Search Disabled |
|
|
|
Search Options | Help | Site Map | Cultivate Web Site | ||||
|
|
|||||
| Home | Current Issue | Index of Back Issues |
| Issue 9 Home | Editorial | Features | Regular Columns | News & Events | Misc. | ||
This page is intended for printing purposes.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to the ninth issue of Cultivate Interactive.
It is quite a task writing the final editorial for the last issue in the current run of a magazine. You need to face in all three directions, past, present and future. To a large extent I have solved the the first of these three demands in offering you another article, Cultivating Understanding: The story of Cultivate Interactive, which will give you a view of a webzine which has now produced some 113 feature articles and a host of other articles. So for the moment I will move on to the future.
As far as the Magazine itself and its future is concerned, I need do no more than quote one of our evaluators: "..Clearly the main deliverables of this project will require to be maintained if they are to be of continuing use, namely the WWW site, the e-zine, the discussion list and the ALM contact list, etc. ....", and indeed this e-zine will be maintained for at least three years, whatever its long-term future. It has been particularly pleasing to see the achievements made by both -EU and-CEE Projects in respect of dissemination activities, and of course Cultivate Interactive has been pleased to play its part.
But for an expert view over the past and towards the future, I thought it would be interesting to hear the views of the Project Managers if I could get hold of them, and was fortunate enough to be able to prevail at short notice upon David Fuegi, Project Manager CULTIVATE-CEE, for his thoughts on how the project has performed and what the future might hold:
Cultivate Interactive: Are you pleased with how CULTIVATE-CEE has performed as a project over its lifetime?
DF: Very pleased. The project endured many tribulations in coming to contract but the partners were still there and still keen when we got going. The British Council and Concha Fernández de la Puente deserve credit for overcoming the initial obstacles.
Cultivate Interactive: What do you regard as the best moments in your time as Project Manager for CULTIVATE-CEE?
DF: My best moments have been attending the big consortium meetings, looking round the table and seeing that all the partners have turned up without me having needed to twist their arms. I have always had excellent support from the partners.
Cultivate Interactive: What do you consider the greatest achievements of the Project?
DF: To help create a team of informed supporters of the objectives of EU programmes in our sectors in the NAS (New Associated States). Cultivate Interactive, the Cultivate E-list and the linked Web sites would all need to be reinvented if they lapsed.
Cultivate Interactive: Equally, what would you consider the biggest challenges or difficulties for the Project?
DF: At overall project level I think the coordinator [the British Council in Poland] has had the hardest time of it because some of our partners have suffered from a serious phobia against filling in forms. In some cases this condition seems incurable. We needed to achieve an intimate working relationship with Cultivate EU and succeeded. At country level, many of the partners have cheerfully overcome serious resource issues and achieved a high profile in difficult circumstances.
Cultivate Interactive: What do you see in the future for the sort of work begun in CULTIVATE?
DF: The reviewers gave all the Cultivate projects a good review and encouraged us to think about sustainability. We are hoping to carry forward the best features and products of the projects into the 6th Framework as part of a bigger grouping. Some countries are willing to make a financial contribution to future work but they will need a recognisable international network of support. It is not easy, but we are working towards putting something into the first call.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
However, for the present, we have another issue for you, (and my thanks to Shirley Keane for her support in its production), with a range of articles both from the DIGICULT programme and elsewhere, starting of course with Christine Michaut's Digicult Column for the latest news from her unit. I have also detected something of an archeological flavour in this issue with two articles describing systems to guide visitors around archeological sites, one by Emily Whetter who reports on the PAST Project and the other by Vassilios Vlahakis, John Karigiannis and Nikolaos Ioannidis describing their work on ARCHEOGUIDE.
In his article on OpenHeritage, Salvatore Lusso takes us through an approach to combining the benefits of technology and more evolved business models in order to promote cultural tourism in the less well known regions of Europe. Marco Meli's article on the MESMUSES Project tells of an initiative to develop the most valuable scientific and technical heritage in science museums into an active memory in other domains.
David Fuegi gives us a picture of the provision and use of library statistics and how the work of the LIBECON Project can help shape policy as provide you with data yourselves. Cary Karp brings us up to speed on the latest Adventures of the .museum domain whilst Marcel van Dijk relates the interesting but bumpy ride taken by the Amsterdam Municipal Public Record Office in its first ever project to digitise government records, entitled It Always Hurts the First Time!
Paul Schreilechner gives us an article on the TREBIS Project, a biodiversity information system which is working on new ways of presenting ecological insights by combining multimedia technologies with geographic information and database systems. Nick Crofts, Martin Doerr and Tony Gill report on the CIDOC (Comité International pour la Documentation) and its work on the Conceptual Reference Model, an aid to comprehension and dialogue that can help to establish the conceptual "common ground" between different disciplines and domains.
In addition to news and events there are two reports on CULTIVATE meetings in Vienna last autumn where participants convened for a combined project meeting and then the Annual Review. As you will see from the latter, a great number of solid achievements were recognised there. One which gained special mention by the evaluators was the Web magazine Cultivate Interactive, something which, naturally, pleased both my colleagues and me.
However we all also agreed that the bedrock of that success lay in the enthusiasm and commitment of the Cultivate Interactive authors as well as the professionalism of those CULTIVATE colleagues with whom we have worked. So as the Magazine goes temporarily, we hope, into hibernation, (still available at http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ for at least three years), I would like to thank readers, authors and colleagues alike for their support and interest in our work.
Richard Waller (Editor)
-------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------
By Vassilios Vlahakis, John Karigiannis and Nikolaos Ioannidis - February 2003
Vassilios Vlahakis, John Karigiannis and Nikolaos Ioannidis report on ARCHEOGUIDE, the first mobile augmented reality guide for archeological sites and museums.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The ARCHEOGUIDE acronym stands for Augmented Reality-based Cultural HEritage On-site GUIDE [1]. It is an EU IST research project co-funded by a consortium of European companies, research institutes and public authorities. The consortium is led by INTRACOM S.A. (Greece), and consists of IGD (Germany), ZGDV (Germany), CCG (Portugal), A&C2000 (Italy), Post Reality (Greece), and the Hellenic Ministry of Culture (Greece).
The project officially ended in October 2002 and produced the first mobile augmented reality guide for outdoor archaeological sites. ARCHEOGUIDE pioneered real-time on-site access to archaeological multimedia data and enabled the reconstruction of ancient monuments and the revival of scenes from ancient life. The project fills the gap left by conventional paper guidebooks, info kiosks and audio guides and provides truly mobile devices with navigation, personalisation, and interactivity features.
ARCHEOGUIDE consists of two main subsystems working in close collaboration. A central server and a set of mobile devices all linked together via a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). It is built around a client-server model and allows for expandability and use of additional devices [1]. The system can be employed at any archaeological site or museum.
The server is the heart of the system and addresses the needs of archaeologists and researchers. It comprises a multimedia database where all the information regarding a particular site is archived. This may include photographs and architectural drawings, 3D reconstruction models of monuments, textual and audio descriptions, and videos. This database material may be used for research, education or recreational applications. It is stored along with attributes that relate each data item to the geographic position where it is located or was found, dating, type, and other. With this information available, it is possible to achieve efficient search and retrieval of the required data.
The server comes with a suite of graphical authoring tools that can be used to create new content and set up its thematic and geographic organisation in the database.
A Windows-based interface (Figure 1) allows for easy use and provides operations similar to a standard editor. A Geographic Information System (GIS) Editor can be used to assign and visualise objects and monuments on a digital map of the site. It uses a 3D terrain model or digital map constructed for aerial photographs, site surveying and digitisation of existing printed maps and plans. The tool allows its users (typically archaeologists, curators, or system administrators) to define areas on the map that correspond to the main monuments as well as suggested viewpoints and tour paths for visiting them (Figure 2).
Having marked those areas on the map, users can populate them with the raw data items that describe them. Their combination can create a complete description including virtual 3D reconstructions, historical information, and access to related museum exhibits.
The efficient ordering and access of this information can be achieved through the hierarchical ordering scheme shown in Figure 3.
An inverted tree can be used to represent the whole site (root), which is then subdivided to areas and monuments (branches), which contain the individual multimedia data objects (leaves).
The ordered data can then be used for the creation of integrated audiovisual AR tours. For this reason, rules and conditions are set for the synchronised presentation of the information so as to create a realistic and scientifically accurate augmented world.
The graphical tools can also be used as virtual reconstruction tools. In this way, archaeological hypotheses can be visualised in a short time, disseminated to the scientific community, and archived for future use. In a similar use scenario, excavation or restoration planning can also be carried out.
Finally, the content of the database can be reused in other applications. Examples include multimedia publishing, educational applications, gaming and tourism.
Typical users of the ARCHEOGUIDE system are the visitors to an archaeological site. They may be of any educational background, age, and nationality and have varying degrees of archaeological knowledge or computer skills. They will experience the system and its features through one of the available mobile devices. These come in various implementations to cater for different preferences and styles of use.
The mobile AR devices [2] are based on laptop computers equipped with a hybrid user-tracking system and a special visualisation device. The tracking system is based on a GPS receiver, a digital compass and a real-time video-processing algorithm performing markerless image tracking [3]. It provides very accurate calculations of the users' position and orientation and consequently the viewpoint and viewing angle. This information is then used in the rendering of monument reconstruction models and avatar animations on the natural surroundings for the creation of an enhanced view. This view illustrates present day ruins in their original form, and populates the empty site with virtual human animations [4].
The accuracy of these calculations ensures the correct scaling and placement of the corresponding models and avatars on the existing ruins.
Figure 4 illustrates the present state of a monument and its AR reconstruction offered by ARCHEOGUIDE. A high degree of realism is achieved enabling users to understand what they see in front of them while listening to a description of the history and use of the monument.
The visualisation of the results is done through a pair of AR binoculars, which are equipped with a small digital camera linked to the hybrid tracker. The device allows users to see the natural view as if looking through optical binoculars but also enhanced by the simulated visual information produced by the system. An illustration of the use of the device can be seen in Figure 5.
An important aspect of ARCHEOGUIDE is the automatic selection of information adapted to the user profile. To achieve that, the server database objects are assigned to specific user profiles. So, once users enter their profile to the AR device, the latter automatically selects those items matching the users' profile and presents them in accordance with the users' position and orientation and the underlying rules and conditions associated with the data.
This flow of information minimises the interaction required by users and effectively gives them the freedom to focus their attention on the tour itself, instead of searching for the relevant data. At the same time they may alter the flow of information and request additional data or navigation aid through a graphical menu rendered on the binoculars' view. This scrollable menu can be conveniently controlled by three buttons on the binoculars themselves. It allows users to change the transparency and remove the rendered virtual models, view a site map marked with their position and orientation marked along the main monuments, and visualise and manipulate 3D models of museum artefacts [1].
This method gives those employing the system the freedom to interact in a user-friendly way and have full control of the presentation. In effect, touring with the mobile guide becomes an informative and pleasing experience.
ARCHEOGUIDE users are offered the choice between the AR unit presented above and two electronic book versions. These devices are based either on pen-tablets or PDA devices and are intended for use similar to consulting a standard book. They provide their users with the same information as the AR devices including personalisation and context aware data flow.
The main difference lies in the mode of presentation. Due to their limited processing power, the AR views are pre-calculated during the system installation and initialisation phases and are simply presented in alignment with the users' natural view. The visual presentation is done on their touch-sensitive screens, which are suitable for outdoor viewing even under direct sunlight.
Users can simply consult the devices for context-based information or they can change the mode of presentation and request additional data with a special pen. A graphical interface similar to bookmark tabs allows for easy switching between static views, animations, virtual views and augmented views. The user may navigate inside a 3D terrain model of the site where reconstructed monuments and avatar animations are added. Alternatively, high-resolution augmented images or panoramas can be viewed; they are automatically scrolled as the user turns and heads in another direction.
