Other government sources are also possible, such as the Treasury's Invest to Save programme, which has funded the A2A (Access to Archives) [7] programme.
It is not yet clear where the ongoing funding will come from to sustain the permanent digital resources and services that will be created. There are three possibilities: museums can redirect funding from other activities (but public funding for museum activities is in general decreasing); additional public funding can be supplied; or income can be generated from users of the content generated by the capital investment.
If the latter, there are a number of models for generating sustainability income. Government sources have described the quarry in which museums develop raw material - digitised captioned images and illustrated catalogues - and commercial sector companies develop authored productions. In museum co-operatives, such as AMICO [8], a number of museums band together to jointly market their digital property. In another model, licensing, museums simply license the rights to use their content to third parties such as Corbis [9]. Museums are taking the first tentative steps towards charging directly for rights to use - for example the British Museum in its COMPASS project, and the National Portrait Gallery. No doubt a mixed economy will eventually emerge. SCRAN [10], the Scottish cultural resource network, claims success from licensing access and use of its content, though some museums are not comfortable with the comprehensive rights it obtains from museums to use and re-use their materials.
The National Grid for Learning as originally defined was expected to stimulate a market for content such as that produced by museums, by providing the funds for schools to purchase electronic teaching and learning material.
Online provision by museums for their various interest groups is now the norm rather than the exception. Stakeholders include the general public; funding bodies including government, local government, and sponsoring commercial companies; museums' special constituencies such as scientists, the art market, local organisations; commercial publishers; educational establishments; and many others.
The UK is still among the lead countries for penetration of the Internet. Surveys of museum visitors now commonly find that 50% of them have online access from home.
People really are using the Internet more at home. There are high access figures for museum and other cultural Websites (such as the Public Record Office and the British Library). Effects on numbers of actual visitors to museums are if anything positive.
Broad band communications are often seen as creating greater opportunities for museums. This is not necessarily so. The complex video, film and sound, which this technology will enable, are not natural media for museums. Broadband content will be both elaborate (requiring large internal resources) and expensive to produce, while existing Web based content is relatively inexpensive. However, some spectacular broadband museum based productions, perhaps using virtual reality environments, can be expected.
Delivery via digital TV should create more populist audiences, and better enable routine two-way communication.
Multimedia productions of various kinds such as are delivered over the Internet now are more natural to museums. Museums have hardly begun to exploit some of the more exciting possibilities, particularly those involving participation and two-way communication with their audiences. The New Opportunities Fund programme can be expected to produce some innovative results here.
The potential to integrate databased information, such as catalogue information and labels, with screen based delivery mechanisms is very significant for museums. It is seen as politically desirable to provide digital access to a large proportion of the objects in the collections. An ongoing puzzle is how to present catalogue type information in ways that demonstrate the interest and significance of the objects.
Across the spectrum of electronic businesses and organisations, there is collaboration and convergence, vertically and horizontally. Internet service providers, for example, are becoming fewer and larger. Media companies are merging. Teleco's are becoming some of the largest companies around, such as Vodafone in the UK.
These trends are seen in the public sector too. The higher education digitisation body, JISC [11], and JANET, the national higher education network, are extending to cover further education (colleges etc.) as well. Together with the other developing public networks, the Peoples' Network (public libraries), the National Grid for Learning, and the University for Industry, there will be a comprehensive digital cultural and educational space for all citizens in the UK. Where are museums situated in that space?
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| Figure 1: The educational cultural networks in the UK |
Museums, libraries, archives and higher education organisations are equally affected, and those in lead positions are forming partnerships, e.g., AMICO, SCRAN, Fathom.com [12]. Smaller museums have to work much harder to form a critical mass. However, collaboration is being encouraged by funding programmes, which increasingly expect bids from groups of museums and other organisations. From the users' viewpoint, co-operation is likely to provide more popular results than specialisation. For example, collections relating to the history of science could be combined with history, or art and design, or military history, or current science, to form a resource with wider appeal than any single subject.
The task for museums, if they wish to succeed in the future digital space, is to design strategies that enable them to use the geographical features of this new landscape in pursuit of meeting stakeholder expectations and their own objectives.
Museums notoriously have to play multiple roles. Currently, there are political pressures on them to become more to do with people than with collections: to expand their role as communal as well as cultural meeting places, to interact more, and to accord validity to contributions from their audiences equal to that that they give to interpretation outwards by museum staff.
Fig. 2 (Fig2.jpg) The parameters of the future space for museums
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| Figure 2: The parameters of the future space for museums |
The role of the collections themselves, and of the information they embody, is unclear, although there is strong political pressure to make comprehensive collections information available online.
