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Welcome to the fifth issue of Cultivate Interactive!
In parallel to the launch of this fifth issue of Cultivate Interactive a series of Cultivate meetings and workshops are being held in Budapest, Hungary. This gathering brings together the two main parts of the European Cultural Heritage Applications Network, Cultivate CEE and Cultivate EU. At the meetings there will be representatives from over 20 different European countries. It is hoped that each individual attending will bring their own unique knowledge and vision of the digital heritage and cultural content community allowing this vast experience and knowledge to be shared. Such conventions can only be beneficial for Museums, Libraries and Archives all over Europe.
Learning from each other is very much the unwritten theme of this issue of Cultivate Interactive.
In their astutely titled feature article Standing on the Shoulders of Giants Paul Miller, David Dawson and John Perkins discuss efforts to leverage existing synergies in digital cultural content creation programmes world-wide. Their article, which deals with the background to a meeting held in London, and reports on a number of significant outcomes that have led to ongoing activity of potentially great benefit to the digital cultural content creation community, discusses collaborative working and how it can be acheived. Within the area in which we work there is great scope for collaboration. Some of the examples given are harmonisation of funding, shared technical standards, preservation standards and general training and awareness. The article advises us to seek out synergies between projects and bear in mind principles written as a result of a meeting held in Lund meeting earlier this year that state Member States and the Commission should work together to "Create a coordination mechanism for digitisation programmes across Member States."
A number of other feature articles in this issue bolster the idea of collaboration by offering advice on how to tackle the problems that are common in memory institutes.
Nils Olander’s article explains how the Stockholm Telemuseum deals with the common problem of actually getting teenagers into the Museum. He explains that they do so by giving them something that all teenagers long for - a platform from which to speak. Since 1996 they have allowed over 800 groups of students to create low budget news programmes using their television studios. The result is an increased interest by teenagers in the museum and what Nils calls more “knowledgeable viewers who fully understand the different phases involved in the production of a program…(with heightened) awareness as to how dependent our society is on different networks”. Communication and collaboration is again seen to be paramount. Ingrid Cantwell in her article on the European Legislative Virtual Library Project (ELVIL) outlines the three main problem areas of access, learning and communication that the project has recently had to face and explains how it is dealing with them. One of the most successful ways has been through organised discussion forums that centred on problem-solving and not only on analysis. The forums are both effective and participative.
Other feature articles that also offer practical advice on the issues they face include the five IST projects providing articles: 3D-Murale, CELIP, CULTIVATE, OpenHeritage and TEL. There is a piece on the Israel Museum and the electronic surrogate by Susan Hazan which considers how they have brought new media into the museum in a creative way. Thibault Heuzé goes in to detail about how CORDIS, the European Commission’s Research and Development Information Service can help you find innovation opportunities and aid with bids for projects. Rob Davies also introduces PSInet: Public Sector Information Network.
Another more practical article is provided by Colin Beardon. He considers how we need to adapt out traditional approaches to the design of software to fit new virtual environments. He explores these ideas through the example of the Visual Assistant software developed for visualisation in the domain of theatre. Virtual environments are also considered by The CINECA team who have written about their role as a leading player in the visualization field. Paul Miller has written for us again, this time with Sally Criddle, in a overview of the projects recently awarded money by the New Opportunities Fund. And finally Leif Andresen considers the importance of user focusing in the creation of bibliotek.dk, the entry point for general public access to the Danish National Union Catalogue.
A number of the regular articles in this issue cover pertinent events in the digital cultural heritage world during the summer months. The National Node column has been written by Karin Hafner of CSC Austria and talks about six information events organised by the Austrian National Node. One of these events, The First Austrian Metadata Seminar held in Vienna on 18 May 2001 is covered in more detail by Michael Day in the At the Event column. Monica Bonnet also provides a review of the 5th European Conferences on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, held in Darmstadt, Germany.
In the Praxis column, in a follow up to last issue’s streaming video articles David Johns of Culturejam Limited takes us on a tour of audio and video encoding. And in the metadata column Christian Guetl proposes the idea for an Integrated Framework for Augmentation and Enrichment of Knowledge (IFAEK) which could be a way of providing existing Web content with more structure and context. IFAEK supplies a combination of additional information from more than one meta-service within the content of a particular Web document.
Finally in our regular DIGICULT Column, Concha Fernández de la Puente leads us around what has been happening in the European Commission in the last 4 months regarding digital heritage and cultural content. DIGICULT also seems to have been attempting to get people to learn from the experience of others. Benchmarking has been discussed as a means of providing support for improving policies and programmes and deciding on good practice. Concha also mentions TRIS, a new support measure that means that “different projects meet, exchange their experiences and develop common approaches to key challenges facing their institutions” [1]. Concha is actually leaving her job in the Information Society Technologies part of the European Commission and moving to work as a regional programmes organiser for EuropeAid. Concha has contributed through her DIGICULT Column to all the issues so far and has also been the Cultivate Project co-ordiantor. Cultivate Interactive would like to say thank you to Concha for all her hard work and wish her well in the future. Concha’s role is now being taken on by Ian Piggot whom we hope will be able to continue the column for us.
In issue 5 last but not least we also have three Misc. articles. The first is an introduction to the most fascinating library buildings in the world lead by Godfrey Oswald. The second offers details of a new European survey that discusses the potential benefits and opportunities for learners with disabilities opened up by technology. And finally, the third, provided by Philip Hunter, is a useful and detailed list of the different Content Management Systems currently available.
We hope the articles in this issue will offer you a taster of the problem solving and collaboration that is going on in the digital cultural heritage community. The potential for further coalition and learning from each other is out there.
When all is said and done we would all be wise to consider the wise words of Aldous Huxley: “Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you.”
Enjoy the issue.
Marieke Napier (Editor)
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By John Cosmas - October 2001
Dr. John Cosmas reports on the 3D-Murale project [1] that is developing a set of Recording, Reconstruction, Database and Visualisation tools for use by archaeologists at the excavation site and at their laboratories.
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An international team of multimedia content creators, led by Brunel University and with support from the European Union, is developing and using 3D Multimedia tools to measure, reconstruct and visualise archaeological ruins in virtual reality, using as a test case the ancient city of Sagalassos in Turkey.
The archaeological site at Sagalassos is one of the largest archaeological projects in the Mediterranean dealing with a Greco-Roman site over a period of more than a thousand years (4th century BC-7th century AD). One of the three greatest cities of ancient Pisidia, Sagalassos lies 7 km north of the village Aglasun in the province of Burdur, Turkey. The ruins of the city lie on the southern flank of the Aglasun mountain ridge (a part of the Taurus-mountains) at a height between 1400 and 1650 metres. A team of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven under the direction of Professor Marc Waelkens has been excavating the whole area since 1990 and has dug up some wonderful treasures. A consortium of universities and companies, led by Brunel University in West London, are collaborating in the European Union-supported 3D MURALE project [1] to develop 3D measurement, reconstruction and visualisation tools for use by Prof. Waelkens’ archaeological team.
New multimedia technologies will produce rich new ways of recording, cataloguing, conserving, restoring and presenting archaeological artefacts, monuments and sites. They will be used to model the Sagalassos site and show how they can be used for preserving and presenting the cultural heritage of Europe in two important ways. Firstly, by putting such new technologies in the hands of the archaeologists themselves rather than creating multimedia content after the excavations. As an important consequence, a more complete record of the finds can be created and presented to the public. Secondly, by presenting the site not as a static entity from a long-gone past, but as a vibrant place that underwent many changes throughout its existence. This includes the visualisation of the site in different eras and of the excavation as it progressed through different time layers.
The 3D-Murale system consists of Recording, Reconstruction, Database and Visualisation components.