A navigation interface, similar to that presented above, is used. It also allows the preview of available reconstructions at several points in the site so that the users can plan their itinerary in a better way.
 |
| Figure 6: Characteristic screenshot from the pen-tablet device |
Figures 6 illustrates a characteristic screenshot from the pen-tablet device, where user location and orientation are permanently displayed on the map and the related artefacts are displayed in the right-hand section. Another option in the right-hand display is augmented panoramas featuring 3D reconstructions of monuments in the original environment.
 |
| Figure 7: Introductory menu for the PDA device |
ARCHEOGUIDE is a versatile system that can be configured for use at any site. The first step towards an on-site installation is the accurate surveying and 3D-modelling of the site itself. This step is very important as its outcome is used in the selection of user-accessible areas, monuments and suggested tours and viewpoints. Once this has been defined in the server, the topology of the wireless network can be defined and verified through on-site coverage measurements. It is very important to ensure that while good coverage is achieved at all user accessible areas, no damage to the site or visual disturbance are caused.
The process continues with the capture of reference images from the selected viewpoints, the construction of 3D monument reconstruction models, avatar animations, 3D scanning of museum artefacts, and recording of audio narration in a selection of languages.
These steps have to be repeated for every new installation while the content creation process has to be repeated every time an additional point of interest is added to the tour.
Currently, there are only a few mobile guide applications installed at cultural heritage sites and museums. They offer basic functionality, like a static site plan, and manual access to visual information or virtual reality reconstructions in the most advanced devices. No mobile device offers AR presentations to its users and the only available substitute are static installations like CAVEs or infokiosks.
This is the reason why the innovative nature of ARCHEOGUIDE is expected to become popular with the general public and at a later stage with the scientific community. ARCHEOGUIDE results do not simply look clean and pleasing. They bring the realism and interaction missing in other systems, together with an extra element in the reconstruction of ruined sites. This element is life through the use of animations aimed at giving more information on the actual use of the site and its history. This way of enriching the information content of the presentations (e.g. knowing what people wore and looked like in a given historical environment) enhances our understanding of that historical environment and makes us more interested in discovering history and cultural heritage.
So far there has been a distinct failure of nerve from museums and archaeological sites to invest in such systems. The reasons behind that are primarily cost and risk avoidance. Yet museums and cultural heritage sites, if they are dynamic in their thinking, could benefit greatly from using 3D and augmented reality both in terms of finance and increased relevance "socially".
There is a strong argument for saying that 3D scanning could, in the mid-term future, be a standard stage in the process of acquiring an object, for reasons of cataloguing, conservation and security. Similarly, the use of GIS is becoming common practice in managing archaeological sites and planning new excavations, and many museums have moved towards virtual collections over the Internet.
The technology is now available to allow this to happen. All that is needed is the will to make good use of it and to combine existing steps of the process in an integrated framework. For these reasons ARCHEOGUIDE is appealing and very promising for adoption by major sites and museums in Europe and beyond. The system could be installed at any site and a large part of the installation and content creation cost can be slashed by reusing digital data, which is usually available for major sites.
ARCHEOGUIDE has undergone trials at Olympia, in Greece. Olympia is one of the most important archaeological sites in the world and offers a perfect use scenario, as it lies in ruins and typically only stones and columns rest intact in their original place. The system was used and evaluated by site visitors, archaeologists and technology experts and received very positive comments for the comprehensive information it provides, the realism of the AR presentations, and the animations for the revival of the ancient Olympic Games. It became an attraction itself and those who participated in the evaluation were prepared to pay a fee to rent it at the beginning of their visit. Negative comments were received for the physical dimensions and weight of the AR mobile unit. This device is being re-engineered and a compact version will be available soon.
The ARCHEOGUIDE consortium has made contacts with archaeological authorities in several countries and is in the process of commercialising the system. Several authorities have expressed interest in acquiring and installing it. A commercial version and a full-scale installation are expected to appear in 2003.
This brief article has aimed at presenting the ARCHEOGUIDE project and the innovations it brings to the cultural heritage sector. ARCHEOGUIDE has successfully completed its research phase and is currently undertaking the commercialisation phase. Market indications point to a full-scale installation in the near future and prospects exist for its adoption in major sites and museums. The technologies and know-how of the project are expected to find applications in other sectors like architecture, e-commerce and education.
Vassilios Vlahakis
INTRACOM S.A.
Developments Programmes Dept.
19.5 km Markopoulo Ave.
PEANIA, ATHENS
GR-190 02
Greece
URL: <http://www.intracom.gr/>
Email: vvla@intracom.gr
Phone: +30 2106671434
Fax: +30 2106677312
Vassilios Vlahakis is Electronic Engineer at the Development Programmes Department of INTRACOM S.A. in Greece. He received his BEng Degree in Electronic Engineering from UMIST, Manchester (1993), and MSc in Biomedical Engineering (1994) and Ph.D. in Medical Image Processing (1998) from Imperial College, London. He has worked as Biomedical Engineer at St Mary's Hospital, London and as Research Engineer at GE Medical System, Paris. His research interests include Image Processing, Communications, and Augmented Reality. He is a member of IEEE, IEE and the Technical Chamber of Greece.
John Karigiannis
INTRACOM S.A.
Developments Programmes Dept.
19.5 km Markopoulo Ave.
PEANIA, ATHENS
GR-190 02
Greece
URL: <http://www.intracom.gr/>
Email: jkari@intracom.gr
Phone: +30 2106677831
Fax: +30 2106677312
John Karigiannis is Computer Engineer at the Development Programmes Department of INTRACOM S.A. in Greece. He received his BEng Degree in Computer Engineering (1998) and M.A.Sc in Electrical Engineering (2000) from Concordia University, Montreal. He has been a research assistant in the Robotics and Real-Time Systems Lab Research Group at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. His research interests include 3D modelling, simulation of multi-robot industrial processes, and haptic interfaces for VR interaction techniques. He is a member of the Technical Chamber of Greece.
Nikolaos Ioannidis
INTRACOM S.A. Developments
Programmes Dept.
19.5 km Markopoulo Ave.
PEANIA, ATHENS GR-190 02
Greece
URL: <http://www.intracom.gr/>
Email: nioa@intracom.gr
Phone: +30 2106671349
Fax: +30 2106677312
Nikolaos Ioannidis is Associate Manager at the Development Programmes Department of INTRACOM S.A. in Greece and Project Manager of ARCHEOGUIDE. He holds a Diploma in Electrical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (1982) and a D.E.A. in Electronics from the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble (1983). Before joining INTRACOM, he worked for ALPHA S.A.I. and SOGITEC Industries S.A. (Paris), as a software engineer for 3D Animation. His research interests include digital TV, Multimedia Applications, and Information Services. He is a Member of IEEE, ACM and the Technical Chamber of Greece.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For citation purposes:
Vassilios, V., Karigiannis, J. and Ioannidis, N. "Augmented Reality Touring of Archaeological Sites with the ARCHEOGUIDE System", Cultivate Interactive, issue
9, 7 February 2003
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue9/archeoguide/>
-------------------------------------------------------------
By Nick Crofts, Martin Doerr and Tony Gill-February 2003
Nick Crofts, Martin Doerr and Tony Gill report on the CIDOC and its work on the Conceptual Reference Model, an aid to comprehension and dialogue.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
CIDOC, the Comité International pour la Documentation is one of more than twenty committees that form part of ICOM - the International Council for Museums. CIDOC's members are primarily museum professionals working in the field of cultural heritage information and technology. It organises an annual conference and encompasses a number of working groups. The Documentation Standards working group - formed originally from the fusion of the data modelling and terminology working groups - took the decision in 1996 to embark on the development of a detailed conceptual model of the domain of cultural heritage information, known as the Conceptual Reference Model (CRM). The CRM was intended initially to extend and finally to replace the existing CIDOC relational data model [1] and the initial scope of the CRM was restricted to that of the International Guidelines for Museum Object Information: The CIDOC Information Categories, published in June 1995 [2]. This document, edited by a joint team of the CIDOC Data and Terminology and the Data Model Working Groups, resulted from the consolidation of earlier initiatives which had been in gestation since 1980. The Guidelines thus represented the fruit of many years of collective effort and reflection concerning museum information and constituted an obvious starting point for the development phase of the CRM. The first published version was released in Melbourne in 1998. Although originally developed by the CIDOC Document standards working group, the CRM is now maintained by the CRM Special Interest Group (CRM-SIG) organised by CIDOC but open to non-members. Version 3.2 of the CRM has been accepted by ISO TC 46/SC4 [3]. Currently at "Committee Draft" stage (ISO/CD 21127), the CRM will subsequently be published as an International Standard. This will transfer formal responsibility for the publication, review and maintenance of the CRM to ISO.
Development of the original CIDOC relational model had been prompted by the need to provide a common framework for the exchange of cultural heritage information. By 1995, this data model had arrived at the limits of manageable development. The number of entities was growing exponentially, (the final version of the relational data model contained 430 entities), and the overall structure of the model was no longer apparent, even to many of the authors. Yet the model was still insufficiently developed in many areas. The publication of the International Guidelines for Museum Object Information: The CIDOC Information Categories [2], and the absence of a clearly defined mapping with the data model, only served to highlight the shortcomings of the approach. One of its key objectives - to provide a framework for understanding cultural heritage information was clearly not being fulfilled.
The CIDOC data model had been developed on the assumption, common at the time, that common data schemas were required if data exchange were to be made possible [4]. However, this view was gradually being replaced by a new vision based on the possibility of mediation systems capable of managing data from heterogeneous sources. This paradigm prompted a shift from seeing the CIDOC data model as a low-level blueprint for a database schema to that of a high-level conceptual definition. Viewed in this new light, many conceptual shortcomings of existing relational models became apparent. The group realised that a new sort of model was required, one that would provide the common ground needed for the development of compatible information systems but which did not pre-define implementation issues.
The essence of this new approach can be expressed in terms of the distinction between information and data. Information, in this context, can be defined as the meaning that is common to different forms of expression. 'Je suis fatigué', 'I'm tired', and 'I need to rest', all say much the same thing in different ways - they carry much the same information. Data, on the other hand, are tokens - words, letters and symbols, bits and bytes, etc. - which have a particular meaning because of their rôle within a semiotic context. The original CIDOC data model was a data schema because it attempted to a define specific representation for cultural heritage information. By contrast, the CRM is an information level model. It is intended to specify and clarify the concepts that are needed for the exchange of cultural heritage information. Different representations and different data schema can be defined that are nonetheless faithful to this information model. Using current terminology from information science, the CIDOC Conceptual Reference model can be defined as a "domain ontology" for cultural heritage information. The term ontology is derived from philosophy where it refers to the assumptions about existence underlying a particular world view, in other words what sorts of things exist in the world and what the relationships are between them [5]. In computer science, the term has taken on a more specific meaning and refers to the formal definition of a philosophical ontology [6]. The CRM is an ontology in this latter sense since it aims to define and clarify a set of underlying concepts. Qualifying the CRM as a domain ontology further refines the notion: the CRM is intended to cover a specific area of interest, not the whole universe. Paraphrasing the initial definition we can say that the CRM provides a formal definition of assumptions about what sorts of things exist, and the relationships between them, in the context of cultural heritage information. This ontology is represented as an object-oriented model, composed of classes, organised into a hierarchy and related to each other through property links. This structure of classes and properties provides a framework for describing the complex interrelations that exist between objects, actors, events, places and concepts in the field of cultural heritage.
This orientation of the CRM as a domain ontology means that implementation level questions are not addressed. In particular, the CRM makes no assumptions about business procedures and institutional rules, it contains no methods or procedures, it does not define validation rules and constraints - other than those required for compatibility with the CRM - nor does it define data formats or user interface elements. Using the CRM does not ensure byte level or data level compatibility between different systems, it can, however, help to ensure conceptual compatibility.
Largely in reaction to the experience of previous integration projects, including work on the CIDOC data model, the CRM was designed with the following specific goals in mind [7]:
Within the life cycle of the design and implementation of information systems, the CRM has a specific role to play as a conceptualisation of the domain of cultural heritage information.
 |
| Figure 1: Theoretical frame of information |
This theoretical frame is one commonly used in information science and present, in various forms, in a number of standard methodologies for the analysis and development of information systems. It is based on the fundamental distinction between the conceptual elaboration and the technical implementation of an information system, and the domain it is intended to support.
This general approach to information systems follows the classic cycle of analysis, conception and design. The initial objective is the analysis of the domain and its conceptualisation as a formal ontology. This abstract level of design is then applied to the design and realisation of a practical system.