There are already excellent examples to illustrate the kind of content that the four domains of the museum future space will contain. Those below are drawn from UK organisations.
Populist infotainment - Perhaps because they have to try harder to engage their audiences, science museums provide some of the best examples of this. The Science Museum offers Exhibitions Online, for example Challenge of Materials [13], the Museum of Science & Industry in Manchester [14] is another excellent site offering material of this kind.
Academic authority - A few museums are using the medium for specialist academic online publishing - for example, the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, with Sphaera [15]; the National Maritime Museum with its Journal of Maritime Research. [16] The National Maritime Museum in particular offers a comprehensive and impressive amount of serious material on its subject area.
Interactive participation - Possibly the best example is the Science Museum's STEM project, where schools are invited to create Websites based on the Museum galleries [17]. Some of these are equal to anything the Museum can commission commercially.
Information provision - Collections online catalogues are growing. Art collections were perhaps the first - the online catalogues of art galleries such as Tate and the National Gallery. It has been argued that catalogues are dreary stuff if not to do with images, but the Natural History Museum's Earthlab datasite shows the way to create meaningful access [18]. Through their Earthlab, online visitors can access their mineral catalogue. On-screen choices entice exploration through interests that anyone can relate to - place, date, type of fossil and others.
Purpose-made educational products - Some museums are offering these. The Association of Independent Museums is just undertaking a project to create pilot projects and to disseminate the skills of making them. However, the cost of any but the most straightforward html offering is proving high. Another issue is how schools would actually use these products: less, perhaps, for teaching using direct online productions, and more as downloadable and printable briefing papers and worksheets. The Science Museum's Flights of Inspiration, made collaboratively with the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, was specifically designed for use in formal school settings [19].
Museums seek funding to pursue their aspirations, but funding is used by the UK government to drive achievement of its policies. A sum of £50 million has been made available to create content for the National Grid for Learning and the People's Network (the public library network). These NOF funded projects will begin to come on stream in 2002. This will rapidly create a critical mass of digitised content from all three Resource: sectors. The cultural online world in the UK can be expected to rapidly evolve.
Large amounts of funding continue to be provided via higher education bodies to create the distributed national electronic networked resource (the DNER) [20], with a national gateway, the Resource Discovery Network [21]. The latter (and we may speculate, eventually the former) will embrace higher education, the public libraries network, the National Grid for Learning.
Museums are not yet the primary target for any major sources of funding in the UK, although there are programmes that they can enter if they wish. To be successful they are having to adopt government priorities: education, access, inclusion; collaboration, co-operation. Some museums are finding themselves dealing with strange bedfellows in the New Opportunities Fund projects, for example. Whether they will see this as an opportunity for creative partnerships, or prefer to forgo funding and continue to define their roles more narrowly, remains to be seen.
The context for museum digital information in the UK is evolving as rapidly as ever. Sustained funding over a number of years has been applied to establishing high quality networked provision for higher education research and teaching. Other networks and services are now in the planning stages - the National Grid for Learning for schools; and the Peoples' Network, for public libraries. Museums may have a place in all of these, although they are the particular target of none. It is possible that these networks will coalesce eventually to become an overarching digital cultural and educational network for the UK.
There are pressing current strategic issues for museums. There is as yet no source of funding specifically targeted at the content they can create. The mechanisms to fund the permanent preservation and maintenance of the publicly funded digital assets that will be created are unclear; and the co-operatives or overarching organisations necessary to properly realise their potential for content delivery and for revenue generation have not emerged, apart from some for art museums.
The significance of the integration of collections databases with Web-based templates or other automated Internet access is that people will be able to, so to speak, help themselves to the information that the collections embody without mediation or interpretation, or even contribute to it. Many museum professionals have not yet accepted that they should actively encourage this. However, opportunities will arise through broad band technology for them to communicate much more directly with their audiences, and the implication of this is that knowledge will become more important than collections.
Despite these issues, museums have created a large amount of highly imaginative and high quality content on the Web, and they attract high numbers of Web visitors. This confirms that they will be a valuable national and global asset once they find their place in the future space.