Recording tools will be developed for measuring terrain, stratigraphy, buildings, building blocks, pottery, pottery sherds and statues on the archaeological site. The results of these measurements will be stored in the 3D-Murale database system. Reconstruction systems will use a 3D graphics tool to combine the individual measured components and reconstruct building elements and whole buildings from building blocks, pottery from pottery sherds, statues from statue elements and stratigraphy from all finds within the excavation. Any missing elements will be added later through archaeological hypothesis using 3D graphics tools and custom-built software. An integrated model will be built of the landscape, buildings, and artefacts for different eras, showing reconstructions of these periods or the current state. The model will be processed to prepare it for high quality stereoscopic visualisation and for lower quality Internet visualisation. The visual experience will also include the display of the stratigraphy. Any individual artefact (building element, building, pottery sherd, complete pottery, stones or statues) may be queried on the database and the outcome of the query visualised individually. Queries may be formed and remotely visualised over the Internet.
The archaeological team have been carrying out one of the largest and most interdisciplinary archaeological projects in the Mediterranean ever. It aims to reconstruct throughout time, that is to say. since the beginning of the Holocene period, palaeoecological and palaeo-economic events. It aims to reconstruct the evolution of regional patterns and the development of Sagalassos into an urban centre (which eventually incorporated all the others into its territory), the emergence, urban transformation, decline and final abandonment of this centre, as well as the post-occupation history of the site and its territory. The archaeologists continue to catalogue, conserve, restore or protect, and present hundred thousands of artefacts and the site as a whole.
The archaeologists will define from both a scientific and archaeological point of view a set of requirements for the MURALE technology that are necessary to produce visualisations from two eras of the archaeological site. To reproduce accurate and rapid visualisation, a set of goals and work-tasks will be derived from these requirements. Through regular testing they will also update the archaeological and general user requirements to ensure the precision and speed that can be achieved when used in situ. Regular visits will be scheduled to the site for the testing of recording equipment in field circumstances and for the provision of continuously - updated information. A set of representative test objects will be provided for testing the recording equipment. The archaeologists will closely collaborate with the technologists to continuously evaluate their progress under field conditions.
User-friendly and portable 3-D recording techniques will be required. These systems will measure a range of objects of different dimensions. They will be easy to transport, easy to use, and produce accurate and visually convincing results both for guiding ongoing conservation and anastylosis efforts and for presenting archaeological materials and sites to a wider audience of non-specialists.
A first goal is to register in situ all stratigraphical evidence, since archaeological fieldwork by its nature destroys this kind of information. Secondly, techniques need to be developed to record 3-D models of artefacts, mainly for cataloguing and visualisation, and of pottery sherds, sculptures and buildings, mainly for restoration and visualisation. Thirdly, the terrain of the site needs to be modelled in 3-D as such topographic data yield important information for the archaeologists and is vital for realistic visualisation.
Restoration involves taking the 3-D models from the recordings and completing them in a number of ways. Firstly the system must permit a virtual reconstruction of all excavation phases and their stratigraphy. Secondly this system will take 3-D models of objects or their components and allow a virtual, and possibly also the physical completion or anastylosis of pottery, statues, building elements and buildings. This will permit the virtual reconstruction of ceramic objects, either to replace a physical completion of the real object for presentation or publication purposes, or to make the selection of objects to be restored easier and to guide the conservators during this process. Finally, an integrated model must be built of the landscape, the buildings, and the artefacts for different eras, showing reconstructions for these periods or the current state.
Visualization of archaeological sites such as Sagalassos is particularly challenging due to:
Techniques need to be developed to swiftly visualise the site so that people can virtually navigate through it on a standalone high -quality site visualisation system and an Internet visualisation system. This will call for special measures, such as level-of-detail selection, prediction of next views, exploiting our reduced visual resolution when moving, etc. The visual experience will also include replays of the excavations, showing the different layers of the excavations being ‘peeled off’ one by one. This will help future archaeologists revisit the site in virtual reality in order that they make their own interpretation of the finds.
A database will be created in order to store and retrieve the artefacts, buildings and their reconstruction. The database will serve several purposes. Firstly, it will define where the pieces belong in the scene and in which period they were relevant. This will allow the user to set a time slider, after which a complete site model will be composed automatically, showing the buildings, the vegetation, and the artefacts typical for that period. Secondly, it will serve as a repository that can be used by the archaeologists to help them classify finds, to prepare restorations, and to keep track of statistics. Thirdly, the database will be a major gateway to the wider public and to other archaeologists, by making much of this information available over the Internet.
A conventional text based database will be developed for storage and retrieval of text, 2-D image and VRML image information on archaeological content such as buildings, artefacts, parts of artefacts, drawings, documents, and research papers. A query by 2-D image and 3-D object example-based database will be developed for storage and retrieval of text, video, 2-D image and 3-D voxel and VRML image information for archaeological content such as buildings, artefacts, parts of artefacts, drawings, documents, research papers etc. It will make this content available by remote Internet access for other archaeological researchers and members of the public.
Assessment, Evaluation, Dissemination, and Use
The whole MURALE technology and set of tools will be demonstrated both to specialised audiences and to non-specialised visitors. Service demonstrations will be set up to demonstrate the performance of these new tools. These results will be progressively collected and presented in demonstrations both on the site and elsewhere for larger European and other audiences. At the end of the project an overall tool performance will be delivered. It is intended that the experience and results of this project will be reproduced in trials at other European sites and in other European collections.
Dr. J.Cosmas - Brunel University (Project Co-ordinator)
john.cosmas@brunel.ac.uk
Prof. L. Van Gool - Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule,
Zurich.
Also, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.
vangool@vision.ee.ethz.ch
D. Vanrintel - Eyetronics NV
desi.vanrintel@eyetronics.com
M. Grabner MSc - Graz University of Technology
grabner@icg.tu-graz.ac.at
Dr. M. Gervautz - Imagination Computer Services GesmbH
gervautz@imagination.at
Prof. M. Waelkens, Dr. M. Pollefeys - Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven
marc.waelkens@arts.kuleuven.ac.be
,
marc.pollefeys@esat.kuleuven.ac.be
Dr. R. Sablatnig - Vienna University of Technology
sab@prip.tuwien.ac.at
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Dr. John Cosmas
Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering
Brunel University
Uxbridge
Middlesex UB8 3PH
United Kingdom
John.cosmas@brunel.ac.uk
<http://www.brunel.ac.uk/~eestjpc/>
Phone: +44 (0)1895 203120
Fax: +44 (0)1895 258728
John Cosmas is a Reader of Multimedia Systems at Brunel University. He researches into the development of multimedia studio, television, visualisation and database systems.
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For citation purposes:
Cosmas, J. "3D Measurement & Virtual Reconstruction of Ancient Lost Worlds of Europe ", Cultivate Interactive, issue
5, 1 October 2001
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue5/3d/>
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By Tuula Haavisto - October 2001
CELIP, Central and Eastern European Licensing Information Platform is working towards raising awareness among librarians about purchasing electronic material; which nowadays also includes knowledge on contracts between libraries and vendors. Buying a book or a hardcopy of a research journal and buying access to an electronic information resource are very different processes. Tuula Haavisto, CELIP Project Manager, reports on how CELIP can help librarians make the latter a lot easier.
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CELIP is funded by the European Commission and run by EBLIDA, Tuula Haavisto Library Knowledge T:mi and ten library associations in the participating countries: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
The CELIP project is due to last 15 months, from 1 November 2000 to 31 January 2002 and consists of three main actions: A two-phase survey about the licensing situation in the countries mentioned, ten licensing workshops, and a common meeting with the representatives of right owners. Information is being disseminated via the Web site [1].
EBLIDA has been active in training librarians in copyright and licensing matters since the mid-90’s. ECUP, the European Copyright User Platform was introduced at the same time and is consistently the most well known platform, thanks to the EBLIDA Web site. The newest project, CELIP, is a direct successor to CECUP (1998-99), the successful effort which concentrated on copyright matters in the CEE countries. The library associations have now reached the status as copyright partners in their respective countries and effort is once again necessary now that concerned countries have to adopt the new EU copyright directive into their own legislation.
The need to go further from copyright to licensing information and experience sharing was made clear in the CECUP copyright workshops. The European Commission was willing to finance this project as part of the IST programme, and so CELIP began on 1 November, 2000. The partners are the same as in CECUP: EBLIDA is again in charge of co-ordinating the project, and the writer of the article is the Project Manager. Ten library associations in ten EU accessing countries take care of the work on-site. The Steering Group remains nearly the same too. It was and is a very central and responsible group. All the members are very good at sharing project information amongst themselves and with their respective countries.
