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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.
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| 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/>
Date of Article: 16 October 2000
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