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Suzanne Keene
Head of Collections Management
The Science Museum
s.keene@nmsi.ac.uk
<http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/>
Suzanne Keene has worked in the fields of archaeology and museums for many years. From working on the research publication of excavations in Winchester she moved to the Museum of London to head conservation. While there she developed one of the first computerised systems for recording conservation across all disciplines. In 1992 she moved to the Science Museum, as Head of Collections Management. Major projects have included LASSI, the Larger Scale Systems Initiative, to specify and procure collections management software available to all UK museums; the Netful of Jewels, a report to government on behalf of the National Museum Directors’ conference; and the National Collections Centre, to house a variety of large scale collections to be visited by the public on one of the Science Museum’s sites. She has authored two books, most recently Digital Collections: Museums and the Information Age.
She currently serves on the board of The Tank Museum and continues to lecture and publish widely in the fields of museum information and collections.
Comprehensive references to online published information,
including that referred to in this article, can be found on the
portal Website.
URL: <http://www.s-keene.dircon.co.uk/infoage/>
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For citation purposes:
Keene, S. "Museums in the Digital Space", Cultivate Interactive, issue
2, 16 October 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue2/space/>
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By Alexander Weir - October 2000
The protection of Intellectual Property Rights is a major concern for the EC Information Society Technologies Programme (IST) and especially for DIGICULT projects which include Libraries, Museums, Publishers, Galleries and many other organisations and institutions dealing with our Digital Heritage and Cultural Content. Intellectual Property Rights cover every aspect of cultural life, our heritage and business from the publication of a written work to the development of a computer programme to index a library database. Whatever your particular specialization, interest or activity IPR is a subject that you should be aware of. In order to assist paypersons through the minefield of protecting IP rights, the European Commission established the IPR-Helpdesk to be the central reference point for all IP related enquiries.
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After two years of operation, the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Helpdesk, an initiative of the European Commission's INNOVATION programme is now firmly established as the primary source of IPR information and assistance among European innovators. The IPR-Helpdesk provides free support on issues concerning the protection and exploitation of intellectual property and primarily assists European Researchers working on Community research projects under the Fourth and Fifth Framework Programmes and the EUREKA initiative. IPR-Helpdesk also assist potential applicants to Community funded research programmes, on all matters related to intellectual property.
The protection of the intellectual property (IP) generated by European entrepreneurs and innovators is a key issue for Europe´s enterprise society as innovation is essential for enterprise development and for the competitiveness of European business.
The IPR-Helpdesk achieves the following aims:
The IPR Helpdesk offers two main services:
In order to be able to carry out these tasks, the IPR Helpdesk has established wide-ranging contacts with the European Patent Office, national patent offices, patent lawyers, universities, and others involved in intellectual property within Europe.
The IPR-Helpdesk acts as a catalyst between those needing assistance in the field of intellectual property and those offering such assistance.
The IPR-Helpdesk is now the central IPR reference point for Community-funded research contractors. Particularly directed at intellectual property aspects within Community-funded research and technological development (RTD) activities, the IPR-Helpdesk is also open to all SME's. Help is given on research contract related issues, consortium agreements, in locating the assistance necessary to register as well as protect and exploit their research results. The RTD Community represents about 5% of European Research and Development (R&D) expenditure. One of the objectives of the IPR-Helpdesk is to provide assistance in the IPR aspects of contracts binding these entities with the European Community. The terms of these contracts define various rights relating to accessing and to ownership of R&D resulting from consortium work.
Another important aim of the IPR-Helpdesk is to encourage the use of technical and patent databases as a way of finding out the state of the art before embarking on any R & D activity. In Europe, 30% of R&D outlay is squandered on work that merely reproduces the results of existing research. By spurring companies on to make systematic use of patents as a source of information, the IPR-Helpdesk helps them to target their research on aspects that are genuinely innovative.
The IPR-Helpdesk is located in the centre of Luxembourg. The staff includes a number of multilingual legal experts from around Europe. In addition to the legal team, technical and creative staff maintain and develop the Web site. Public relations personnel have the specific tasks of bringing the Helpdesk's mission to the attention of its users and the wider academic and innovation community.
In the context of its activities the IPR-Helpdesk has developed a range of publications that can be found on the Internet site [1].
The IPR-Helpdesk Web site provides unique access to a collection of national links relating to IPR and Innovation. This enables any EU citizen to get acquainted with rules, fees and services in the field of innovation and IPR in all member states.
These EU national pages are available from the IPR Web site [2].
The IPR-Helpdesk legal team have prepared an extensive series of briefing papers aimed at researchers and managers to give an overview on important IPR issues. The documents also contain various links to further relevant sources of information.
The papers cover subjects such as:
These and other briefing papers are available from the IPR Web site [3].
Documents such as international treaties and conventions, Community legislation in force and in preparation, national legislation and other documents relating to intellectual property can also be downloaded via the IRP-Helpdesk Web site.