The CELIP objective is to raise the awareness level of librarians about licensing issues when providing electronic services. Librarians all over the world have to learn new skills to enable them to purchase electronic material. When librarians are no longer buying ownership of physical objects like books but access to information (electronic journals and databases) the librarian is faced with the complications of provisions of use for electronic resources. CELIP is targeting these situations. The key here is not in selecting electronic resources, nor evaluating their quality or their technical level but the legal position of librarians.
CELIP is there also to maintain the good initial contacts established under CECUP between librarians and right owners in CEE countries. The second discussion on user rights in the electronic environment was organised in June 2001. We had four guests from the CEE countries and three from international or foreign right owner organisations. Our discussions were based on statements and policy papers from both sides, and they were considered to be very useful. Especially the TECUP Memorandum of Understanding) [2], an important European consensus report on electronic publishing, was presented and discussed. Many participants mentioned that it was important to recognise the support from both sides for this document. The results of the common meeting will be reported by the follow-on group to TECUP, the Frankfurt Group. The common will to continue these contacts was also expressed in the meeting.
The project, as part of its work, is producing a survey about the licensing situation in the concerned countries. The first version of the results was published on the Web in May 2001 [3].
The licensing situations in the C&EE countries vary a great deal. Single licenses in single cases are known in nearly all the CELIP countries. The consortium model is only now stepping in. Slovenia has the longest experience, from 1997 on, in a countrywide licensing consortium. In Hungary, there are more than 20 consortia between libraries and vendors, and ca. 15 in the Czech Republic. These consortia are contemporary and they have been compiled according to the subject. In the Czech Republic the Ministry of Education has been active in initiating consortia forming, and is also in charge of the costs of many of the contracts. Government financing will cover the years 2000-2003, and after that the libraries must find new ways to arrange the financing. Of the 15 consortia at least two (EBSCO and Proquest) are open for all types of libraries. Estonia, being a smaller country, is looking for a consortium co-operation with Finnish libraries. Bulgaria has recently founded its two first consortia. The initiation-maker was a vendor, Martinus Nijhof. The costs in Bulgaria are paid by libraries and partly by Tempus Project. Slovakian libraries are negotiating with the Ministry of Education about a countrywide consortium. In Romania, Latvia and Lithuania the only consortia are the eIFL consortia.
The eIFL Direct project (Electronic Information for Libraries Direct) by EBSCO and the Soros Foundation Network Library Programme is an interesting case. EIFL Direct is comprised of more than 40 countries (including the CELIP countries) making it the largest library (information) consortium in the world. It allows libraries in participating countries to have unlimited access to over 5.000 full-text, English-language journals, primarily in the humanities and social sciences. The costs for 2001 are paid by the libraries, national governments or national Soros Foundations. The advantage to the participating countries is the ready negotiated, reasonably priced framework contract.
The public libraries and librarians in the CEE countries have also been included in eIFL. Therefore they are more experienced in electronic resources, than their Western European counterparts in non-English speaking countries.
In mid-September 2001, six of the ten workshops were held. In the workshops special attention has been paid to the basic terminology and partners in licensing, to licensing statements and principles and to experiences from different countries. The national presentations given so far have covered the contract law as well as experience sharing from case libraries in the countries that have licensing contract experience. In licensing negotiations, libraries meet different legislation from the countries of the producers and vendors, and it is important to understand one’s own legal position.
There are some preceding projects which offer good ready-made material for the CELIP workshops. TECUP (Testbed implementation of the ECUP framework) [4] has already been mentioned. The material found on the ICOLC (International Coalition of Library Consortia) Web site [5] is also useful. The IFLA Licensing Principles make useful background documents [6].
A poster session about CELIP was presented at the IFLA Boston conference in August 2001. The Slovenian Steering Group member, Dr. Maja Zumer, gave a presentation about the licensing situation in these countries in the open session of the IFLA Committee on Copyright and other Legal Matters [7].
The last CELIP Steering Group meeting will be held in Helsinki in November/December 2001 in connection with the Euro ICOLC conference [8]. This offers a good opportunity to get in contact with European colleagues dealing with the same matters.
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Tuula Haavisto
Project Manager,
C/o e-Office
4. Linja 24
FIN-00530 Helsinki, Finland
Phone: +358 - 40 - 568 9396
Fax: +358 - 9 - 7289 5060
Contact information for the co-ordinator:
EBLIDA
PO Box 43300
NL-2504 AH The Hague
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 70 309 0608
Fax: +31 70 309 0708
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For citation purposes:
Haavisto, T. "CELIP: Licensing Information for Librarians in Central and Eastern Europe", Cultivate Interactive, issue
5, 1 October 2001
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue5/celip/>
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By David Fuegi - October 2001
David Fuegi introduces Cultivate Central and Eastern Europe (Cultivate CEE), a new addition to the Cultivate Cultural Heritage Applications Network (CULTIVATE) [1] which supports the cooperation of memory institutions (archives, libraries and museums) under the European Commission’s Information Society Technologies Programme (IST). It brings to the network 10 new nodes in the Accession countries. These nodes should become established from the autumn of 2001.
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CULTIVATE CEE began work on 1st April 2001. At a stroke, this added 10 more countries to the Cultivate Cultural Heritage Applications Network (CULTIVATE). In formal terms Cultivate CEE is a separate contract with the Commission with its own partner structure. In practice, it will work very closely with Cultivate EU with which it shares a common workprogramme and a common technical infrastructure. Cultivate CEE runs for 2 years and so formally ends March 2003, soon after the end of Cultivate EU. The partners met in Torun, Poland in May 2001 to plan their work and again in Vienna in June. A further meeting will be held at the end September in Budapest and from then on the new Cultivate nodes should be operational according to their local circumstances.
A full description of the Cultivate network has already been given in Cultivate Interactive [2] and no attempt is made to reproduce that here.
In essence, Cultivate CEE extends the Cultivate concept into the following countries of Central and Eastern Europe:
A co-ordinating body for cultural heritage will be established at national level in each of these countries. As a result, it is expected that
The project is coordinated by the British Council (Poland) and managed by MDR Partners (UK). The project’s partner line-up includes strong partners from all the CEE countries listed above and includes players from the libraries, museums and archives sectors.
Cultivate CEE aims to increase take up of the IST programme and awareness of its results in its target countries concentrating on the cultural heritage sector. It will work closely with NCPs and other relevant organisations and projects to achieve its aims. Whereas under the 3rd and 4th Framework Programmes a network of National Focal Points (NFPs) was established in all EU Member States as part of the Telematics for Libraries Programme, the Cultivate CEE partners have less of a tradition on which to build. Nonetheless, the Cultivate CEE partners aim to create a network of national nodes similar to those in the EU countries.
Within the archives, libraries and museums sector the CEE National Nodes will aim to:
Cultivate CEE will not duplicate the infrastructure provided by Cultivate EU. It shares the same technical partners as Cultivate EU and makes a substantial financial contribution to the provision of the following common services:
The corporate identity of CULTIVATE CEE was discussed with the partners in CULTIVATE EU at a meeting held in Vienna in June under the auspices of CSC. From a contractual perspective CULTIVATE CEE is and will remain a separate project. However from the point of view of the clients of the project, separate identities could be confusing and counterproductive. The two projects (and CULTIVATE Israel) have therefore decided to present one face to the outside world through:
Within the framework of the separate contracts on which the projects rely, it has been decided to hold joint management meetings to discuss matters of common interest (mainly the common services listed above and most aspects of marketing). The two projects have also asked to be peer-reviewed at the same time. These management arrangements fully come into effect in a joint meeting of the two projects planned to take place at the Hungarian National Library in Budapest at the end of September. Most of the national nodes will be represented and the experience should be mutually beneficial in cementing together this pan-European network.