The intended scope of the CRM should be understood as the domain that the CRM would ideally aim to cover, given sufficient time and resources, and is expressed as a definition of principles. The practical scope is, necessarily, a subset of the intended scope. The intended scope is difficult to define with the same degree of precision as the practical scope since it depends on concepts such as "cultural heritage" which are themselves complex and difficult to define. The objectives provided by the intended scope are important, however, since they allow appropriate sources to be selected for inclusion in the practical scope. The practical scope is expressed in terms of the reference documents and sources that have been used in its elaboration. The CRM covers the same domain as these reference sources (see below). This means that data encoded in accordance with one of those sources can be transformed or integrated into a CRM-compatible form without loss, insofar as the reference source remains within the intended scope of the CIDOC CRM.
The intended scope of the CRM may be defined as all information required for the scientific documentation of cultural heritage collections, with a view to enabling wide area information exchange and integration of heterogeneous sources. This definition requires some explanation:
As of autumn 2002, formal mappings have been established for the following data structures; all elements that fall within the intended scope are covered by the CIDOC CRM:
Many other data structures have been taken into account in the development of the CIDOC CRM by informal investigation, and more mappings are under way.
A domain ontology such as the CRM is designed to be explanatory and extensible rather than prescriptive and restrictive. Currently, no specific formalism for semantic models has been widely accepted as a standard, nevertheless the semantic deviations between the various available models are minimal.
Consequently, the model has been formulated as an object-oriented semantic model, which can easily be converted into other object-oriented models. The TELOS data model [8],[9] has been used as a reference system throughout the development of the CRM, though without use of its assertional language. TELOS, in common with many other knowledge representation languages, decomposes knowledge into elementary propositions - declarations of individuals, classes, unary and binary relations. The properties of TELOS relevant for the purposes of the CIDOC CRM are similar to those of RDF and RDFS [10]. Since Resource Description Framework (RDF) may soon become a de facto standard for the applications we target, (other competitors being DL-based systems, DAML+OIL etc.), we have adopted terminology close to that of Resource Description Framework Scheme (RDFS) and therefore more familiar to members of the Web technology community than that used by TELOS. As our primary interest is ontological, we intend to produce the CRM in various representations, such as RDFS, Extensible Markup Language Document Type Definition (XML DTD), etc, The primary source for the CRM remains a complete implementation in TELOS on the SIS knowledge management system [11]. Logical assertions are omitted from this implementation since they can be added at a later stage, once the ontological commitment of the primitive classes, properties and isA relations are established.
On its own, the formal definition of the CRM is not easily understood. The use of rich specialisation hierarchies generates a rich set of inherited properties and cross-references. Consequently, this relatively compact definition of 211 elements corresponds to several thousand properties of the declared classes. A full set of direct and inherited declarations can be automatically generated from the original definition, and is available as a separate document on the CIDOC CRM website [12]. This document is implemented as html hypertext, so that all referred concepts are accessible by a single click, as needed when using the model.
It is worth noting the reasoning behind the choice of an object-oriented formalism as the basis for the definition and presentation of the CRM. This decision was motivated by several factors :
The use of the object-oriented model is specifically not intended to influence decisions about implementation. The CRM has been used as the basis for successful implementations using a wide range of technical platforms, including relational databases [7].
The CRM does not aim to provide a complete philosophical analysis of the concepts it defines, nor to provide formal criteria for determining whether or not a particular item is an instance of one of its classes. Rather, it seeks to provide a core language that will facilitate tasks such as the semantic integration of heterogeneous data structures and the design of new data structures. Our aim is that an expert's grasp of CRM concepts should be sufficient to allow parallels to be drawn between elements in the planned system and compatible CRM concepts. Consequently, the CRM is intentionally focused on a set of fundamental, shared concepts that can safely be standardised.
But what are the practical applications of the CIDOC CRM? Used as a methodological tool in cultural heritage technology projects, the CIDOC CRM can improve communication and help avoid potentially costly misunderstandings. As a reference for good practice it can be used to compare and evaluate existing systems. In a technical context the CRM can be used as a basis for data archiving, exchange and integration - an important contribution to the creation of a global network for cultural heritage information. These different applications are discussed below.
Perhaps the most immediate role for the CRM is simply as an aid to comprehension and dialogue; as its name indicates, the CRM is a reference document that can help to establish the conceptual "common ground" between different disciplines and domains. The need for clear and unambiguous communication is critical to technology projects in the cultural heritage sector that bring together domain experts, (such as historians, archaeologists, and biologists), with system developers and other technicians. In order to design and build satisfactory information systems, technical experts are faced with the difficult task of coming to terms with all the complexities and subtleties of cultural heritage information. At the same time, domain experts need to explain their requirements in terms that IT specialists can understand and evaluate the solutions they propose. Misunderstandings in the design of information systems can turn out to be extremely costly.
By providing a rich and detailed analysis of the cultural heritage domain, the CRM can facilitate dialogue between cultural heritage experts and technical specialists. The classes and property relations of which it is composed are all clearly defined through textual scope notes, examples, cross-references, and their position within the formal structure. This multiple and "redundant" presentation is intended to be accessible to technicians and domain experts alike - cultural heritage professionals may see it as a formal representation of familiar concepts, while IT specialists can view it as a high-level blueprint for an information system. The CRM provides, in effect, a basis for mutual comprehension.
Apart from its role as a purely conceptual reference, the CRM can also serve as a technical reference for use in comparing and evaluating information systems and data schema. Comparing existing or projected information systems and schema with the CRM helps to highlight divergences - both in scope and in structure - which can then be examined in more detail to see if they are justified or not.
The value of the CRM as a technical reference becomes particularly apparent when it is used as the basis for data transfer between incompatible systems. The CRM can provide the semantic backbone for a common data format, for example an XML or RDF Schema, that can be shared by a number of different systems: a technical lingua franca that allows data to be transferred from one system to another. If data need to be shared between a number of different systems, the use of a single intermediate reference format is a simple and efficient way to proceed; otherwise, the number of transfer and mapping protocols increases exponentially as more systems are included.
Providing an extensible basis for data transfer between heterogeneous systems and schema is of enormous value since it facilitates both data transfer between institutions and data migration between systems. A common semantic model such as the CRM can also be used as the basis for system-independent data formats for the long-term archiving of digital cultural information.
The CRM can be used as a reference guide when creating technical specifications for the design of new cultural heritage information systems. It is important to underline that it is not necessary to implement the entire CIDOC CRM as is. The model is intended to cover the entire field of cultural heritage information, at a level of detail acceptable for scientific research. This means that some aspects of the model would be superfluous for a specific implementation and that others would need to be extended to support institution-specific requirements. The CRM has been designed to make this process of adaptation as simple as possible by providing 'plug-in' points and guidelines for extensions that remain compatible with the overall structure. The CRM has been used successfully as the basis for the design and implementation of a number of cultural heritage database applications - such as Geneva City's Musinfo project [13] and RLG Cultural Materials [14]. By using the CRM as a starting point for a technical specification, much of the trial and error involved in modelling an information system from scratch can be avoided, resulting in a more flexible design which can be more readily adapted to future needs.
Possibly the most ambitious application of the CRM is in the development of integrated query tools, mediation systems and data warehouses. At present, much of the information stored in library catalogues, archival finding aids and museum collection management systems remains isolated. Different information resources normally need to be queried individually, and cross-system links are rare. The ability to combine and integrate information from multiple sources has the potential to add significant value to existing data - facilitating research and enhancing the quality of the user's experience.
Physically combining data into a single system may be impossible, for technical, organisational or economic reasons, so mediation systems aim instead to federate information sources, making distributed queries possible without the need to physically aggregate information into a single monolithic database. A typical mediation system acts as a single interface for users. It accepts and interprets queries and distributes them to participating systems. These systems reply to the mediator, which consolidates the results for the end user. In order for a query mediation system to function correctly, it has to be able to communicate with each participating system in a way it can understand, and interpret the results. Participating systems are unlikely to have identical data schema and may well store different levels of detail about similar objects, so the mediation system needs to be a semantic polyglot.
Using the CRM as the basis for the mediation system's data schema makes distributed query systems much easier to design. By mapping each participating system's internal data representation to the canonical form provided by the CRM, it becomes possible to integrate and interpret data stored in otherwise incompatible systems.
Conversely, the CRM can be used to inform the design of data warehouse systems, which take the opposite approach. Relevant data are copied into the data warehouse from different sources at regular intervals, integrated into a single database and 'normalised' to remove duplicates and merge identical instances. The data warehouse is used both as a source of consolidated knowledge, and as an index to the original data sources.
The CRM has been specifically designed with mediation and data warehouse applications in mind, allowing data to be combined from heterogeneous data sources in a meaningful way and without loss of detail.
The CIDOC CRM can be described in the traditional way starting with the major classes. This has been done in the main definition document [15] and in [7]. These high-level classes are those which emerged as a result of the logical grouping of shared properties [16]. These groups are concerned with fundamental notions such as identification, participation, location, purpose, motivation and use etc. The diagram below presents an overview in which Temporal Entities, and hence events, occupy a central place.
 |
| Figure 2: A qualitative metaschema of the CIDOC CRM |
All property paths to dates go through Temporal Entities, as do most of the property paths to places. Those place properties which bypass temporal entities should be understood as short cuts of temporal entities. Similarly, Actors are only seen as relating material and immaterial things (Physical Stuff, Conceptual Objects) through Temporal Entities.
Any instance of a class may be identified by a number of Appellations. These are the names, labels, titles or other means of identification used in the historical context. We model the ambiguous relation of items to their names as part of the historical process of knowledge acquisition. The notion of identification used here should not be confused with that of database identifiers in implementations of the Model, which are not part of the ontology.
All class instances can be refined (specialised) into more detailed categories through the use of Types. Types frequently consist of a range of properties that refer in general to things of a certain kind, such as "a dress made for a wedding" in contrast to the "dress made for my wedding".
CRM properties can be grouped by the following list of meta properties
The CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model is maintained by the CIDOC CRM Special Interest Group [17], a diverse international group of museum information professionals with an official mandate from ICOM-CIDOC (the Documentation Committee of the International Council of Museums), dating from August 2000, to develop and promote the standard.
The membership of the CIDOC CRM Special Interest Group is diverse, both in terms of the members' geographical and professional backgrounds; the group currently has 50 members from across the globe, spanning Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia, and includes museum curators from various disciplines, collections information managers, information scientists, librarians, representatives of regional, national and international standards bodies, natural historians, museum data management consultants, and system vendors.
The CIDOC CRM Special Interest Group also contains two "sub groups." Several members of the SIG are also members of Working Group 9, Sub Committee 4, Technical Committee 46 of the International Standards Organization (normally identified by the rather cumbersome alphanumeric string ISO TC46 SC4 WG9!). This group is made up of technical experts representing ISO "P-member" (i.e. voting) countries, and they are responsible for guiding the CIDOC CRM through the ISO standard development process. The ISO process normally consists of six separate stages, but since the CIDOC CRM was already a relatively mature standard developed by ICOM-CIDOC (an internationally-recognised body with standards development experience), the CRM was eligible for the "Fast Track Procedure" and entered the ISO process at stage 3, the Committee Stage.
The second sub-group within the CIDOC CRM Special Interest Group consists of the participants in the Cultural Heritage Interchange Ontology Standardization (CHIOS) Project. This Thematic Network project is also devoted to the development, standardisation and promotion of the CRM, and is generously funded by the European Commission's Fifth Framework IST programme.
Since the members of the CIDOC CRM Special Interest Group are spread across four continents, electronic communications are used extensively to discuss a variety of issues; chief among these are the electronic mailing list, crm-sig, and the Web site at <http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/>, both hosted by ICS-FORTH in Crete.
However, the CRM-SIG meets in the real world too; to ensure that the momentum is kept up, the group aims to meet three times a year, at least until the CRM is published as an ISO standard. The CHIOS funding is invaluable in this regard, because it enables a core group of long-standing SIG members to attend the meetings regularly, providing vital continuity and momentum for the development of the standard.