These legal texts are available from the IPR Web site [4].
Certainly one of the highlights of the IPR-Helpdesk Web site, IP-Wire is a free electronic newsletter. The newsletter has currently more than 5,000 subscribers and covers a wide variety of subjects and issues relevant to IPR and Innovation. From various surveys IP-Wire is an essential medium for accessing relevant and up to date information in all IP fields. Recent issues for example covered the Amazon.com patent on its affiliate programme, WIPO's latest patent filing statistics and a report on the Aventis patent infringement case. Regular features include items on how to use esp@cenet in the form of a search quiz, news of IP court cases from around the world and a selected European patent of the month. All articles are accompanied by relevant hyperlinks guiding the reader toward further sources of information.
IP-Wire & IP-News are available from the IPR Web site [5].
In order to help laypersons gain full benefit from the esp@cenet service the IPR-Helpdesk has developed a multimedia tutorial. This extensive tutorial is a unique tool that helps European innovators to better understand patent information and help them use effectively the esp@cenet during their R&D process. The tutorial also includes a general introduction to patents and patent information. This tutorial should be seriously considered by any innovator before entering a research project.
The esp@cenet tutorial is available from the IPR Web site [6].
Other facilities include an extensive range of multimedia tutorials designed to help SME's and others understand fully the IP issues that confront them under the 5th Framework Programme. These tutorials explain the various Community rules relating to IP issues in RTD projects.
These tutorials are available from the IPR Web site [7].
One of the current major debates within the innovation community in Europe is the protecting of inventions with an economic and effective patent system.
All business sectors are concerned by the protection of inventions.
In order to address this particular issue the European Commission has recently proposed the adoption of a single patent to cover the whole area of the European Union. This Community patent will addresses the needs of small and medium-sized firms, in that it will protect the inventive and innovative character of industrial products or processes. It is designed to promote innovation within SMEs.
This proposal for a Community Patent represents the outcome of a large-scale consultation process embarked upon in the context of the Action Plan for the Single Market (European Council of Amsterdam in June 1997) and the Green Paper entitled "Promoting innovation through patents" of 24 June 1997. The Commission took the initiative and organised a hearing of interested parties which took place on 25 and 26 November 1997. These came out clearly in favour of a unitary Community patent, to be created preferably by way of a Community Regulation, as had been the approach in the case of the Community trade mark in 1994. The Commission Communication of 5 February 1999 on the follow-up to the Green Paper took stock of the consultation in some detail.
It is worth noting that inventors, industry and, in particular, SMEs welcomed the planned approach with its aim of making the patent accessible, affordable and thus competitive. Innovation is of vital importance to competitiveness, growth and employment in the European Union.
Protecting inventions through patent law is a means of ensuring that inventors' ingenuity is rewarded. In patent matters, it is important for the European Community to have a legal and regulatory environment at least as favourable as that enjoyed by companies located in world regions competing with the European Union.
First it is more expensive than the patent systems in place outside the Community and is therefore not readily accessible to SMEs. Secondly it is incomplete, as the 1989 Luxembourg Convention on the Community Patent, which was to have created a unitary system of protection, has never entered into force.
The time has come to address these weaknesses. In response to the recent sharp fall in the Community's share of growth in the number of inventions patented world-wide, this proposal sets out to re-establish its previous position.
The European Council in Lisbon on 23 and 24 March 2000 reiterated the importance of rewarding innovative ideas by way of industrial property rights,
and patent protection in particular. Accordingly, the European Council invited the Council and the Commission to ensure, in cooperation with the Member States, that the Community patent is effectively implemented by the end of 2001.
The purpose of the proposal is to put in place a system of unitary patents covering the entire territory of the Community. Given the territorial nature of national patent laws, the objectives pursued cannot be achieved by Member States individually or collectively.
This proposal for a Regulation is aimed at creating a new unitary industrial property right, the Community patent. This is essential for eliminating the distortion of competition which may result from the territorial nature of national protection rights; it is also one of the most suitable means of ensuring the free movement of goods protected by patents.
The creation of a Community patent will also enable businesses to adapt their
production and distribution activities to the European dimension. This is considered to be an essential tool if we are to succeed in transforming research results and the new technological and scientific know-how into industrial and commercial success stories - and thereby put an end to the "European paradox" in innovation - while at the same time stimulating private R&D investment, which is currently at a very low level in the European Union compared with the United States and Japan. The Community patent system will coexist with the national and European patent systems. Inventors will remain free to choose the type of patent protection best suited to their needs.