The Central and Eastern European national nodes have begun work and are in process of:
Cultivate Russia is currently under negotiation and expected to start late in 2001. This project is expected to complete the Cultivate cluster. It will be coordinated by the British Council (Moscow) and managed by MDR Partners. It will seek to work very closely with the existing Cultivate network.
The Partners in Cultivate CEE are as follows:
| Name | Short name | Country |
| The British Council (Poland) - Coordinator | BC | UK |
| MDR Partners - Manager | MDR | UK |
| Technical partners (in both Cultivate EU and Cultivate CEE) | ||
| The Library Council | CL | IRL |
| Resource: The Council for Libraries, Museums and Archives | RESOURCE | UK |
| University of Bath | UBAH | UK |
| Cultural Service Centre Austria | CSC | A |
| Institute for Learning and Teaching Research Technology, University of Bristol (subcontractor to CL) | ILRT | UK |
| Riksbibliotektjenesten | RBT | NO |
| CEE Country Partners | ||
| Nicolas Copernicus University | NCU | PL |
| Head Office of State Archives | NDAP | PL |
| Museum of Art Lodz | MAL | PL |
| Central Library of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences | CL-BAS | BG |
| Institute of Cultural Memory | CIMEC | RO |
| Vilnius University | VU | LT |
| Ministry of Cultural Heritage (Hungary) | NEKOM | HU |
| Institute of Baltic Studies | IBS | EE |
| Institute of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Latvia | IMCS | LV |
| Narodni Muzeum (National Museum, Prague) | NM | CZ |
| Slovak partner to be announced | SK | |
| Ministry of Culture (Slovenia) | MC | SI |
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David Fuegi
david.fuegi@mdrpartners.com
http://www.mdrpartners.com
David Fuegi manages Cultivate CEE. He is a partner in MDR Partners, a consultancy company established to engage with strategic IST developments in Europe and specialising in international work involving libraries. He is joint author of “Library Performance Indicators and Library Management Tools” (1995) and of “Study of Library Economics of Central and Eastern Europe” (1998) both published in Luxembourg by the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.
He is currently project manager for LIBECON and is joint author of the project’s Millennium Study. Other major recent projects include business planning for the TACIS Russian State Library Project in Moscow and drafting public library standards for England for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. He manages the IPF public library benchmarking clubs and is special adviser to the UK Committee on Public Library Statistics. Other European library projects in which he has worked include the Publica Project (DG13), ISTAR (DG5), PLDP (DG16), PULMAN, TACIS TELRUS etc. Formerly he was Library Advisor to UK government ministers responsible for Libraries and held senior positions in public libraries.
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For citation purposes:
Fuegi, D. "Cultivate Reaches Out to Central and Eastern Europe", Cultivate Interactive, issue
5, 1 October 2001
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue5/cee/>
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By Gabriele Scali, Flavio Tariffi, Stefano Cuomo, Hub Kockelkorn, Dominique DeLouis and George Mallen - October 2001
OpenHeritage [1] is a research project funded under the Fifth Framework Programme (Jan 2001 - Dec 2002) aiming to create an IT infrastructure and service to improve access to collections information held by regional museums and galleries. The collections of regionally distributed smaller museums will thus be as attractive and accessible as the larger, better known, museum collections. This "cultural driven" economy could give a significant contribution to the local economic development enabling the enrichment of local touristic and cultural assets.
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It has been pointed out by several surveys that the application of technological solutions to memory institutions in fields such as the multimedia management and valorisation of museum and library collections is failing to express substantive and sustainable economic results for a number of reasons. The main being the lack of a self-supporting economic model for the promotion and exploitation of Cultural Heritage through ICT, and the excessive "technology push" in the use of virtualisation, to the expense of a sound understanding of the global vs. local processes. The result is the improper use of innovation often deployed in an self-referential way.
A general result is that memory institutions see ICT and multimedia as something that is "pushed" towards them from the outside, with frequent rejections and a generalised lack of compliance which results in improper use and quick obsolescence. The present scenario sees a fast-paced shift from the "old" economy made of goods and physical transactions towards a new "cultural economy" based on intangible services and on accessible, on-demand "experiences" where a dominant role is played by the media industry, tourism, entertainment and cultural self-accomplishment. It is a strongly user-centred system of values where access becomes the dominant concept, in which memory institutions are in the uncomfortable position of having to compete in a new, unusual horizon subject to current market forces. This is a particularly severe problem for the multitude of less famous memory institutions that represent up to 95% of the existing Cultural Heritage (CH) in most European countries, but do not benefit from the spotlights of a prestigious location or huge "routine" touristic flows.
Nevertheless, this "diffused heritage" represents the bulk of the heritage that will fuel the media and "cultural/touristic experience" markets especially in those areas (i.e. Objective 1 areas) which have to look at their territorial assets as one of the most important leading factors of their development.
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| Figure 1: The OpenHeritage business
model |
The project's objective can be summarised in these five steps
1) The development of dynamic, computable models of territorial CH systems aimed at assessing and valorising the prospective Socio-economic strengths of each region or location. These models, will make it possible for local policy makers to determine/benchmark the positioning of each system in the competitive scenario and to enhance and leverage the local areas of excellence for the Cultural Heritage.
2) The development of an innovative solution for collections management based upon the strengths of two existing Content Management (CM) systems. This technology aims at a shift in the way memory institutions resort to technological solutions in terms of user orientation, access solutions deployment model
3) The deployment of core territorial service infrastructures (the Territorial Service Centres - TSCs) supporting memory institutions through a host of facilities management, customer relationship management, storage, promotion and transaction services that range from ensuring the network and system management of the hardware and software equipment installed in museums to the outsourced management of sophisticated Call Center functions. The TSCs bring into CH the emerging new economy model of the Application Service Provider (ASP) and represent the territory-savvy enabler that can ensure a viable and effective deployment of ICT in memory institutions, while at the same time enabling a substantive exploitation of both individual memory institutions and territorial systems.
4) The validation of the model and related technologies and services in significant test beds, through a range of technological and territorial validation activities.
5) The development of an "openheritage.com" enterprise oriented at the exploitation of the European CH on the world market. The company will develop an advanced portal on Art and Culture encompassing both traditional "community" features and business-to-business areas for the exploitation of rich media assets, mostly derived from the establishment of local systems inside territorial memory institutions.
With the aim of providing a reference point for those peoples who wish to monitor strategic location of cultural heritage resources within a territory, - such as researchers, policy makers, business people, memory institutions, OpenHeritage defines a methodology and a prototype of a digital socio-economic modelling application, intended to satisfy these needs.
Cultural and natural heritage witnesses the development of knowledge and customs for each country through the centuries. Such heritage, often damaged by speculation, negligence, and ignorance, needs to be protected and exploited, in order to preserve the peculiar characters of each country.
The wrong administration of the natural and cultural heritage leads to serious damage, therefore it is necessary to provide tools which make policy makers, memory institutions, enterprises, capable of gaining knowledge of the entity of such heritage, and of services connected to it.
The development of a "European Strategic Atlas for the Cultural Heritage" is an example of application of computer science to the human sciences sector; technical methodologies like the entity-relationship model was concretely applied to a real case scenario, in order to show the main ontologies involved within the project.
The database which will store the identified entities was designed after a detailed requirement analysis and a conceptual design phase.
As delivered output of such activities, we developed a conceptual schema, which encodes the world of Cultural and Environmental Heritage and of related services, from an operational point of view.
A consistent part of our effort was devoted to the detection and classification of the different kinds of cultural resources that are present over the European territory. Each resource brings a set of values. The definition of such values was, for some aspects, difficult, since many resource classes are very domain specific. Thus, some sector specific competence was and will be required in order to complete our analysis and populate the proposed schema with suitable data.
Although our approach has been designed in order to be compliant with further refinement steps, we believe the proposed classification hierarchies are complete and stable enough.
We recognized that it is an important goal to specify which data is to be collected and how it will be organized using an easy electronic registration.
The solution under development is a comprehensive software suite designed to support the development and delivery of digital content, namely object descriptions and interpretations, multimedia productions for public access and to provide collection management functions. It is based on the architecture of System Simulation Ltd's MUSIMS (MUSeum Information Management System) and includes modules from Space's MuseumWare multimedia production toolset.