The CRM-SIG has adopted a rigorous procedure for managing outstanding issues, based in part upon the process developed by the Dublin Core community (some members of the SIG also took part in the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative in the past). Outstanding issues can be raised either at meetings or on the e-mail list, but an issue must be submitted at least two weeks in advance of a meeting to be on that meeting's agenda; otherwise it is deferred until the next meeting.
Issues are given an identifying number, assigned to a particular working group, and tracked on the Web site. Before each meeting, proposals for addressing the issues are sought from the membership, and each proposal is also added to the issue log on the Web site. The group then votes for the proposals for each issue on the agenda at the following meeting.
The CHIOS funding has also been used to good effect to invite experts from specific disciplines when particular types of professional input have been required; for example, the group was able to sponsor experts from the natural history community to participate who would otherwise not have been able to take part. As a result, the CIDOC CRM was modified slightly to address the description of taxon creation and assignment so fundamental to the natural history community, but which has traditionally been excluded from mainstream museum documentation information standards.
The benefits of this kind of expert involvement are threefold; the CIDOC CRM standard itself is enriched to cover a broader scope; the natural history museum community will now have a much more useful tool at their disposal, that will facilitate interoperability both between their peer natural history institutions and the wider museum community; and the CIDOC CRM can demonstrate additional community input and support, an important criteria for ISO in the standardisation process.
Members of the CRM-SIG are also increasingly promoting the CRM in professional arenas by developing support materials, presenting papers and running training workshops at conferences. The SIG is increasingly focusing its efforts on this kind of dissemination activity as the standard becomes ever more stable, and emphasis shifts to application and deployment rather than development. Again, the CHIOS funding has been invaluable in facilitating this essential outreach and support work.
The CRM SIG will shortly be holding its most ambitious outreach event yet; the "Sharing the Knowledge" Symposium [18], organised jointly by the CIDOC CRM SIG and the Smithsonian Institution. This event, to be held on 26th-27th March 2003 at the Smithsonian's International Center in Washington, D.C., will bring together researchers and practitioners from many disciplines to address the technical, organisational and philosophical challenges to the effective sharing of cultural knowledge from museums, libraries, archives and beyond.
The final phases of the ISO process will probably be completed within a year. However, even though the ISO standardisation process is not yet finished, the CRM can and is already being used. Partners in the CRM-SIG have successfully developed applications based on the CRM ranging from data consolidation and data migration to full scale information systems. Current work on the CRM within ISO is aimed at finalising formal aspects of the model, ensuring coherence and facilitating comprehension. The basic conceptual constructs used in the model can be considered as stable and are unlikely to be modified in the near future.
Nick Crofts
Head of Documentation
Musées d'art et d'histoire
Rue Charles-Galland 2
Geneva, CH-1206
Switzerland
URL: <http://mah.ville-ge.ch/>
Email: nicholas.crofts@mah.ville-ge.ch
After studying Philosophy and History of Art in Canterbury, UK, and a brief spell in radio journalism, Nick Crofts started working at the National Sound Archives in London where he first became interested in information management. Nick studied Information Technology in Geneva and spent several years working in the documentation department of Geneva's Musées d'art et d'histoire. He has worked as project manager for Musinfo -computerising Geneva's museums and is currently Head of Documentation of the Musées d'art et d'histoire. Nick is also co-ordinator of the ICOM/ClDOC Documentation Standards Group.
Martin
Doerr
Researcher
Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH)
Institute of Computer Science
Vassilika Vouton
P.O. Box 1385
Heraklion Crete
71110 Greece
Email: martin@ics.forth.gr
URL: <
http://zeus.ics.forth.gr/forth/ics/isl/people/people_individual.jsp?Person_ID=2>
Martin Doerr has studied Mathematics and Physics from
1972-1978 and holds a PhD in Physics from the University of
Karlsruhe, Germany. He has been Senior Researcher at FORTH since
1990. He has done theoretical work in knowledge representation as
well as system and application development of various advanced
information systems. Since 1992 he has participated in a series
of projects on cultural information systems and teaches courses
in cultural informatics. He is chair of the CIDOC CRM Special
Interest Group, a Working Group of the International Council of
Museums and collaborates with several cultural organisations on
the development of advanced information systems and IT
environments. His research interests are ontology-driven systems,
cultural data models and terminology management.
Tony Gill
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
140 E. 62nd Street
New York, NY 10021
U.S.A.
URL: <http://www.mellon.org/Staff/Gill/Gill.htm>
Email: tg@mellon.org
Phone: +1 (212) 838 8400 x2265
Fax: +1 (212) 223 2778
Tony Gill is the Director of Metadata for ARTstor at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with strategic and operational responsibility for analysing, enhancing and integrating heterogeneous descriptions of art and material culture in order best to meet the needs of scholars and educators. He participates actively in the international art and museum standards and knowledge management communities.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For citation purposes:
Crofts,N., Doerr, M. and Gill, T "The CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model: A standard for communicating cultural contents", Cultivate Interactive, issue
9, 7 February 2003
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue9/chios/>
-------------------------------------------------------------
By David Fuegi - February 2003
David Fuegi explains the role of the LIBECON Project in providing library statistics for policy makers and how you can make use of them yourselves.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The LIBECON project [1] collects library statistics and makes them available via the Web to policy makers, practitioners and researchers free of charge in a standardised format based on ISO2789 (the international standard for library statistics). The data comes from national surveys conducted by the competent authorities in each country. This resource supports research and advocacy. It also enables international benchmarking to take place. LIBECON now supports self-defined searching. You can download the database for the sector that interests you (e.g. Public libraries or Higher Education Libraries) and compare internationally on any parameter in the questionnaire with any countries that interest you. The database is particularly strong on Europe (EU, EFTA and Accession Countries) but now welcomes data from any country willing to participate.
LIBECON is funded by DGINFOS under FP5. It is a freely available tool for policy makers, practitioners and researchers who require standardised statistical data to make comparisons between countries or groups of countries for advocacy or for management purposes, including international benchmarking. Although national statistics are now increasingly available on the Web, Web publishing is still far from universal. Statistics of some library sectors are hard to find - not always because they have not been collected. If you manage to find the data you need at national level, you still have to take care to check definitions. For example, you have found the number of staff employed in public libraries in country X but is it telling you total numbers or totals in full-time equivalents? Or you find the total spending in local currency, but need to convert it accurately.
LIBECON does not undertake primary surveys but relies on a network of country coordinators to complete the LIBECON survey forms from national sources. These forms are based on the ISO2789 standard and help ensure both that the data is comparable and that ISO2789 is understood and more widely adopted. LIBECON checks the data received for feasibility and follows up queries. If the data is incomplete, LIBECON seeks to agree a basis for grossing up the data so that it is complete for that country. If data is missing, LIBECON interpolates from known years. If a country has no data at all for a sector, an average derived from a group of comparable countries is interpolated. This interpolation process allows the big "political" numbers to be estimated, for example, total number of library employees in Europe (374,000 in 2000) or total registered readers (139 million). Readers requiring more information on actual numbers or on methodology can find it on the LIBECON website, especially in the Millennium Report which is still of great value. A new version of the Millennium Report (with a new name!) will be published on the site in the second half of 2003.
LIBECON's geographical scope is increasing. The strength of the database is mainly Europe [not just EU] but we are currently adding new countries, for example, Canada, USA, Turkey and so on. Our 4th Newsletter, available on the website gives more information. LIBECON is keen to load data from any country able to supply it to the necessary standard.
You can now download LIBECON data for the sectors which interest you. The sectors are public libraries, national, schools, special, higher education and other major non-specialised. You can then choose to compare any country with any other country or specified groups of countries using any of the data elements collected through the LIBECON questionnaire.
The data elements include, for example number of libraries, number of staff, issues, stock, spending and so on. To see a complete list, download the questionnaire. You can combine any two data elements to give ratios which then allow transparent and meaningful comparisons between countries. This is made possible by the standardisation process described earlier.
You are interested in public libraries (one of six possible choices of sector). You download the relevant file from the website. You are interested to see if you can make a case for more spending on public libraries based on international benchmarking. If the country for which you want to make the case has not contributed data, you will not be able to proceed. If your country HAS supplied data, you need to choose the relevant ratios. In this case, the obvious one to start with would be total spending on public libraries divided by total population to give spending per thousand population. The answer will be in Euros, so you do not have to worry about currency conversions. You decide to compare yourself with EU countries and Central and Eastern European countries. The result will look like this (based on grossed data).
| Figure 1: |
You then move on to other ratios that you regard as significant. For example, if your spending per head figure is low, could this be because you have few readers? Do a ratio of registered readers/population. If this is low, is it because service levels are low? Check libraries/population or stock/population for example. You can define the questions that you want answered which allow you to explore the issues.
LIBECON aims to work with all other organisations with an interest in library statistics, including UNESCO [2], EUROSTAT [3], ISO [4], IFLA [5] and EBLIDA [6] and has formed a Strategic Advisory Group to ensure that it remains in touch with the agenda of the major stakeholders, (see details in Newsletter 4 from the Web site [7]).
LIBECON supports standardisation in our field by keeping in touch with developments in ISO2789 and ISO11620 (Library Performance Indicators) and in EUROSTAT which is undertaking useful development work at present. The new LIBECON questionnaire is based on the current draft revision of ISO2789 and aims to speed up take-up of the revisions to this crucial standard.
LIBECON also creates a network for compilers of library statistics, many of whom are neither librarians nor based in institutions answerable to library stakeholders. An international workshop will be held in 2003 aimed at such people and our network of country coordinators.
LIBECON also recently conducted a feasibility study to find out if it might be possible to extend its activities to archives and museums, but concluded that this would not be feasible due to the non-availability of comparable data for both domains. It also looked into EUROSTAT's current activity in cultural statistics, especially museums.
We believe our work is valuable for many people interested in our field. We welcome feedback on any aspect of the work.
David Fuegi
david.fuegi@mdrpartners.com
http://www.mdrpartners.com
David Fuegi is professional adviser to LIBECON. 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 joint author of the LIBECON project's Millennium Study. In the UK he is involved in the Co-East EQUAL project. 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.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For citation purposes:
Fuegi, D. "Who Needs Statistics? : A note on the Libecon Project", Cultivate Interactive, issue
9, 7 February 2003
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue9/libecon/>
-------------------------------------------------------------
By Marco Meli - February 2003
Marco Meli reports on the MESMUSES project: an EU co-funded initiative to reuse innovatively the most valuable scientific and technical heritage available in science museums so that it may serve as an "active memory" of knowledge to be exploited in different domains.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Self-learning environments provide their users the opportunity to explore various knowledge spaces. A classic issue when designing such environments is finding the right balance between leaving users complete freedom or guiding them very rigidly from one knowledge item to the next. Another issue is the to provision of an environment in which a set of facts and of abstract concepts can be presented differently according to the users' background and understanding. A knowledge map is a set a related concepts and facts that is offered to users with some guidance or suggestions on possible itineraries that they may follow to explore the knowledge space.
MESMUSES (MEthapors for Science MUSEumS) aims to design a general method and supporting tools to produce such knowledge maps. The method and the tools are tested and validated by two large science museums, the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie in Paris and the Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza in Florence, which provide access to their digital catalogues. Both museums are developing knowledge maps and itineraries on different themes in Biology (Genome) and Physics (Galileo and the laws of motion). A group of industrial partners (Finsiel and EDW in Italy and Valoris in France) and academic institutions (INRIA and ENST- Bretagne in France, Institute of Computer Science of FORTH in Greece, and University of Florence in Italy) are contributing to the methodology and the implementation of the supporting technology.
MESMUSES is engaged in the design of and experimentation with metaphors for organising, structuring and presenting scientific and technical knowledge provided to the public in science museums. These metaphors are built upon knowledge maps which define and connect neighbouring knowledge units. These maps are made visible and can be browsed through so-called "semantic portals" which enable users to locate easily information relevant to their current interest, and to navigate either on predefined itineraries, or on new routes that they select for themselves on the map. The same knowledge structure should also facilitate management and reuse of information assets by producers, for example museum staff preparing supporting content for a temporary exhibition.