The European Commission has proposed to create a Community Patent to give inventors the option of obtaining a single patent legally valid throughout the European Union. The proposal would significantly lessen the burden on business and encourage innovation by making it cheaper to obtain a patent and by providing a clear legal framework in case of dispute. The Lisbon and Feira European Councils cited the creation of a Community Patent as an essential part of Europe's efforts to harness the results of research to new scientific and technological developments and so contribute to ensuring a competitive, knowledge-based economy in Europe. The Summits recommended that the Community Patent should be available by the end of 2001.
Internal Market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein said: "The creation of a Community Patent is an essential part of Europe's efforts to reduce the cost burdens on business and help ensure that research and technological and scientific innovation can be successfully applied by industry and commerce. Often in the past Europe has provided the research, but it is others who have used it to commercial advantage. We need to turn that around. Europe's reputation for research should be matched by a reputation for innovative, competitive product development. A single patent will slash the costs of patent coverage while guaranteeing a high level of protection. Such a Community Patent will provide an important competitive tool to European industry and notably SMEs in the age of the new economy."
At present patents are awarded either on a national basis or through the European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich, which grants so-called European Patents. These are essentially a bundle of national patents. The EPO, established by the intergovernmental European Patent Convention of 1973, offers a single application and granting procedure and so saves the applicant the trouble of having to file with a series of national patent offices. But each Member State may still require that, in order to be legally valid in their territory, the European Patent must be translated into their official languages. Moreover, in the case of disputes, it is national courts that are competent so that, in principle, there can be 15 different legal proceedings, with different procedural rules in every Member State and with the risk of different outcomes. The costs of translation mean that it is currently significantly more expensive to patent an invention in Europe than it is in the US or Japan. When added to the potential inconvenience of working with a variety of different legal systems in case of dispute, the current system is a significant barrier to research, development and innovation.
Under the Commission's new proposal, Community Patents would be issued by the European Patent Office. National and European Patents would coexist with the Community Patent system, so that inventors would be free to choose which type of patent protection best suited their needs.
A principal aim of the proposal is to reduce the cost of patenting an invention in Europe. The table below shows clearly the variation in the costs of patenting in Europe compared to the US and Japan:
| Filing and search fees | Examination fees | Grant fees | Renewal fees | Translation costs | Agent's fees | Total | |
| EPC | 810 + 532 | 1 431 | 715 | 16 790 | 12 600 | 17 000 | 49 900 |
| US | 690 | - | 1 210 | 2 730 | n/a | 5 700 | 10 330 |
| Japan | 210 | 1 100 | 850 | 5 840 | n/a | 8 450 | 16 450 |
Table 1: Comparison of costs and fees (in euros) payable for obtaining patents in the EU, the United States and in Japan.
The cost of the current European Patent is as you can see three to five times higher than that of Japanese and US patents.
A patent application consists of a detailed description of the invention and a set of claims, which defines the scope of the protection provided by the patent. At present, a typical European Patent (to apply in eight Member States) costs approximately 49,900 EUROS, of which 12,600 EUROS (some 25 per cent) is accounted for by translation costs. In the case of a European Patent to apply in all 15 Member States and requiring translation into all eleven EU official languages, the translation costs go up to some 17,000 euros.
The proposal to create a Community Patent would reduce translation costs to approximately 2,200 Euros by not requiring any translation beyond that already foreseen in the Munich Convention for the granting of the patent (this implies that the patent would be granted and published in one of the working languages of the EPO - English, French or German - and the claims (i.e. the part of the patent which defines the scope of protection) would be translated into the other two).
In practice the universal language for patents is English and translations are very rarely consulted. For example at the 'Institut National de la Proprieté Industrielle', the French national institute of industrial property rights, translations are consulted in only 2 per cent of cases.
Further information regarding the Community Patent is available from the IPR Web site [8].
If you would like any further information on any aspect of IPR’s protection or on any of the subjects mentioned in this article or you would just like to be kept up to date about the future activities of the IPR-Helpdesk, including IPR seminars, events and conferences, site updates, newsletter, etc, then please feel, free to contact us [9].