The main components of the system are:
1. Object Description Catalogue - this is the central repository of information about the museum's objects. The object description records are defined with field structures supporting the storage of both structured information like dates, dimensions, museum numbers, location codes, links to digital images and other multimedia resources, artist names etc, as well as unstructured free text information such as the object history, construction techniques, social relevance and other interpretative content. The data definitions follow the Spectrum standard using the recently defined mda/CIMI XML DTD for museum objects.
2. The Multimedia Resource Arena - this is a file system containing all the digital images, audio and video files, 3D models, special effects and virtual reality components. Each of these multimedia resource types can be created using 3rd party, readily available tools, eg image scanning and digitising products, Photoshop for manipulating digital images, Shockwave or Flash for creating animations. The MuseumWare toolset provides a range of facilities for creating such resources. Each resource entry is uniquely identified and can therefore be linked to objects in the Object Description Catalogue. These links can be one to one, one to many, many to one or many to many.
3. The Content Development System - Based on the Object Description Catalogue, this is a set of procedures for managing the development of descriptive content for public presentation. It defines the workflow processes for authoring text, image management processes, special effects production and so on.
4. The Collection Management System - Many museums and galleries already have computerised collection management systems. The proposed solution will provide interfaces to commonly available CMS so that data can be imported into the Content Development System. In this situation there are separate but linked systems each with its own functionality, processes and practices.
5. The Publishing Pipeline - This is a set of procedures for managing the delivery of content to a Web hosting service. It allows the museum or TSC to keep their Web sites up-to-date with new content, revised content, diary events, exhibition programmes etc. all controlled by a publishing schedule.
6. Terminology Resources - These are the thesauri, key word lists and dictionaries which control the vocabularies used for object description. These are required both for standardisation of object description and for retrieval. They also provide a basis for multilingual retrieval. OpenHeritage will licence available resources such as the Getty AAT (Art and Architecture thesaurus) and ULAN (Union List of Artist Names) and make these available within the solution. It will also incorporate special resources that individual museums may have developed for their own specialised use. Again the amount of work involved in such a special configuration will be a factor in the business relationship between OpenHeritage and the museum.
TSCs are built around the idea that memory institutions should consider new technologies as fundamental instruments of valorization and promotion for themselves and the surrounding territory but technological advances point toward a new way of conducting business: changing staff roles, new organizational structure, diverse audiences, increased access, innovative collaborations and new approaches. Cultural institutions (especially smaller ones) are seldom prepared to actualize these apparently simple changes. Territorial Service Centers aim to provide them with the necessary support and coordination.
TSCs are dedicated to providing the tools museums need to do their job and to offer expertise, models, best practices, and more, for anyone interested in using new technologies and media to help understand and appreciate cultural heritage collections.
Territorial Service Center refers, therefore, to an integrated managing model that supports networks of museums by offering them outsourced know-how and technology facilities and promoting a favorable link between museums, thus creating technological and concrete geographical networks based on cultural districts.
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| Figure 2: The Open Heritage Data flow
and main actors |
TSCs are based on two main concepts:
The cooperation networks will be stronger and more efficient if they are founded on a community of shared interests over and above any technological consideration. The pooling of experience, information, knowledge and technical resources makes it possible to create a positive dynamism and to optimize budgets. Advantages include the sharing of costs and tasks, and the pooling of a wider variety of skills. Ideas are validated by a group which goes beyond the narrow confines of an individual establishment with the result that decisions benefit from greater critical objectivity and credibility. From the outset, the different technological or editorial products developed benefit from the market constituted by the consortium's own members. This gives added weight to the standards advanced by the networks and reinforces the scope for the exchange and re-use of their knowledge at a later date.
The system's logic is that the peculiar shared management services and activities of museums allow for the optimisation of each element that make up the network.
The realization of a network of museums, and the resulting sharing of strategic services, guarantees synergic relations between these institutions.
The combined administration of a museum network consents the increase of visibility, offers integrated itineraries and additional services that qualify the visitor's experience; in addition cultural events that involve the entire network are easily widespread. In this way, "minor" places will take advantage of the attractive potential of well-known sites for their development and diffusion. Moreover, this is one of the distinguishing purposes of the OpenHeritage project.
While cooperation makes it possible, in the first instance, to mobilize the resources required to implement the new technologies, the applications materialized by these technologies then allow museums to work more closely together.
Memory institutions are at risk of wasting big opportunities because of their own binds. The undeniable advantages offered by information technologies should stimulate the museum administrators to get informed on these new opportunities, acquiring a server and learning how to use it: unfortunately the necessary training would absorb internal resources already involved in other activities, and the indispensable investments would be unproductive for a single museum.
Territorial Service Centers are planned to be a significant force in helping to overcome problems of:
It follows that, the opportunity to exploit the advantages of new technologies, without doing investments directly, is offered by the Territorial Service Centers, developed with public and private incentives capable of supplying memory institutions with technical services (server, Web site, e-commerce and booking online facilities...), including the staff training, needed to directly reach the cultural heritage and tourism market thanks to an international network.
The advantage of working on the Web is that while a decisive element of forming concrete museum networks is a defined geographical context, Internet technology removes geographical binds: a community based on similar objectives and aims could be created.
The Internet can make a major contribution to the public image and face of the museum, and can make its collections and resources known and used by a world-wide audience in a way which was never previously possible. It is important that all museum staff should be aware of this, they should be encouraged to make their contributions and to take advantage of the Internet's benefits.
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| Figure 3: A TSC page |
The validation/test bed activities will test and approve the technological solutions, the territorial models and infrastructures and the global exploitation portal. These will be carried on in several Museums, organised in a pyramidal way that sees three major museums directly involved in the Consortium and another other 25 Museums with different responsibilities and representing a wide range of local Memory Institutions. These memory institutions will drive and test the technological solutions in order to provide an effective tool for the Cultural Heritage economy, and avoid the technology push effect.
Inputs will be required from staff with functions in documentation, education, interpretation, library and information services, computing, design, public relations, marketing and publications as well as those in curatorial departments. They should see the Internet as another tool which will enhance, but not replace, their traditional activities. It is important that appropriate work on the Internet should be recognized as valid professional activity, and that, for example, electronic publications should be taken into account in assessments as well as those published in printed journals.
There may be opportunities for museums to develop new services based on their Internet presence, such as remote enquiry-answering services, news services on the subjects they cover, on-line booking for events and party visits, distribution of publications and images (free or for a charge), on-line shopping services and opportunities for advertising and sponsorship. It is up to each museum to assess the possibilities and decide which will make a contribution towards its mission.
In deciding their policy for Internet activities, museums should of course consider them in the context of their overall information systems strategy. This should not only cover the preparation of material targeted at fellow professionals, the general public, children, and special interest groups, but should also consider how Internet facilities can be provided and used within the museum itself.
The global openheritage.com portal will offer a one-stop-shop, on a global scale, to all the contents and customer services hosted by the TSCs at the territorial level.; it will be powered by state-of-the-art Internet technology and will build on the previous experience of Partner CHOL in the frame of the Museum Images enterprise initiative (the new brand name chosen by CHOL for the on-line distribution of digital images).
The on-line system, that will be significantly enhanced from its present state, will extend its reach beyond the trading of image rights, to encompass a broad range of multimedia, editorial and educational services centred on Cultural Heritage.
Museum Images will showcase the Cultural Heritage of Europe and the wealth of knowledge that European museums possess, through the use of Internet technologies.
It has been recognised that an important goal is the specification of the data to be collected and how it may be organized to simplify electronic storage. Central to the Museum Image philosophy is the respect of the integrity, security and copyright of digital images entrusted by the museums for Internet distribution. To keep faith to its mission Museum Images is constantly seeking out improved and leading–edge technologies in this field.
Museum Images objectives are :
Museum Images offers publisher companies, the press and advertising a tool to search through a Europe-wide catalogue for the unknown or little-known images, a hidden source of wealth.