Central to our approach is the policy that all objects, facts or concepts in the real world are represented by digital surrogates. These surrogates are themselves defined as instances of general categories. For instance, all the scientific instruments from the collection of the Museum of the History of Science in Florence can be represented by surrogates -i.e. structured descriptions- which are instances of the class "Instrument". Any instrument is described by attributes such as its name, construction period, material, etc. Attributes are chosen for each class in order to form together meaningful descriptions of the objects that the surrogates of this class will represent. In the same way, scientists, theories, or experiments are represented by surrogates. The surrogate classes are connected one to the other by predefined relations : a scientist contributes to a theory and runs an experiment, an experiment confirms or contradicts a theory, a theory may subsume another and so forth.
The categories and the relations between them form together a generic knowledge map, or as linguists say, a "domain of discourse". Computer scientists prefer to name this map an "ontology", although this word is somewhat misleading. This map can be populated with information extracted from museum databases, or created on purpose by authors. When populated with resources, the map forms a so-called "semantic web". An important feature of semantic webs is that the underlying knowledge maps are graphs of related concepts. The names given to the concepts and to the relations between them constitute a terminology that is instrumental for information exchange and for enacting cooperative processes within a community of users, e.g. researchers, students, lecturers, etc.
A knowledge itinerary is a path through the graph of the knowledge map which is proposed to the visitor. When user follow an itinerary, they are offered various resources, (examples, contrary examples, explanations, etc.), which are chosen according to their preference and background. Knowledge itineraries are considered a new way of exploiting museum resources, where they are used as assets in the production of courseware for teaching or self-learning.
One of the first objectives of the project was to establish and validate a methodology and related tools for Scientific Knowledge Cartography. This methodology defines how to create knowledge maps structuring some domains of scientific knowledge.
A second objective was to design tools for creating "itineraries" on the knowledge landscape, to orient museum visitors through a real physical exhibition or a virtual one. The Consortium has developed specialised tools and architecture to implement the itinerary mechanism, both as static (predefined) itineraries and dynamic ones (generated from the indexed resources during navigation).
A third objective, tightly linked to the previous one is to design personalisation methods which will offer different itineraries on the same knowledge domains to the different categories of visitors, from the very young to the elderly, and to university scholars. We intend to experiment with dynamic re-routing of visitors from one itinerary to another according to their queries or requests.
The last major objective of the project is to design various tools for managing and reusing information assets. Managing information resources involves in particular indexing them in the terms of the conceptual schema, (whatever the format and media of these resources), from say, a section in a book chapter, physically available in the museum library and represented by a digital surrogate such as a UNIMARC record, to multimedia online content.
So far, the MESMUSES Project is achieving its goals and is actively contributing to the validation of the semantic web concepts and standards.
Building the Information Society, where digital assets can be fully exploited, is a key priority for Europe. A major asset which can "make the difference" is the effective exploitation of cultural heritage in novel ways, with a clear strategy for a long standing value building proposition in key market segments like learning. Innovative approaches like managing cultural assets with the paradigm of modern knowledge management techniques are among the most prominent examples of leveraging technologies for the cultural heritage domain.
The MESMUSES Project falls exactly into this category: it proposes to access multimedia cultural information by creating a novel way of navigating through digital assets by means of itineraries, learning environments professionally created or developed by users themselves.
Exploitation in Mesmuses is geared towards the following objectives:
The Mesmuses experience demonstrates that the semantic web family of methods, standards and tools can be exploited by cultural organisations to offer to their visitors new knowledge discovery services. This may open opportunities for inventing more interactive and attractive web contents than the traditional online exhibition catalogues.
Marco Meli
CEO and Cofounder
EDW International
Via Abamonti 2
20129 Milano
Italy
URL:http://www.edw-international.com/
Email: meli@edw.it
Phone: +39 02 29513925
Fax: +39 02 295123930
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For citation purposes:
Meli, M. "Knowledge Management: a new challenge for science museums", Cultivate Interactive, issue
9, 7 February 2003
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue9/mesmuses/>
-------------------------------------------------------------
By Salvatore Lusso - February 2003
Salvatore Lusso reports on a project seeking to create a cultural heritage community in lesser known European regions where culture, environment and tourism represent the main resource of the area.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The aim of the OpenHeritage Project is to create a cultural heritage community in lesser known European territories where culture, environment and tourism represent the main resource of the region. The concept is to create a mixed model based on commercial activities (hotels, restaurants, locally produced goods, etc.) and the activities of public bodies. This model would be able to promote the cultural heritage of museums and memory institutions at local and international level. Such a sustainable economic model is seen as the only way to change an historically poor system into a winning, added value one.
 |
| Figure 1: Front page of the South Sardinia TSC Web site |
This community will refer to a local Territorial Service Centre (TSC), an IT infrastructure and service provider that will:
The TSC will assist visitors towards a full appreciation of the environment visited which may be considered an open museum possessing a distinctive cultural identity thanks to the landscape and its particular environmental features.
The core of the service is the creation of a TSC acting as catalyst in the area, among memory institutions, public bodies and private companies (hotels, restaurants, shops, entertainment, car rentals agencies and event promoters such as theatres, cinemas, galleries, municipalities, cultural associations, sport clubs, etc.). This will operate in such a way as to create a strong network of contacts and offer visitors a great variety of opportunities. Its visibility will also be promoted at international level by means of a TSC local web portal which will provide:
The main task of the project is to concentrate upon the widespread cultural and environmental heritage, especially in regions more remote from the better-known tourist centres. One should emphasise that the region as a whole will be considered as an open museum where the landscape and environmental features will emerge as a distinctive cultural entity.
 |
| Figure 2: Chief factors in a TSC |
Accordingly for every service that requires this kind of approach the portal will employ new technologies and tools available on the market to permit users to experience and appreciate the site they are visiting. Such services might include, for example, the description and visualisation of cultural tours, precise directions to a museum hosting an event, the precise location of the region's TSC, etc.
These new technologies will offer two different levels of user interrogation capability:
 |
| Figure 3: Users can interrogate 3D landscapes |
We would preface this section with the recognition that the intended service is not yet fully structured nor complete.
We have produced a scenario describing what a typical tourist does before visiting a country, including whether he or she decides to go there ultimately or not.
On the one hand there are vertical or horizontal portals for hotel reservations, created by commercial organisations which by their nature do not attach great importance to the promotion of the region with regard to either environmental or cultural opportunities for visitors. These portals assume that prospective tourists have already firmly decided upon their destination, and provide relatively little information on what they will be able to do or visit. In other words they provide few opportunities for visitors to plan their tour or other related activities in advance.
On the other hand there are tourist portals created by public bodies, which are often full of institutional content on places of interest in the area such as monuments, churches, museums, etc. The problem is that this content is not always displayed in an appealing manner for tourists. This is often because such public bodies are unaware of a few fundamental marketing strategies that would actively leverage promotion of the region's assets. Consequently one rarely comes across suggested or customisable tours, videos showing the region as a whole or places of interest in particular are rare, as indeed is any form of virtual tour.
 |
| Figure 4: 3D reconstruction of a site of interest |
What a Web site should do is to encourage the potential tourists' curiosity such that they will actually choose to visit these places of interest. In the proposed itineraries there will be the chance to contact restaurants typical of the region, shops selling local products and also reserve hotel or other accommodation.
We realise that commercial organisations have not designated many resources to the creation of models for the integrated promotion of the tourist region since by their nature they are more oriented towards attracting more typical revenue, such as, for example, from hotel bookings. Conversely public bodies interested in the promotion of the region have yet to acquire the expertise in effective marketing and communication that is fundamental in attracting visitors to an area; particularly to less well-known places.
The service will therefore seek to promote the region acting through cultural tourist resources and focusing on areas with low visibility but high potential. This process will make it possible for example to extend the tourist season in certain places (nearly all southern Mediterranean) where the only attraction promoted to date is "sun, sea and sand". If we consider a typical Internet approach, a user will find in the TSC portal, (for example that of southern Sardinia, see Figure 1 above), information on cultural attractions, green tourism, events, itineraries, TSC stores and so forth.
Eventually the Web pages will also contain hypertext links to information on local businesses. Accordingly, having enjoyed a virtual visit and their curiosity aroused, potential tourists are more likely to want to examine suggested tours, restaurants, accommodation, etc. in the portal together with their supporting information. It is more likely, as a result, that potential tourists will become actual ones.
The main measurable results expected from the project are as follows:
So, the overall focus of the project is on opening heritage to the future through innovation, thus helping memory institutions fulfil their mission; to give the most comprehensive access to their collections not only to coteries of specialists and technologists, but to the largest possible public in Europe where memory and cultural identity belongs. The realisation of local cultural heritage will act as a driving force for the promotion of tourism over the entire region, and will bring about a stronger integration of cultural heritage resources, the environment and the local economy.
| Participant name | Participant short name | Country | Expertise | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Space Spa | SPACE | I | Technologies applied to the cultural sector |
-OpenMuseum patented technology -Management -Exploitation activities |
| System Simulation Ltd. | SSL | UK | Collection Management technologies |
-Collection Management module -Exploitation activities in the UK |
| National Museums of Scotland | NMS | UK | Museum's activities | -Museum requirements |
| Chambre de Commerce et Industrie de Lyon | MHTL | F | Regional economic policies | -Regional requirements |
| Museo Locale "Genna Maria" | ARCHEOVF | I | Museum's activities | -Museum requirements |
| Stichting Museon (Museum voor het Onderwijs) | MUSEON | NL | Museum's activities |
-Museum requirements -Validation activities |
| Cultural Heritage on Line | CHOL | F | Multimedia technologies for cultural assets |
-Image brokerage system -Dissemination |
| Centro di Ingegneria Economica e Sociale | CIES | I | Socio-economic territorial search models | -Socio-economic models |
| Cultural Service Centre Austria | CSCA | A | Organisational services to memory institutions | -Commercial strategies |
| Digital Publishing Japan | DPJ | J | High quality publishing | -TSC services |
| Association for Documentation and new Information Technologies | ADIT | RU | Information technologies in Russia's museums | -Museum requirements |
Salvatore Lusso
Project Manager
SPACE SpA
Via S. Tommaso D'Aquino n.18,
09100 Cagliari
Italy
Tel: +3907022810305
URL: <http://www.website>
Email:salvatore.lusso@spacespa.it
Salvatore Lusso has a degree in Engineering and a Masters degree in Marketing Strategies from the Polytechnic of Milan in the management of new technologies in companies. He has attended the Train-it course "Turning IST Technology into an investor-winning business plan". He has developed strategies projects for Brandt Group, Artemide, Illy, Piaggio, Ticket Restaurant and Benetton Group. Salvatore has worked for ACCOR Services Hotels (Europe-wide leader in hotels property and services) between Milan and Paris. He monitors market strategies in the Company and is in charge of a number of running projects in the cultural tourism sector, including SANDALYA (with RAS), OPENHERITAGE, CHERI and others.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For citation purposes:
Salvatore, L. "OpenHeritage: Developing cultural tourism in lesser-known regions", Cultivate Interactive, issue
9, 7 February 2003
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue9/openheritage/>
-------------------------------------------------------------
By Emily Whetter - February 2003
Emily Whetter of MJC² Limited reports on PAST - a new way of showing visitors to archaeological sites what life was like for their early inhabitants.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 |
| Figure 1: Image of Pocket PC |
| showing the interactive map |
When people visit an archaeological site, it is difficult to give them a clear picture of how people lived on the site - all that usually remains is a few ruins, and sometimes not even those are visible. There have been various approaches to try to resolve this situation, but there are problems with all of them. Museums on site rely on the visitors' memory of their tour around the site, pamphlets given out at the entrance and noticeboards at points of interest are usually written in language that is difficult for children to understand, involve significant production costs and may be hard to update. PAST presents a new solution to this problem whereby visitors not only see images showing the site as it was in the period represented by the site, but also receive a detailed insight into the lives of the occupants, from the frame of reference of their own lifestyle and interests. Each visitor will be given a highly personalised route around the site, tailored to their speed of travel and their interests; this means that individual visitors only view the locations relevant to them, at a rate that suits them. They will only be shown material at a level tailored to them, so children do not get bored, adults do not feel patronised, and everyone goes away with a complete understanding of the information shown to them.