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Alexander Weir
IPR-Helpdesk
64-66, avenue Victor Hugo,
L-1750 Luxembourg
alexander.weir@ipr-helpdesk.org
<http://www.cordis.lu/ipr-helpdesk/>
Phone: +352 47 11 11 1
Fax: +352 47 11 11 60
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For citation purposes:
Weir, A. "IPR-Helpdesk The Intellectual Property Rights Gateway For Digital Cultural Heritage", Cultivate Interactive, issue
2, 16 October 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue2/ipr/>
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By Daniel Thérond - October 2000
Daniel Thérond introduces the European information network on cultural heritage policies (HEREIN project). HEREIN monitors heritage policies in line with the principle of systematic information exchange laid down in the Granada convention on the architectural heritage and the Valetta convention on the archaeological heritage.
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The European
information network on cultural heritage policies (HEREIN
project) originates in the IVth European Conference of Ministers
responsible for the Cultural Heritage (Helsinki, May 1996), which
recommended setting up a permanent information system for
authorities, professionals, researchers and training specialists
[1]. The aim, basically, was to establish a
kind of information service to monitor heritage policies, in line
with the principle of systematic information exchange laid down
in the Granada convention on the architectural heritage and the
Valetta convention on the archaeological heritage.
The 1996 Council of Europe’s Report on cultural heritage policies already made available a substantial amount of material in printed form. It comprised input from 27 countries plus a summary.
What are HEREIN's aims, who are the partners in the project, and what are the prospects?
Convert the Council of Europe's paper databank on the architectural and archaeological heritage into a system:
The project, which runs from November 1998 to November 2000, comprises:
The site is basically concerned with national policies, to meet a desire, which authorities have often expressed in recent decades for more information about other countries' practices. Access is by theme, country or database, and the site deals with a number of questions :
Theme 1.Changing perspectives on heritage strategies.
Theme 2.Agents (organisations and people)
Theme 3.Financial policy
Theme 4.Knowledge and protection
Theme 5.Conservation and management
Theme 6.Access and interpretation
Theme 7.Statistical data
In addition to the concise data on each country, the site is also a portal to computerised databanks and to whatever other Internet sites countries wish to make available by setting up links. At the same time, an international working team under British lead is developing a multilingual thesaurus in English, French and Spanish that will clarify the concepts.
International co-operation and implementation of activities nationally will increasingly involve a cross-sectoral approach bringing in, in addition to public authorities, business and the voluntary sector, for the concepts of cultural heritage and built environment have widened so much that they can no longer be the sole preserve of a specialist administrative authority.
This is where the European Foundation for Heritage Skills comes in, helping set up European networks and establish machinery for running multilateral projects.
HEREIN can be considered a demonstration project, not only as regards achieving its own aims but also in terms of assembling the administrative and financial components for a European cultural project (Council of Europe and European Union, heritage ministries and public and private partners).
The next stage in the project will naturally consist in widening the circle of partners, adding first of all to the number of participating countries (Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia and Sweden have already joined the Network, their information will be available on-line from September 2000). A system to assist the partners and train future participants is already being put together. The partnership will be having discussions with the European Commission with a view to get financial support for wider extension and dissemination of the HEREIN project.
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| The training session for new countries held at the European Youth Centre, Budapest |
 |
| Participants of the training session |
Several topics are suggested looking at the home page:
We hope to develop all these services through a living and stronger co-operation between national institutions, local partners, professional bodies.
European heritage should therefore usher in a new generation of European co-operation.
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| The HEREIN Steering Committee group at their last meeting in Oslo, April 2000 |
A French version of this article is also available.
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Daniel Thérond
Executive Director of the FEMP (European Foundation for Heritage
Skills)
For further information contact Nicolas Dautier Nicolas.DAUTIER@coe.int
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For citation purposes:
Thérond, D. "Www.European-Heritage.Net: The European Heritage Network", Cultivate Interactive, issue
2, 16 October 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue2/herein/>
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By Daniel Thérond - October 2000
Daniel Thérond présente le réseau européen d’information sur les politiques du patrimoine culturel (projet HEREIN). HEREIN vise à établir un 'observatoire' pour suivre l'évolution des politiques du patrimoine, en conformité avec le principe de l'échange de l'information systématique inscrit dans la convention de Grenade pour la sauvegarde du patrimoine architectural de l'Europe et la convention de La Valette sur le patrimoine archéologique.
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Le réseau
européen d’information sur les politiques du
patrimoine culturel (projet HEREIN) est issu de la 4 ème
conférence européenne des Ministres responsables du
patrimoine culturel (Helsinki, mai 1996), qui a recommandé
la mise en place d’un système permanent d'information
à la disposition des administrations, des professionnels,
des chercheurs et des spécialistes de la formation [1]. Le but premier était
d'établir un 'observatoire' pour suivre
l’évolution des politiques du patrimoine, en
conformité avec le principe de l'échange de
l'information systématique inscrit dans la convention de
Grenade pour la sauvegarde du patrimoine architectural de
l’Europe et la convention de La Valette sur le patrimoine
archéologique.