The Museum Images platform will allow the interpretation of the scientific descriptive fields provided by museums thanks to a search engine and lexical interrogation system which has been adapted to the language of the business.
Museum Images will also offer services such as portfolios, paste-up, protected delivery of the digital images, and the possibility of using high-bandwidth networks. It can optionally manage authorship rights for most of the images which it will offer.
And finally, Museum Images is ready to consider partnership proposals in either technological or editorial fields. It brings you the richness of the collections which it distributes and the store of knowledge which museums possess about them and that they are willing to share with you.
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| Figure 4: The access to the Global
Portal |
IST-2000-25136 OpenHeritage project aims at providing a model for the promotion and exploitation of the cultural heritage assets of smaller cultural institutions by fostering their connection to the territory. The project is developing and implementing solutions for the analysis and comprehension, valorization, regional network of museums and galleries and a dedicated IT infrastructure to support it. A strong involvement of local Memory Institutions, particularly local Museums, for developing general but customised technological solution will help in shifting from the technology push effect to a cultural driven economy.
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Gabriele Scali (First Author)
Technical Director - Space SpA
Via M. Nistri, 5
59100 - Prato
Italy
Gabriele Scali was one of the pioneers of object software engineering in Italy at the beginning of the 90's. After field experience ranging from cognitive sciences to adaptive systems, to simulation and pattern recognition, he has worked in the biomedical sector in which information technologies are not only used but also created and developed.
Flavio Tariffi
Technical Director - Space SpA
Via M. Nistri, 5
59100 - Prato
Italy
Flavio Tariffi has been dealing with ICT for Cultural Heritage topics for several years and is in particular responsible for the analysis and project management of high-tech solutions in the fields of database management systems, digital imaging, library and museum systems, advanced telecommunications applications and interactive multimedia publishing both on CD and on-line.
Stefano Cuomo
Project Coordinator - Space SpA
Via M. Nistri, 5
59100 - Prato
Italy
Stefano Cuomo comes from the academic and research world and for a long time looked after the innovation initiatives for a study centre based in Florence's University and the town hall of Prato. He is an expert of European research projects financed by regional and Community funds.
Hub Kockelkorn
ICT Project Leader - Museon The Hague Stadhouderslaan 41
2517 HV, Den Haag
The Netherlands
Hub Kockelkorn deals with IT projects, like the European OpenHeritage and Regnet projects and co-ordinates a couple of Dutch educational projects. He has participated before in two European projects (RAMA and SIMILE) and was responsible for several external projects (exhibition about the Marshall Plan, research into the user requirement for a visitor information system at EXPO 2000 in Hannover). He is a member of the advisory committee of the Foundation for the Ethnological Collections in the Netherlands and has written various publications in the field of socio-economic history and automation matters in museums.
Dominique DeLouis
President Cultural Heritage On Line
24, rue Sainte Marthe
75010 Paris
France
Dominique Delouis graduated in Computational Engineering and Management at the Ecole Centrale in Lille, France and in Information System Analysis and Design at Sup'Telecom in Paris. In September 2000 he set up the Cultural Heritage On Line company that is involved in the OpenHeritage project. Previously, he was in charge of a number of information technology projects, as a project manager at France Telecom: RAMA and Electronic Document Interchange between Libraries (EDIL/Libraries programme). He is the marketing manager of Museums On Line and coordinated the MENHIR project. Dominique Delouis is also a consultant for UNESCO.
George Mallen
Director System Simulation Ltd
250M Bedford Chambers, Covent Garden
WC2E 8HA London
UK
George Mallen is the founder and Managing and Director of System Simulation Ltd, a software engineering firm specialising in software infrastructures for cultural heritage and e-publishing applications.
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For citation purposes:
Scali, G., Tariffi, F., Cuomo, S., Kockelkorn, H., DeLouis, D and Mallen, G. "OpenHeritage: Enabling the European Culture Economy", Cultivate Interactive, issue
5, 1 October 2001
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue5/openheritage/>
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By Ute Schwens, Susann Solberg, Britta Woldering and Peter Dale - October 2001
As global networks grow in significance it is becoming more important to share knowledge and standards. By combining the resources of some of Europe's national libraries the idea of a single European Library has moved a step closer to becoming a reality. The European Library (TEL), a 30-month co-operative project of Key Action 3 [1] of the Information Societies Technology (IST) [2] research programme will provide the groundwork on which to build a pan-European service.
The main results are expected
to be the developing and testing of open standards, working
methods and practices that can readily be adopted by all national
libraries to work as a seamless partnership. The aim of this
article is to give an overall view of the projects objectives,
contents and structure.
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In addition to print media, which is likely to retain its importance in many areas, new media such as networked publications, interactive and multimedia products and services will all play an increasingly important role over the next few years. In order to structure the resulting vast flood of information for the benefit of the individual information seeker, Web gateways and portals will need to be created and continuously upgraded. This task requires international co-operation with regard to both technology and content, as is already happening with the new communication networks that have already been developed to act as international cross border “tools”.
In the TEL project [3] several of the leading European national libraries and institutions are aiming to jointly develop the basis for such a concept of a Web portal to facilitate easier and seamless access to this rich seam of information. TEL officially began on February 1, 2001. The project is largely being funded by the European Commission as an accompanying measure under the cultural heritage applications area of Key Action 3 of the Information Societies Technology (IST) research programme and is scheduled to run for 30 months. In addition to the EC funding the participating libraries have made a firm commitment to contribute a significant proportion of the development costs from their own resources, thus emphasising the importance that they place on a successful outcome, and a future operational service.
Eight national libraries and the national bibliographic centre of Italy are the active participants during the project phase of TEL. The Conference of European National Librarians (CENL) is also a full partner, and it is acting on behalf of the remaining national libraries who are members of CENL. After the conclusion of the project phase the concepts and findings emerging from TEL will be offered for adoption and further development by any other interested national libraries that have not been involved in the project phase, and it is hoped that these libraries will play a full part in the eventual operational service. The Project Co-ordinator and any of the TEL partners will be happy to discuss the progress of the project at any time so that any potential new participating libraries can begin preparations for taking part in the operational service as soon as is practical.
The project partners are:
National libraries are important “content-owners” in their own right, having national and comprehensive collection mandates in their respective countries and they have a close relationship with publishers and other rights-owners. Apart from this they are not only interlocked within a variety of co-operative structures but also play an important role, and sometime assume the leadership, within their national co-operative information and library systems. Their traditionally good contacts with publishers and rights-owners are beneficial to a continuing dialogue between public and private information suppliers so that services and contents can be offered to information seekers in a form that is easy to use, transparent, structured and comprehensive.
It is the aim of the TEL project to create the technical, legal and organisational means for a comprehensive European information service on the basis of decentralized records of either conventional or digital collections of the participating national libraries, although the emphasis during the project phase will be on digital collections. In the future it is hoped that it will be possible to search and order documents directly from the collections of the participating European national libraries by entering through a single portal and running a single search. It will be possible to access electronic publications directly. An important consideration that still has to be settled is the clarification and definition of copyright and licensing questions in each of the participating countries, and trans-nationally; the development of a business model for TEL will hopefully play an important role in resolving this. It has to be emphasised that TEL is not a technical project which aims to develop software and interfaces in the first place. The primary aim is the construction of a cooperation framework for better access to the great national holdings in conventional as well as digital formats. Access to electronic documents has priority here. The more electronic documents that become available (and the number of such publications is increasing exponentially), the more difficult it becomes to provide unitary access, as they are difficult to find within the flood of information. Sometimes, also, legal restrictions impede their usage.
In the TEL project consideration is being given to the difficult question of how Europe-wide access to the collections of the national libraries, on site as well as from other countries, can be made possible. An important precondition is the creation of the necessary organisational and technical fundamentals for the long term establishment of a European digital library consisting of distributed digital collections. The existing digital libraries of the participants are being included in this work.