PAST [1] is an acronym for exPeriencing Archaeology across Space and Time, an EU-funded project undertaken by the following organisations:
The IT partners:
The archaeological partners:
 |
| Figure 2: Image of Pocket |
| PC showing welcome page |
On arrival at the site, visitors will be given a Pocket PC, which will display a welcome page (see Figure 2) asking them to select their language. They will work their way through a profile to ascertain their interests and level of presentation of information. They will then be presented with an interactive map with their route displayed (see Figure 1 above), and a choice of options, which will include the opportunity to reschedule their route completely, to add and remove points, and most importantly, to visit the first point.
As they progress around the site, they will be given the option to reschedule if they move faster or slower than anticipated, and to change the level of presentation of information if they feel it is not suitable. At the end of the visit, the visitor is able to create a CD of their visit, for future reference. Visitors can also access the system from home over the Internet before arrival, which means they can fill in the profiling section and arrive at the site ready to begin their tour.
Figure 3 displays the architecture of the system. It consists of a client, namely a Pocket PC, using Pocket Internet Explorer as a browser to access a number of dynamic HTML pages, and the server-side components that create those pages. The communication between the client and the server is made using wireless networking.
 |
| Figure 3: Image of the system architecture |
| showing the interactive map |
On the server, there are five components:
The PAST system is currently being trialled at two sites - Passo di Corvo in Italy and Toumba in Greece. Passo di Corvo is a prehistoric village - the excavations in this site have confirmed that the one hundred or so structures visible from aerial photography do not all belong to the same period of time, but span a period of around a thousand years (from 4500 to 3500 B.C.). The site of Toumba is located in the coastal plain of Thessaloniki, on the foothills of Mount Hortiatis. It consists of an artificial hill (tell or toumba) created by the overlapping of archeological remains over several thousand years. The numerous objects discovered during the archeological dig, including prestigious artefacts and a large quantity of pottery from the late Mycenean Age, allow dating of the excavated area to the Late Bronze Age (i.e. 1200 B.C.).
Emily Whetter
MJC² Limited
33 Wellington Business Park
Dukes Ride
Crowthorne
Berkshire RG45 6LS
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 1344 760000
Fax: +44 1344 760017
URL: <http://www.mjc2.com>
Email: Info@mjc2.com
MJC² Limited focuses on providing software solutions to complex optimisation, planning and scheduling problems addressing amongst other areas: supply chain optimisation, strategic logistics, realtime distribution scheduling, manufacturing planning, intelligent business analysis, mobile workforce management and interactive visitor guiding around exhibition halls and other centres.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For citation purposes:
Whetter, E. "PAST - Bringing archaeological sites to life", Cultivate Interactive, issue
9, 7 February 2003
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue9/past/>
-------------------------------------------------------------
By Paul Schreilechner - February 2003
Paul Schreilechner reports on new ways of presenting ecological insights by combining multimedia technologies with geographic information and database systems. Via TREBIS, a biodiversity information system, the Vorarlberger Naturschau, a natural history museum in Austria, opens up its digital archives.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
In the TREBIS project [1], the Vorarlberger Naturschau [2], a regional natural history museum opens its digital archives to the public, attracting visitors by presenting on-site information about current processes in nature: the distribution of animals and plants, biodiversity, endangered species and ecological facts. An interactive multimedia user front end including a geographic information system is tested and evaluated in the context of querying information stored in a museum's client-server database system.
 |
| Figure 1: Start screen of the TREBIS software |
Natural history museums across Europe own vast treasures of our cultural and natural heritage. Some of this heritage has been catalogued, very little has been digitised and presented via the World Wide Web. All in all, very little information on biodiversity has been made available to the public until now. In the TREBIS trial, up-to-date information is made accessible to museum visitors, in contrast to the traditional approach of presenting non-dynamic, sometimes even historic data without context. Recent developments in nature and their very own dynamics are taken into account through regular updates of the data.
What sets this project apart is an approach that goes beyond existing information systems: namely the integration of technologies such as a database management system, a desktop mapping system/geographic information system (GIS) and multimedia technologies.
The structure of TREBIS is based on a didactical concept which addresses the main aspects of teaching biodiversity. Via a multimedia interface the user can navigate through the different modules of the information system which are designed to address different personal interests. Whether you are interested in specific conservation issues or whether you just want to enjoy the beauty of nature, TREBIS allows you to approach biodiversity from your personal viewpoint.
 |
| Figure 2: Interactive maps help you to discover biodiversity hotspots |
| W. Barthlott et al., Department of Botany and Geography, University of Bonn. |
 |
| Figure 3: An interactive quiz about the ecology of Lake Constance |
During the trial visiting school classes as well as ordinary visitors tested the software and by so doing participated in an accompanying evaluation study which centred on motivational aspects. This study was carried out by the Department of Didactics for Biology at the Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität in Munich [5]. Initial results from the evaluation show that knowledge acquisition is enhanced by the interactive aproach to the topic. The design of the instruction process was shown to provide visitors with increased confidence as well as enjoyment, interest and excitement during their use of the program. Comparison with a control group, which watched a film instead, indicated that the information system provided equally effective learning outcomes but motivated its learners more. Other results indicated that younger students showed higher content-related and computer activity-related motivation than older students. Girls showed higher content-related, program-related and computer activity-related motivation than boys.
 |
| Figure 4: School children testing and evaluating the software |
This is a selection of comments from teenage students:
"The program is well built and I like the graphics. There is lots of information about nature. I especially love the content of the different topics and the quiz." (female student, Bundesgymnasium Lustenau, 4b)
"The program is very interesting. There are lot of things to look at and the design is good. I am not really interested in nature, but I really can imagine using the program during a visit to the museum." (male student, Bundesgymnasium Lustenau, 4b)
"The program design is excellent. You can find lots of information about characteristics of animals and plants. I could not even get through all of it. I definitely would use the program again when coming to the museum next time." (female student, Bundesgymnasium Feldkirch, 3e)
"I think the program is funny and instructive. It is also understandable for young people. But most of all I liked the quiz." (female student, Bundesgymnasium Feldkirch, 3e)
 |
The TREBIS partners are strongly committed to an extension of TREBIS-trialled technology. This would involve crossing national (and language) borders in a further stage, once the technology and the feasibility of the principal approach have been extensively tested and evaluated. Subsequently, the software and its user interface will not be limited to museum use, but also made available to the wide array of institutions involved in biological distribution issues and collections. This includes, for example, research organisations, botanical gardens, national parks, botanical stations, cloisters, archives and environmental groups. The trial will also show to what extent TREBIS technology may be applied directly in schools and universities, eventually contributing to the improvement of curricular and learning techniques.
Paul Schreilechner
Manager
Biogis Consulting GmbH
5071 WALS-SIEZENHEIM (near Salzburg)
Dr.-Hans-Lechner-Str. 6
Austria
Tel: +43 662 452216
Fax: +43 662 452216 22
URL: <http://www.biogis.at>
Email: paul.schreilechner@biogis.at
Paul Schreilechner is manager of Biogis Consulting GmbH which he founded in 1996. He is the coordinator of the TREBIS project. Over the last years he has managed several software development projects including BioOffice, a combined GIS and database software solution for managing biological distribution data.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For citation purposes:
Schreilechner, P. "TREBIS - A biodiversity information system", Cultivate Interactive, issue
9, 7 February 2003
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue9/trebis/>
-------------------------------------------------------------
By Marcel van Dijk - February 2003
In 2001, for the first time in its history, the Amsterdam Municipal Records Office received and processed records that had been electronically created by a government authority. In the course of the project a great many obstacles were faced and ultimately resolved. In his article on the ups and downs of this difficult process, Marcel van Dijk gives us a flavour of the challenges encountered and the hard lessons learnt.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Dutch Government is going digital, and the archival world is experiencing the much heralded consequences. Inside governmental administrations, document management, and with that good record management, is subject to heavy digital turbulence and insecurity. At stake were the following two issues: How can our governmental organisations, in an electronic environment, record and apply their information to support their management, and render an account of their actions? And further: how shall the transfer of electronic records to the governmental record offices be implemented? Last year, in the Netherlands a regulation was issued on the arrangement and accessibility of records with archival value. Special attention was given to electronic records, as our government's memory and our national electronic cultural heritage were at stake here!
Many a Dutch governmental authority will find it hard to comply with these regulations. The Amsterdam Municipal Records Office [1] often finds that many municipal authorities fail to practise good records management, especially where electronic records are concerned. We cannot emphasise enough the risks that are being run at times with the accounting for municipal implementation procedures and the keeping of our historical and cultural heritage.
The Amsterdam Municipal Records Office has some experience now appraising electronically created archives. The Amsterdam Projectbureau 'Year 2000', handling the Millennium problem, transmitted its records after closing down, eleven metres of paper records and ... nine CD-ROM's. According to Dutch regulations, the Projectbureau should have appraised these records as well as prepared them for transfer. But on that particular occasion, an agreement was made that the Municipal Records Office would accomplish this task. I shall only go into some of the details of our experience, nor do we claim to have the solution to everyone else's digital challenges out there. However I trust this article will serve as a general warning however, and be of benefit to the many municipal (and other) record creators and records offices.
This Projectbureau was installed in 1998 by the Municipal Board to secure the transfer into the new millennium. Key activities were appraising the reliability of hard- and software used in municipal departments in terms of the millennium rollover, briefing the municipal authorities on these matters and taking care of internal and external communications. These activities were, for a large part, electronically supported, and this of course reflected on the bureau's records.
 |
| Figure 1: 'Bugman', the mascot of the Bureau Year 2000 |
The Projectbureau had to deal with a variety of questions. What data was stored in the bureau's databases? What PowerPoint presentation was shown supporting the municipal executive's speech warning about the Millennium bug? And what about the Web site specifically set up to inform citizens and authorities? These questions could partly be answered by the paper documentation, but consulting the electronic documents provides many more insights and illustrations.
On the bureau's closure, its records were transmitted to the Records Office. The paper components had already been appraised to a fair degree. We subsequently processed them and provided further archival description and material preservation: business as usual.
 |
| Figure 2: Viruses can endanger the integrity of electronic records |
Initially, in global terms, stocktaking of the CD's gave us immediate cause for concern. In the process of making back-ups, the virus checker sounded the alarm. The ICT department successfully disinfected the CD's without affecting the files' integrity. However a far more serious problem lay in the structure in which the information was organised. The content of shared and individual workstations had been burned directly onto the CD's, structured in maps which referred back only partially to the structure of the paper records. As a consequence we were confronted with a whole raft of questions: What was on the CD's, and what was in the files? Had this Word document ever actually been sent as a letter? What purpose had this spreadsheet served? At what meeting had this picture been taken? And what software do I need to open this file? All too often the necessary context data was missing, that is: the metadata.
Administrating metadata of hard- and software with which electronic records are created is, of course, vital. But equally without the information on the context in which those records were received or created, it would soon be very hard to interpret such records. The contextual information can in many cases easily be attached by implementing electronic filing. It is therefore of utmost importance to start the business of filing as soon as possible in the overall process; this means basically providing the files, as well as the electronic documents stored into them, with a plain description of the content. Then, electronic records could _ provided procedures are implemented to cover issues such as version management and document status _ be appraised at directory level.
 |
| Figure 3: Poorly named files hamper the appraisal of records |
But as it was, in directories with names such as 'E-mail' or 'miscellaneous' (as we sometimes found in these records) we could never be sure what we would come across next, particularly when documents bore names such as '3rd concept' , 'A,dam ll' or 'ATT01368', (see figure 1). The documents in these directories therefore had to be opened and inspected one at a time. A very labour-, time- and money-consuming affair! Lack of structure and lack of explicit and interpretable metadata therefore lay very much at the root of the problems that confronted us in our aim to prepare these records for transfer to our electronic depot [2].
The global stocktaking of the content of the CD's took us, for reasons mentioned above, about one week. Thereafter we concluded that appraisal [3] in some cases was appropriate on the level of the CD, in some cases at directory level but more often than not at document level, depending on the way the directories had been defined. Moreover, we had to deal with a large variety of software and files: MS-Word and WordPerfect files, e-mail, Web pages, databases, spreadsheets, PowerPoint files, photographs in JPEG and other JPEG files such as logos and other images. We even found a computer game, made with the aim of preparing Amsterdam for the turn of the millennium. We defined a project plan by formulating the necessary work in relation to file type. The problem was, of course, that it was difficult to estimate how much time we would need to carry out the different activities, as we had no experience whatsoever of these file types. And, on top of that, we were confronted regularly with unexpected problems.