Une quantité importante d’information était déjà disponible sous forme imprimée, avec le Rapport sur les politiques du patrimoine culturel, publié en 1996 par le Conseil de l’Europe, qui comportait 27 monographies nationales et un document de synthèse.
Quels sont les objectifs de HEREIN, qui sont les partenaires du projet, et quelles sont les perspectives?
Transformer la banque de données papier du Conseil de l'Europe sur le patrimoine architectural et archéologique en un système permettant :
Le projet, mis en oeuvre de novembre 1998 à novembre 2000, comporte :
Le cœur du site est dédié aux politiques nationales du patrimoine, pour répondre au désir souvent exprimé par les autorités au cours des dernières décennies d’accéder à plus d'informations sur les pratiques d'autres pays. L'accès aux informations peut se faire par thèmes, par pays ou via une base de données, le site aborde les grandes thématiques suivantes :
Thème 1. Perspectives des politiques du
patrimoine
Thème 2. Acteurs (organisme et professionnels)
Thème 3. Financement
Thème 4. Connaissance et protection
Thème 5. Conservation et gestion
Thème 6. Communication et sensibilisation
Thème 7. Données statistiques
En plus des données concises sur chaque pays, le site est également un portail vers les banques de données informatisées et les sites Internet que les pays souhaitent rendre accessibles par hyperliens. En même temps, une équipe internationale dirigée par les britanniques développe un thésaurus multilingue en anglais, français et espagnol qui clarifiera les concepts.
La coopération internationale et la mise en œuvre d’activités nationales nécessiteront de plus en plus une approche multi-sectorielle regroupant, en plus des autorités publiques, les secteurs privé et bénévole. En effet, les concepts de patrimoine culturel et d’environnement bâti se sont élargis de telle sorte qu’ils ne peuvent plus relever de la seule compétence d’autorités administratives spécialisées.
C'est à ce niveau qu’intervient la Fondation Européenne pour les Métiers du Patrimoine en aidant à la mise en place de réseaux européens et en offrant un mécanisme de gestion des projets multilatéraux.
A ce titre, HEREIN, peut être considéré un projet de démonstration, non seulement en ce qui concerne la réalisation de ses objectifs mais aussi par le montage administratif et financier réalisé pour un projet culturel européen (Conseil de l'Europe et Union Européenne, ministères responsables du patrimoine et partenaires publics et privés).
La prochaine étape dans le projet consistera naturellement à élargir le cercle des partenaires et avant tout celui du nombre de pays participants (la Belgique, Chypre, l’Estonie, la Lettonie, le Luxembourg, la Pologne, la Slovénie, la Slovaquie et la Suède ont déjà adhéré au réseau, leurs données seront disponibles en ligne à partir de septembre 2000). Un mécanisme de soutien des partenaires et de formation des futurs participants a déjà été testé. Le partenariat est en discussion avec le Commission Européenne afin d’obtenir une aide financière pour une extension et une diffusion plus larges du projet HEREIN.
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| La session de formation pour les nouveaux pays organisée au Centre Européen de la Jeunesse de Budapest |
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| Les participants à la session de formation |
La première étape sera de permettre un fonctionnement effectif du réseau. Un des avantages de HEREIN dans ce domaine est qu'il fournira un dispositif partagé, ou au moins une coordination appropriée des responsabilités dans la diffusion internationale de l’information. Il convient de souligner cet effet indirect de l’action du Conseil de l'Europe.
La conférence ministérielle programmée pour 2001 devrait être une occasion importante pour consolider et organiser la nouvelle structure de travail. Le système comportant un observatoire et divers services pouvant s’y rattacher devrait permettre de grandes avancées dans les modalités de coopération européenne dans le domaine du patrimoine.
Si la banque de données sur les politiques du patrimoine reste but initial de HEREIN, European-heritage.net offrira également une gamme d’autres services. La Home Page suggère une série de sujets :
Nous espérons développer tous ces services à travers une coopération vivante et plus forte entre les institutions nationales, les partenaires locaux et les organismes professionnels.
European-Heritage devrait donc conduire vers une nouvelle génération de coopération européenne.