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| Members of work package 5, Dissemination and Use of the project “The European Library” (TEL) and authors of the article about TEL. From the left: Susann Solberg, Dr. Britta Woldering, Peter Dale and Ute Schwens (work package leader) |
Gabriel [4] the World Wide Web service of the CENL national libraries, which was established in 1997, has a significant role to play in all of this. Currently 41 national libraries from 39 member states of the European Council participate in Gabriel. The service offers, via a single Internet address, individual access and consistently structured information about the European national libraries, their collections and services. Gabriel provides an extremely useful model for further networked services in international librarianship, apart from its most useful function as an online guide to the national libraries. The basic concept of Gabriel is very closely linked with the aims of TEL.
The main results expected to emerge from TEL consist include:
As the project is primarily concerned with the development of a framework for co-operation, the technical aspect is limited to specifying the requirements for an interoperable test bed. The individual participants will be responsible for the development and implementation of operable (and interoperable) systems and services after the end of the project.
In accordance with the overall aims of TEL the project tasks are divided into four main workpackages:
In the first workpackage it is intended to consolidate current procedures in respect of deposit (voluntary or statutory), copyright and user rights between national libraries and publishers on a national level as well as elaborating general standardised procedures on a European level by means of pragmatic guidelines and the development of rational negotiation procedures. TEL will aim to engage as partners the larger publishers of electronic publications as well as national and European publishers associations.
Workpackage Leader: Koninklijke Bibliotheek (The Netherlands)
Always keeping an eye on the results of the other workpackages, in this workpackage the TEL participants will aim to generate business plans and models to be applied within a mutually-agreed co-operation framework (product definition, price models, etc.) The work will be based upon intensive market research and user surveys. Beyond this the partners’ individual and collective aims concerning service utilisation shall be clarified, and their practices and procedures regarding registration and clearing etc. will be closely examined with a view to standardising these practices wherever possible.
Workpackage Leader: The British Library
Co-operating closely with, and drawing on the results of, other relevant projects and agents a joint practicable procedure concerning metadata standards and schemes will be developed in order to support broader access to online and offline digital materials in national libraries. In order to facilitate this work metadata from publishers will be integrated, and this workpackage intends to identify the best way of achieving this aim. In order to be consistent a “virtual” European library needs to offer multilingual search possibilities and services. Therefore, a prototype for a multilingual service will be developed within TEL. The results of the earlier Multilingual Access to Subject Headings (MACS) [5] project fit very logically into the planned model. MACS started in 1999 as a CENL project and delivered a working prototype early in 2001.
Workpackage Leader: Koninklijke Bibliotheek (The Netherlands)
For the operation of TEL the functional and technical specifications for the development of optimal searching possibilities in decentralized databases as well as on Z38.50 and on XML platforms via a joint portal are to be developed in this workpackage.
With the test beds for Z39.50 and XML the following aspects are being considered: access, content, interoperability and performance. Benchmarking will be developed beyond this. The test beds can later be passed on to other national libraries for further utilisation and will serve in this way for generating a “best practice”. It is emphasised that it is not the task of this workpackage to create a mini-version of a feasible system; the only development during TEL will be testbeds.
Workpackage Leader: Die Deutsche Bibliothek (Germany)
A fifth work package is responsible for all aspects of publicity and public relations, the organisation of workshops and seminars, the dissemination and publication of project results, and the maintenance of a dedicated project Web site.
This workpackage will also, during the lifetime of the project, arrange for initial steps to be taken towards the actual utilization of the project findings and the setting up of an operational service.
Workpackage Leader: Die Deutsche Bibliothek (Germany)
The apparently endless possibilities for global communication that have been made available by the Internet, as well as the requirements resulting from the massive emergence of Web-based and other electronic publications has created an exciting new field of work. This has led to a range of accompanying features such as quite sophisticated new technical requirements, complicated legal questions and high costs. A co-operative European project like “The European Library” is well-placed to create scope for development in this field by taking advantage of synergy effects and by developing software tools for creating a full range of rationalization potentials in the service-delivery of Europe’s national libraries.
TEL is still at a very early stage of its work, and few findings are available yet for public consumption. However, in the coming months the results will begin to flow and they will be made available on the constantly updated project Web site [3]. Cultivate readers are invited to follow the progress of TEL by constantly re-visiting the Web site or by subscribing to the TEL newsletter. Anyone who requires more personal attention is welcome to get in touch with the Co-ordinator; contact details are given below.
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Ute Schwens
Deputy Director of Die Deutsche Bibliothek
TEL Work Package Leader and member of the TEL Management
Committee
Ute Schwens is the Permanent Deputy of the Director General of Die Deutsche Bibliothek, Deutsche Bibliothek Frankfurt am Main. Ute is a Certified librarian and the positions she has held include: Assistant to the Director General and Head of Department, Bibliographic Services. After qualifying as a senior librarian she was Head of Department, Digital Library and Director Services and Archives (Reader Services, National Bibliographic Services). Since 1999 she has been Permanent Deputy of the Director General of Die Deutsche Bibliothek in Frankfurt am Main.
In the TEL project Ute is manager of the TEL activities of Die Deutsche Bibliothek, a member of the TEL Management Committee and Workpackage Leader for Workpackage 5 (Dissemination and Use). She also plays a prominent role in the CENL/FEP Joint Committee on Electronic Publications which is acting as an Advisory Committee for Workpackage 1 (Publisher Relations).
Susann Solberg
Assistant to the Director General of Die Deutsche
Bibliothek
Susann Solberg is the Deutsche Bibliothek, Assistant to the Director General and responsible for public relations. Susann is a Certified librarian, with experience in descriptive cataloguing, the National ISSN-Centre, subject indexing, and in the periodicals acquisition department as press officer. Since 1999 she has been Assistant to the Director General and responsible for public relations. In the TEL project she has a primary role in Workpackage 5 (Dissemination and Use) and and is the DDB representative for Workpackage 2 (Business plans and models).
Dr. Britta Woldering
TEL representative
Britta Woldering received her PhD from the Department of Japanese Studies of Ruprecht-Karls-University in Heidelberg, Germany, in 1997. In 1997/1998 she was a trainee at the Library of Trier University, where she obtained her qualification as a senior librarian in 1999.
Since 2000 Britta has been a project officer at Die Deutsche Bibliothek, Deutsche Bibliothek Frankfurt am Main. She works on the CARMEN project WP12, which deals with cross-concordances of thesauri for Social Sciences. In the TEL project she is assisting on all issues in which DDB is involved within the TEL project and in particular she is a prominent member of the team working on Workpackage 5 (Dissemination and Use).
Peter Dale
The British Library
96 Euston Road
London NW1 2DB
United Kingdom
Phone + 44 20 7412 7078
Fax + 44 20 7412 7018
Peter Dale has worked in various departments of Bibliographic Services in the British Library. After many years working in the BLAISE database services he took up a more prominent role in the marketing of BL’s bibliographic services. In the last few years the main emphasis of his work has moved towards international co-operation among Europe’s national libraries, with an active role in initiatives such as CoBRA and GABRIEL. He is the overall Project Co-ordinator for TEL and as such is Workpackage Leader for Workpackage 6 (Project Management/ Liaison with the EC), and additionally plays an active role in Workpackage 1 (Publisher Relations), Workpackage 2 (Business plans and models).and Workpackage 5 (Dissemination and Use).
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For citation purposes:
Schwens, U., Solberg. S., Woldering, B. and Dale, P. "The European Library (TEL) – The Gate to Europe’s Knowledge", Cultivate Interactive, issue
5, 1 October 2001
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue5/tel/>
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By Nils Olander - October 2001
Do you have problems getting teenagers into your Museum? Nils Olander explains how Telemuseum [1], based in Stockholm, tackled this problem by allowing them to create low budget news programmes using Telemuseum’s television studios.
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It has always been difficult to get fourteen, fifteen and
sixteen year olds interested in museums. This is usually because
they are interested in other areas which they feel are more
important to them; such as experiencing life, exploring future
possibilities and discovering love. Evidently, teenagers do not
seem to find these things at museums.
Today’s teenagers demand much more out of their adolescent existence than the youth of the sixties. Thirty years ago, a teenager thought of life as a carefree existence where one enjoyed oneself by going to the movies, eating at a restaurant or simply surfing television channels. However, nowadays is it more important for them to get hands on experience that has practical value.