As to text files, these included Word- and WordPerfect files as well as e-mail messages and scanned letters and accounts. We decided on the guiding principle that the electronic files would serve as complementary to the paper records, in such a way that the paper records would be pre-eminent. Some of the paper records clearly had more authenticity than the electronic records, as they were signed or stamped. Furthermore, the paper records had already been appraised and an archival description had been made. Our next task therefore was to find out whether or not the electronic text files had already been included in the paper records. When this was the case, the electronic version was not used. Alternatively, and when we were dealing with a record with archival value, we printed the electronic file and added it to the paper records.
Accordingly the CD's had to be checked as to which documents on them needed to be retained and, more specifically, whether these documents were already included in the paper records. Both the paper records' archival description and the notes made at the first stocktaking of the CD's supported this check. Even so, a fairly large proportion of the files had to be opened and checked, as a direct consequence of the way documents had been filed and named. As mentioned earlier, it was sometimes very hard to determine with what kind of document we were dealing. In figure 3 we see an e-mail message with the text: 'Joep: three times; kind regards, Henk'. The three attachments were entitled 'acceptation protocol concept 02, 03 and 04'. Nowhere was a statement to be found concerning the context in which the protocol had been created, where we could find version 01, or the final version and whether or not, and to whom, the protocol had finally been sent.
These are random examples of the lack of information we encountered. Versions of the same text files were found in different directories and even on different CD's. A Word file could form part of the bureau's Web site, without being referenced or identified. Only after considerable time and effort, and after searching the paper records repeatedly, were we able to appraise the electronic records a little bit faster. This way of proceeding proved to be very labour-intensive, as a thousand files were involved. We considered other ways, like throwing all text files in a big 'basket' and sorting out the important files, helped by different sorting routines. However this proved not to be very effective, as the structure, still apparent in some places, would then completely disappear. Conversely sorting routines at directory level proved to be effective. Directories that seemed promising were checked at random in this manner. Moreover, we used several search engines, inserting arguments connected with functions, tasks and activities of the bureau.
In this way, the electronic records could be worked on quite thoroughly. The result: practically all the electronic text files were either already included in the paper records or for other reasons were without archival value. But this did not hold for all documents, (for example not for the communication plan and for documents concerning the organisation of a meeting with Turkish entrepreneurs); so ultimately it proved wise not to have skipped the stocktaking of all the electronic records!
As to the other file types, it was clear that, if we chose to save them, they had to be saved digitally. Files such as Web sites and databases could be printed, but they would lose their digital functionality. In particular with regard to the Year 2K Web site, including sound fragments and animations, we judged such a loss of functionality as unacceptable; the appraisal of these files had been made, to a significant degree, on the basis of their digital capabilities. Ultimately our solution was to copy the content of the CD's to a file server-disk.
In the Netherlands, the issue and rationale of archiving Web sites has only recently gained some public attention. Hence, we could only take limited advantage of earlier experience. In this particular case, the Web site had played such an important role in the bureau's primary goals, (guidance and communication), that we decided to retain completely the first and last versions. A number of intermediate versions, updates by which more or different information was added, and consequently representing a substantial change, were kept as well. In fact we found on the CD's only one complete site, plus 33 updates. These files had been stored to disk as zip files and had first to be unpacked. Thereafter, we were able to add the subsequent updates to the only complete version we had. In this way we re-created the various updates until we reached the last and 33rd.version, hoping it would function. This not only took considerable time, but also called for an enormous amount of disk space. Starting out with 299 zipped Web files, with a volume of 27.9 Mb, after unpacking we counted 2,967 files with a volume of 70.6 Mb. Once updating was complete, we counted 32,874 files with a volume of 370 Mb!
The result was not altogether satisfying: not all parts of the site functioned. On top of that, we found out that the oldest version of which we disposed was not in fact the first version of the Web site, something which an adequate set of metadata would have made clear from the start. Ultimately, we contacted the Web site's builder, in this case a small commercial designer. This firm provided us with the first version and the last (functioning) version of the site. Due to the relatively short interval between the design of the site and its transfer to the Municipal Records Office, valuable contact had still been possible with the designer. However over the same period, many comparably small ICT firms had been obliged to shut down and had disappeared. Who would have given the archivist the information he or she needed about such a Web site, built by such a small firm? This experience was one of the reasons why the Amsterdam Municipal Records Office began formulating a policy for the archiving of municipal sites. In this policy statement due attention will be given to adequate terms of transfer (e.g. probably earlier than required by existing regulations), required metadata, file formats and archiving of hyperlinks.
For some of the databases and spreadsheets found on the CD's, the lack of version management on the one hand and meta-information on the other, had an even greater impact then in the case of the text and Web files. Tables and schedules named by numbers only do not have the slightest meaning. Luckily, some spreadsheets and databases were accompanied by some information about the content and some technical information. On the accompanying document, the content of the files was made explicit, as well as which matches existed between the databases. Unfortunately the matches were omitted in the process of copying the databases onto the CD's, consequently most databases could not be opened.
Since it was these same databases which could give us a unique insight into the state of ICT at the municipal authority of Amsterdam on the verge of the New Millennium, we again felt obliged to contact the database designer. He provided us with a lot of information, from which it became clear that the databases contained a great deal of data, but also lacked a lot of data. Finally we preserved the database containing the result of the first stocktaking of the state of ICT in Amsterdam as executed by the bureau. This provides a very clear, though incomplete, picture of things before the bureau started its effort. Future researchers consulting these records shall have to bear their incompleteness in mind.
A number of files from the records of the Project Bureau Year 2000 have been selected for inclusion in the Amsterdam Municipal Records Offices' digital repository. These include pictures of publicity campaigns and gatherings, images, like the Bureau's logo, an educative computer game concerning the Millennium problem in Amsterdam, functioning Web site versions, some PowerPoint presentations and a database. Contents are disclosed by means of an archival description and a set of technical metadata which come with the records.
The project is far from over. Many questions remain unanswered. For example two substantial questions are: how are we going to keep these materials accessible and interpretable over the years to come? Moreover how are we going to provide the public with access to these records? In the digital age, management of - in principle - archival records is really a dynamic issue. This project shows in essence one thing very clearly: when archiving of electronic records is not properly planned and projected right from the start, as with a proper administration of the contextual, administrative and technical metadata, then any reconstruction afterwards is bound to be a most laborious and time-consuming affair with an uncertain outcome. The chances of success decrease with the passing of time. Good procedures and agreements with record creators beforehand together with a strict 'admission policy' are indispensable to ultimate success.
To make a long story short: everyone who wants to conserve history shall, far more than in the past, have to look to the future. And this does not only go for Amsterdam. For example, could the way electronic records are archived by the European Commission set an example here .. or perhaps not yet?
 |
| Figure 4: Electronic government...accessible archives? |
So in conclusion, the lessons learnt boil down to this: the storage of digital records has to be organised at the very moment of their creation; trying to manage them after that moment will cost everyone concerned a disproportionate and unjustifiable amount of effort.
I would very much like to thank Carolien Schönfeld, also of the Gemeentearchief Amsterdam, for her invaluable support on this article, both for her comments on its content and advice over points of translation.
Marcel van Dijk
Gemeentearchief Amsterdam - Amsterdam Municipal Records Office
Afdeling Verwerving en concerndiensten - Acquisition and Services Department
pb 51140
1007 EC Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Tel: +31 20 5720312
Fax: +31 20 5720326
URL: <http://www.gemeentearchief.amsterdam.nl/>
Email: mvandijk@gaaweb.nl
Marcel van Dijk has been working for the Municipal Archives of Amsterdam since 2000. In charge of the Municipal Archives, he supports and advises governmental organisations in Amsterdam which face problems in the sphere of record management.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For citation purposes:
van Dijk, M "It Always Hurts the First Time: Experiences with transferred electronic records", Cultivate Interactive, issue
9, 7 February 2003
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue9/amsterdammro/>
-------------------------------------------------------------
By Cary Karp - February 2003
Cary Karp, Director of Internet Strategy and Technology at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, and President of the Museum Domain Management Association, updates us on the developments associated with the designation of an initial group of seven new top-level domains. In particular he informs us of the activity of the Dot-museum Network Information Center which he first raised with us in his article in issue 4.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
In Cultivate Interactive Issue 4, an article appeared under the title, "The Sign on the Door: Establishing a Top-level Museum Domain on the Internet" [1]. This described several years of activity which culminated in the designation of an initial group of seven new top-level domains in late 2000. The article went on to provide a more detailed review of initiatives leading specifically to the one which was reserved for the exclusive use of the museum community: .museum. In the present article, I would like to describe many of the things that have happened in the interim. In particular, the activity of the fledgling Stockholm-based "Dot-museum Network Information Center" mentioned in the earlier article, is now supported by an accompanying measure in the DG-IS program for Cultural Heritage Applications (musEnic - Contract number IST-2001-33538) [2].
At the beginning of the last decade the Internet was a rather arcane communication tool used almost exclusively by the academic community. The bulk of the content that it sustained was text-oriented and conveyed either as e-mail, via FTP or through the Internet Gopher. Indeed, even the World Wide Web was initially envisioned as a text-only platform. After much discussion of economics, logistics and politics, the Internet was subsequently opened for unrestricted commercial use. The advent of graphic Web browsers and modems fast enough to support relatively easy access to multimedia content further changed the landscape. The stage was thereby set for the extremely rapid development of the Web as we currently recognize it. At the same time, the seeds were sown for what would soon be termed the dot-com craze. Businesses devoid of tangible assets were appearing all over the Web, with nothing to identify them other than a brand consisting exclusively of a domain name such as, www.snazzyname.com.
A domain name marketplace emerged, where attractive names in .com were being sold for staggering prices. The speculative acquisition of domain names became a business in its own right and rapidly led to the distasteful and often outright dishonest practice of domain name hijacking and ransoming. In its wake, the "defensive registration" of domain names became an important aspect of the protection of intellectual property. This, in turn, further inflated the value of speculative trade in domain names. Domain disputes resulted in litigation with such frequency that lawyers began specialising in it.
By the mid-90's, the initial authors of the Domain Name System (DNS) perceived an urgent need for remedial action. In 1996, a proposal was released for the creation of a significant number of new generic (as opposed to national) top-level domains. This was intended to serve two purposes, each based on an assumption. The first was that interest in the defensive registration of brands and trademarks as domain names would wane if the number of top-level domains in which this needed to be done were large enough. The second assumption was that there would be less speculative trading in domain names if the supply of names were radically increased through the availability of a significantly greater selection of top-level domains (TLDs).
A third consideration figured in the discussion of that proposal. This related to the ability to enhance the semantic value of the DNS by the appropriate selection of new TLD "labels". As initially conceived, domain names were only intended to provide a means for the mnemonic association of aggregates of letters, conveniently used by human beings, with the numeric addresses that computers on the Internet use when addressing each other. Domain names were not intended to be based on words or phrases. Despite this, the branding practice described above resulted in domain names frequently consisting of words intended to convey clear meaning about what they designated. The extent to which the semantic aspects of the DNS should be recognised and developed remains a subject of debate among the Internet architects and protocol engineers.
The implementation of the 1996 proposal proved to be a fiercely contentious issue. Without going into its intricacies, the process resulted in "proof of concept" action, intended to establish the basic viability and utility of the envisioned expansion of the TLD name space. One of the concepts to be proven was the value of a TLD label with explicit rather than mnemonic meaning. The basis for this proof of concept was the group of seven TLDs referred to at the outset of this article. The one intended to have the most deliberate semantic focus was .museum.
When the new TLDs were announced, the domain name market was all but frothing. It was expected on all fronts that prospective name holders would immediately embrace the new TLDs. There were, however, a number of contractual formalities that needed to be resolved before the new creations would actually be available for use. Although the initial timetable for the requisite negotiations had envisaged their completion before the end of 2000, as it turned out, the actual process was to take over a year. (In fact, at time of writing, six of the seven have come into operation.) Although unforeseen at its outset, the year 2001 proved to be one of the most dramatic not only in the history of the Internet, but also for the entire IT industry.