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| Les membres du Comité de Pilotage lors de la dernière réunion à Oslo en avril 2000 |
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Daniel Thérond
Executive Director of the FEMP (European Foundation for Heritage
Skills)
Pour de plus amples informations contact Nicolas Dautier Nicolas.DAUTIER@coe.int
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For citation purposes:
Thérond, D. "Www.European-Heritage.Net: Le Réseau Européen Du Patrimoine", Cultivate Interactive, issue
2, 16 October 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue2/herein-fr/>
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By Theodora Stathoulia - October 2000
The Information Society Programme in Greece, under the 3rd Community Support Framework (Koinotiko Plaisio Stirixis), is one of the eight key actions that comprises the programme, with a total budget of 2,839.1m Euro. It is the first time the country has proceeded with the implementation of such a specific programme for the information society. Theodora Stathoulia reports.
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Strategies, priorities and objectives are specified under a concerted key action in which sectors, those related to education and culture, the citizen and the ‘electronic government’, the new work models in the digital economy, the telecommunications and technical support, are well integrated into the programme. The research and development actions in the country for the 2000-2006 period concerning the specific technological transformation manifest new possibilities for the Greek society. The programme action is divided into five axes:
The main points of the strategic goals for each of the above listed axes are as follows:
Education and culture will attempt to equip, network and instruct educators and create digital content for the development of the educational system for the 21st century by the use of new technology for the documentation and advance of Hellenic culture.
Services for the citizen and improvement of the living conditions will focus on the use of information and communication technologies. It will aim to provide sufficient services for the citizen in crucial public sectors as well as the improvement of quality of life with the introduction of new technologies in the health and welfare system, the environment and transportation.
Development and work in the digital economy will establish the conditions for the transformation to the ‘new economy’ with the advance of electronic commerce, research and its link with production, training to new technologies and tele-working.
Telecommunications will further the process of market liberalization through the development of the telecommunications infrastructure in remote areas for the improvement of advanced services at low cost and many access points for the citizens.
It is of interest here to refer to some background points from the description part of the programme. From the objectives of the first axis the attention is drawn to the necessity of connecting all schools to Internet by the end of 2001. To train all educators for the use of the internet and multimedia by the end of 2002, as well as to make all school leavers ‘literate’ to digital technology by the end of 2003.
In particular, some specific indicators for the success of the programme by the end of its duration include, inter alia, the following:
In addition, the presentation of the Information Society Programme objectives and strategic goals will be better comprehended in the particular national context if more data on the current situation in the country concerning the information society is added.
This can be better understood in the light of some important figures:
It is interesting to examine the objectives of the first axis, on Education and culture by the end of the programme:
This axis is divided into three activities:
The description of the first activity presents a number of interesting objectives:
Surprisingly, there is no reference to libraries at all. Even in the detailed description of the three activities there is nothing linking their objectives to libraries.
The second activity, entitled ‘introduction development of new technologies in education, recommends that all involved parts focus on the development of educational software, the training of educators and tele-education, without any reference to the role of libraries in schools.
Furthermore, the third activity of the first axis, entitled ‘Documentation, dissemination and furthering of Greek culture’, is firmly linked to the development of digital content and the documentation of Greek civilization as well as the improvement of accessible portals and information services. In order to re-enforce the interrelation of culture with other socio-economic activities, a number of proposals are listed. However, the role of the libraries is not incorporated.
The absence of libraries’ role in the Information Society Programme does not mean that libraries will not be funded. In fact, all projects in which libraries were involved, under the 2nd Community Support Framework (1995-1999) will be re-examined under the 3rd Community Support Framework for further financial support. Of course, the criteria for the new research and development activities in libraries will be tightly linked to new goals and objectives of the Information Society Programme. However, libraries in Greece have to specify their own strategic goals in order to make possible that the new programme will correspond to their needs.
The 2nd Community Support Framework gave to libraries all financial assistance needed for building new services and reconstructing the old profile to a new more advanced. For instance, 89m Euro were given to higher education libraries in Greece under the 2nd Community Support Framework (75% the european contribution and 25% the national). It is a huge amount considering the number of libraries (32) and the number of users (about 400.000).
Today, the Greek library community has to proceed to a national strategic plan, which will be incorporated, into the Information Society Programme. It is of great importance to examine the new context under the 3rd Community Support Framework in the light of knowledge and information industry’s future in relation to libraries’ future.
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Theodora Stathoulia, Ph.D.
Information scientist
Adjunct Professor
Library School
Technological and Educational Institute of Athens
Greece
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For citation purposes:
Stathoulia, T. "The Information Society Programme in Greece (2000 to 2006)", Cultivate Interactive, issue
2, 16 October 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue2/greece/>
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ISSN 1471-3225 |