If this line of reasoning is applied to the study programs available at museums and to the pedagogy of these programs it follows that in museums teenagers should be their own guides and project leaders. In every instance, it should be the teenagers themselves who come to fully value and appreciate their surroundings without any insistence from us.
I am a museum teacher and can usually instinctively know if an exhibition or showing has turned out to be a success. Judging success and understanding the benefit people receive from an event is also helped by feedback from satisfied groups, thank you notes and even applause. This kind of feedback is very rewarding and keeps you interested in your work at the museum. Sometimes, you can even experience a real sense of achievement and pleasure from a successful exhibition or showing. Such feelings give you the necessary energy and drive to move on to deal with the next group waiting its turn at the museum.
It is this pleasure that those working in the museum community would like teenagers feel. It should be possible to create situations where teenagers can experience the same “kick” from an exhibition that we do. We want them to go out of the museum gates with a genuine feeling that inside the museum walls lie rich and exciting ways of experiencing life.
I think the key to attracting teenagers lies in letting them act publicly, in allowing them to be somebody, in making them a part of something, in giving them the chance to create something noticeable and in allowing them to experience something which feels real and worthwhile.
School outings to museums are usually fairly exciting, learning experiences. However the presentation phase, carried out after the visit has repeatedly been overlooked. Creative solutions for how such presentations should be carried out are often difficult to come by. Such presentations sometimes take the form of a summary with recommendations or conclusions, a reporting session for others in the group, an exhibition at the school library or even a written account of the outing. Usually these follow up presentations fail to materialise leaving the pedagogic sequence of learning activities incomplete. In short, there is often no presentation in most cases.
So what if the presentation is the most important phase of a museum visit? Emphasis should be placed on making sure that a good presentation becomes the focal point after a museum visit. To put such a situation in to practice, there should be a sphere which is widely accessible and available to both students and teachers alike. This means there must be a public sphere for teenagers to act in which is large enough to incite their interest to act. A library space, a classroom environment or a circle of schoolmates is simply not good enough.
Today’s public sphere includes airwaves, the media and networks. In order to reach teenagers, we should be bold enough to use which ever means are available to us.
Please don’t stop reading! I’m not about to lecture on the Internet as the solution to all problems. In contrast, I actually want to assert that the Internet is perhaps not entirely suitable for this particular situation. Making a presentation available on a Web site is like recording a message on an answering machine. You hope that interested teenagers will come to your Web site just as you hope that callers will listen to your recorded message in full.
The airwaves, on the other hand, offer us tremendous opportunities.
The Telecommunications Museum (Telemuseum) in Stockholm shows the depicting developments in telecommunications within the fields of telegraphy, telephony, radio and television. Since 1996, Telemuseum has been a base for activities for teenagers from Swedish schools. Using their own resourcefulness, teenagers produce their own news programs in the television studio. The news programs are then transmitted on cable television network to over 350,000 households. There is a daily transmission at 17:40. These activities have been up and running since 1996 and have resulted in approximately 800 groups of students, primarily from high school to senior high school level, broadcasting their own news programs over the airwaves.
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| The Telemuseum Studio |
The purpose of this project is not to train all teenagers who participate in the project to in becoming presenters. Rather, we would like them to become more knowledgeable viewers who fully understand the different phases involved in the production of a program. We would also like to heighten their awareness as to how dependent our society is on different networks.
There are approximately nine groups which participate in ‘T-news’ every week. Each group consists of roughly 15 students. Over a period of three hours, the group works in a fully equipped television studio. The studio offers the group access to The Swedish Newspaper Telegram Bureau (Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå -TT), The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (Sveriges Metrologiska och Hydrologiska Institut - SMHT) and to news bureaus available on the Internet. The students in the group take on the roles of chief editor, producer, meteorologist, local and foreign sport reporters as well as domestic and foreign country correspondents. During the first two hours, they collect news releases, discuss the content, compile the news, edit it and put together a script. Sometimes, they also conduct interviews by telephone. Often they will interview students of a similar age category at the Swedish school in London. Some groups even bring with them a videotape or other material that they have prepared beforehand.
During the last remaining hour, a number of students will re-group and take on the roles of camera operators and news presenters. After only one rehearsal in front of the cameras, they tape the program. The students handle all technical work themselves and tend to do a splendid job. Learning how to conduct database searches, operate cameras, splice and edit pictures and work the microphones takes only up to about 10 minutes in 90% of cases. The students manage to learn how to do things at an amazing pace.
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| Filming T-news |
The success we have experienced with ‘T-news’ has given us the drive to spread the idea and to try and encourage the same kind of activities in other areas. If our plans work out well, we believe that we can launch Internet based video meetings among teenagers within different broadcasting and editorial areas of television. During working days, the various groups of teenagers can then discuss their selection of news items with one another.
As a further development, we are exploring the possibility of getting in touch with similar types of projects in other countries. Perhaps there are already similar activities in telemuseums around Europe. It would be useful for teenage students to get in touch with others of similar age groups. Even if their discussions take place with difficulty in using the English language, such discussions are still beneficial. Mutual exchanges over actual events and happenings can stimulate everyone to get involved. In effect, each person can become the source of foreign news and correspondence for the other. And such exchanges do not need to take place only through video meetings via the Internet. Telephone calls are also a very effective way of getting good work done. Often, telephone calls are more functional than Internet based communication.
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Nils Olander
Telemuseum
Box 27842
S-115 93 Stockholm
SWEDEN
Phone: 46 15 91 33 29
Fax: 46 86 70 81 27
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For citation purposes:
Olander, N. "T-News: Bridging the Museum Generation Gap", Cultivate Interactive, issue
5, 1 october 2001
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue5/telemuseum/>
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By Paul Miller, David Dawson and John Perkins - October 2001
Paul Miller, David Dawson and John Perkins report on a recent meeting at which representatives of national and international cultural content creation programmes from around the world were invited to consider scope for greater collaboration.
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"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders
of giants"
Sir Isaac Newton, cited in The Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations
The wealth of nations is becoming increasingly visible online. Indeed, many perceive dissemination of their cultural identity via the Web as a means of maintaining their individuality against the homogenising tendencies of the English–speaking world. Other reasons for this movement online are many and varied, as are the sources of money utilised in content creation.
However, the largely piecemeal nature of digital content creation, and the varied approaches taken by different projects raise the spectre of what Terry Kuny [1] and others have referred to as an encroaching Digital Dark Ages. Now, with some evidence of a political will behind us, with a raft of new programmes in their infancy, and with clear lessons to be learned from innovators, it is the time to act, and not to continue avoiding the decisions that will help to mould the next generation of truly user–focussed, interoperable, services.
For two days in July, a small group of decision makers and policy developers from Europe, Canada, the USA and New Zealand met in London, exploring the extent to which each could learn from the lessons of the others, and identifying areas in which collaborative work might be of mutual benefit [2]. This article explores some of the background to the meeting, and reports on a number of significant outcomes that have led to ongoing activity of potentially great benefit to the digital cultural content creation community in our memory institutions [3] and beyond.
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| The view of St Paul's Cathedral, the
Thames, and central London from our meeting venue. Photograph taken by Gilles Saint–Laurent, National Library of Canada. |
In countries around the world, significant amounts of money are being spent in making a range of cultural heritage resources available online. In the United Kingdom, some £50,000,000 (€79,000,000) was allocated earlier this summer as successful applicants to the New Opportunities Fund's (NOF) Digitisation Programme [4] were announced [5], and there are high hopes of Culture Online [6] building on this exciting beginning. In Canada, the Federal Government's Canadian Digital Cultural Content Initiative [7] is spending $CAN75,000,000 (€53,500,000) on content digitisation programmes in libraries, museums, and archives, and over $CAN100,000,000 (€71,500,000) has been allocated [8] under the $CAN500,000,000 (€357,300,000) Tomorrow Starts Today banner [9]. The sums involved are impressive, but these programmes are not unusual, and most countries can now point to similar developments.
In the United States, wi