With that, the current narrative can now take up where the previous article left off. When the earlier piece was written, there were no clear signs of the incipient rupture of the dot-com bubble with the resulting inversion of the domain name industry. (Space will not be used here to discuss the relationship between these occurrences and the deep slump in the broader IT sector, or the possibility of that, in effect, being the much-feared Y2K disaster.) In any case, the greatest concern of the prospective operator of .museum then, was in finalizing the contract that was needed in order to commence the domain's actual operation.
Nonetheless, matters were on a sure enough footing for the public inauguration of .museum to be held on 4 July 2001 during the ICOM Triennial Conference in Barcelona [3]. The actual contract was signed on 18 October 2001, and .museum became the first of the three sponsored (i.e. restricted for the use of a clearly defined target community) TLDs among the new seven [4]. The domain became fully operational two weeks later. The entire sequence of administrative formalities involved in the establishment of a TLD was not, however, completed with that. An elaborate start-up regimen was specified in the basic contract, requiring a series of subcontracts for various aspects of the domain's technical operation. Nothing further will be said about this, beyond noting that all such action has now been concluded.
Museums began participating actively in the establishment of .museum during the month preceding the event in Barcelona. By the time its doors were fully open on 1 November, the .museum participant base had grown to an encouraging number. Unfortunately, by then it was also becoming clear that the domain name market was no longer what it had once been. The assessments of the expected rate of the new TLD's growth that had been made during the heyday of the IT boom were now in need of revision. It also seemed likely that marketing activity could not be focused simply on advertising the fact that a dedicated TLD had been placed at the disposal of the museum community. Although not as readily apparent at the time, the notion of "community" would prove to be as important as that of "domain name", on the path forward.
Community also figured prominently in the domain's administrative underpinning. Dot-museum is one of the three sponsored TLDs (sTLDs), so-called because the development and enforcement of domain policies is entrusted to a Sponsoring Organisation. A pivotal notion underlying any sTLD is that it serves a well-defined target community and that its sponsor is clearly representative of that community. (Along with .museum in the service of the museum community, are .aero, for the air transport industry, and .coop, for the international cooperative movement.) The .museum sponsor is the Museum Domain Management Association (MuseDoma) [5], a non-profit organisation that was created by the International Council of Museums [6] (ICOM) with the support of the J. Paul Getty Trust [7], specifically for the purpose of preparing and submitting an application for .museum. If it was approved, MuseDoma would then undertake all the duties incumbent upon an sTLD sponsor. It was difficult for anyone to foresee what this might entail in the longer term. The sTLDs were a completely new phenomenon and their introduction was, as previously stated, a proof of concept. On top of that, the sponsoring organisations were all selected on the basis of their position in their target communities. Almost by definition, none had any prior experience specifically in TLD management.
The operators of the unrestricted TLDs could proceed unencumbered by the need for concern with many of the policy issues confronting the sTLD sponsors. All TLD operators did, however, need to devise means for accommodating the changes in the state of the domain name market. This included the operator of the long-established .com/.net/.org aggregate, and representatives of all ten gTLDs (generic top-level domains) began meeting regularly to discuss the many issues of common interest. In this context it became clear that the three sTLDs were going through almost identical experiences in the way their actions were being received by their target communities. The availability of names in a dedicated TLD was not, in itself, quite the compelling force that had been originally predicted. An obvious means for generating the necessary additional impetus would be to promote names in an sTLD not merely as DNS appellations, but as tokens of membership in what, despite everything, were privileged communities. Appropriate marketing action would, therefore, involve calling attention to the significant benefits that could be derived from belonging to such a community, and which could not be obtained in any other way.
During the course of all the action described above, MuseDoma was investigating means for expanding its own organizational scope to include more than its two founding members, The Getty and ICOM. The .museum Charter obligated MuseDoma to operate .museum, "in accordance with community perceptions about the prevailing scope of the field of museum activity" [8]. The basic framework for this was provided by the definitions contained in the ICOM Statutes [9]. It was, however, expected that the operation of the new TLD might require modification of the ground rules at a more rapid pace than the one at which the ICOM Statutes could be adjusted. MuseDoma was therefore established as an open membership organisation. Although there was no alternative to the initial exclusive participation of the Founding Members, it was expected that members of the .museum community with an interest in the on-going development of TLD policies would subsequently join MuseDoma and actively begin steering its further course.
Membership in MuseDoma was not the sole channel through which the museum community could participate in this process. From the outset, an e-mail discussion list provided an open forum [10] for input and feedback about all aspects of MuseDoma and the operation and policies of .museum. Until now, virtually all discussion about these issues has taken place on-line. It is possible, perhaps even likely, that the membership aspect of MuseDoma has not yet adequately been called to the attention of the museums. At present, however, this remains one of the things on the list for future development.
There has, however, been one important addition to MuseDoma's original configuration. The largest part of the preliminary campaign for the creation of .museum between 1996 and 2000 was conducted with the direct support of the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm (Naturhistoriska riksmuseet - NRM) [11]. When the new TLD had been fully established and the logistics of its operation and administration became the primary concern, NRM formally joined the MuseDoma organisation and continued to provide office facilities and personnel resources for the .museum operational headquarters. In keeping with general practice, such a facility is termed a Network Information Center - NIC. An equally conventional abbreviated designation for the .museum NIC would be MuseNIC. MuseDoma subsequently began the establishment of this facility in Stockholm, with an obvious first step being the formal inclusion of NRM in the parent organisation.
The formalisation of a European nexus for one of the new gTLDs was a clear step forward in the globalisation of the development of what, for lack of a better term, is often called "Internet governance". Even a moderately detailed description of the political ramifications of the latter concern would easily fill a book. Suffice it to say that the EU had expressed clear interest in closing the gap between Europe and the United States in all aspects of the development and utilization of the Internet. The presence of a new gTLD NIC in an EU member state was not without interest in this regard.
MuseDoma responded to a Fifth Framework call for proposals with an application for an accompanying measure in the DG-IS program for Cultural Heritage Applications. The project was termed "musEnic" and was based on one of the many issues that required the attention of the new European facility: determining a strategic basis for refocusing .museum marketing activity as discussed above, and implementing it through what was termed a series of "awareness campaigns". These were targeted on the community of prospective name holders in .museum, the community of Internet users, and the neighboring communities within the ALM sector (Archives, Libraries, Museums).
The musEnic Project (IST-2001-33538) commenced its action in April 2002 and will run through March 2004. A primary metric of its success will be the number of .museum names that are registered as a result of various awareness events arranged by the project. Another goal is for the archive and library communities to have gained a significant enough understanding of the purpose and value of .museum, for them to be prepared to act toward the creation of similar TLDs for their respective communities in response to a suitable future call for proposals for additional TLDs. The final intention is for the public to ascribe the same meaning to dot-museum as it does, say, to .fr. The latter already says, "France on the Internet". The final project goal is for .museum to be similarly and widely regarded as meaning, "museums on the Internet".
Looking beyond the musEnic Project's current lifespan, a broader cluster of cultural sector TLDs might be established within a Sixth Framework Network of Excellence, or in some extension of the initial action. However this might be formally structured, it could include the three ALM domains, as well as further ones relating to the management of fixed cultural property at monuments and sites. All these would be adjacent to the travel sector which is already one of the most active current lobbyists in anticipation of a call for new TLD proposals in mid-2003. It might also be appropriate for this extended action to concentrate on the establishment of a general set of criteria that prospective operators of new TLDs within the heritage management sector would need to fulfil for the creation of their TLDs without requiring separate response to a call for proposals. The development of a template approach is regarded as highly desirable by the agency responsible for the creation of TLDs, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) [12] and there will be, like as not, benefits in a European context in taking the lead in this initiative.
Returning to the awareness campaign being directed toward museums, here are descriptions of a few aspects of the message that is being put forward and the means by which this is being done. The first point can be seen either in terms of basic and value-added services provided to a well-bounded community of trust or, more colloquially, as a bunch of cool things that can be done by members of the .museum community that cannot be done by anyone else.
An example of action better described more formally is provided by the increasingly important and ever more contentious issue of Digital Rights Management (DRM). One of the earliest indications of the value of museums in the network environment was the multimedia industry's acquisition of digital publication rights to material derived from museum holdings. The argument was that museums were not in the electronic publishing business and, therefore, could and should sign over the need to worry about such things to commercial agencies. Immediate monetary compensation was offered for what would then be exclusive rights to all future digital publication of, for example, images of the objects in a museum's collections.
Although the commercial value of this action proved to have been significantly misappraised, museums nonetheless subsequently realised the need for full control over the way they are represented on digital media, both on the Internet and otherwise. A museum requires unequivocal means for enabling the user community to distinguish between material provided by the museum, itself, and material derived from that museum's holdings but provided by unsanctioned entities. The latter group may include both overtly exploitative commercial entities and public-minded erudite individuals. In most cases, the need for verifying the origin of museum material will be a matter both of quality insurance and the protection of intellectual property rights.
These basic purposes can be met by an individual museum without pressing need for considering the TLD component of its Internet identity. The situation is entirely different for autonomous museums undertaking collective action which requires means for verifying its shared origin. Although some indication of organised collaboration can be provided by such things as central Web portals, there is no way to insure that users access the underlying material via that gateway. Since each contributing information repository will invariably be labelled with its domain name, a shared domain identity provides a robust way to indicate their commonality. If the TLD in which such activity is conducted is reserved for the use of a clearly defined community, users have a further means for verifying the origin of the material provided. In any case, they can be sure that it originates with bona fide members of that TLD's target community.
If the provision of such information is to be automated through the use of so-called middleware (the infrastructure interposed between applications and underlying network services), a clearly bounded community of trust is an all but essential prerequisite. There are other examples of this in addition to the one just described. In all such cases, a dedicated TLD provides a core element of unparalleled utility. To conclude this part of the discussion, it may be noted that the envisioned network of excellence based on a future cluster of heritage management TLDs, as described above, can also expand the scope and utility of this community of trust.
A controlled name space such as that in .museum can also be of immediate utility to network users in the everyday process of locating information. The naming structure in .museum has a hierarchical basis. Individual museums have names consisting of three labels. (A domain name consists of a sequence of labels separated by dots, with the highest level being at the far right of the name.) The top-level label will invariably be "museum". The second-level label is a generic term describing a museum's disciplinary concern, or a location designator. For example the Music Museum in Ourtown might use one or both of the names, ourtown.music.museum and music.ourtown.museum, as well as names in additional relevant hierarchies.
The reason for this control is simply to ensure that all participating museums can be reasonably certain about getting suitable names with a minimum of dispute. The alternative would be, for example, to give art.museum to the first museum to request it. Although its holder would likely be quite pleased with this, it is also likely that the other art museums in the world would not. The three-label structure provides all participants with an equitable basis for obtaining names of comparable value. Names derived in this manner have the additional utility of providing the user community with useful information about the specific identity of the museums behind them.
A name space controlled in this way has the further advantage of being indexable. Rather than providing examples of this, the reader is referred directly to the public index of second-level names in .museum at: http://index.museum/. This facility was originally intended to show new applicants the second-level labels that were already in use. It soon became apparent that the index also provided a click path along which individual museums could be located. Doing so could, for example, lead to museums with a given area of specialisation, or a list of museums located in a given city.
Users of the well-known Internet directory services may also find .museum to be of immediately utility, not merely in indicating the museum origin of the material found in a search. Many search engines provide means for restricting a search to a specified domain. Readers are encouraged to test this directly using their favorite search engine. A search, for example, on "history museum" should return a large number of documents, leaving it up to the user to decide which of them were provided by actual museums. It is also possible to restrict the search from the outset to documents provided by museums, by using the form "history site:museum". In addition to verifying the source of the material thus located, the smaller number of documents returned in this manner may be useful in itself. (The "site:museum" syntax is supported by the larger search engines in case the results of an individual test are not consistent with those described here.)
The musEnic Project is intended to increase awareness about everything discussed above plus many related issues not described here. A variety of channels are being used to spread this information. One is through presentations at meetings and conferences arranged by the museum and broader ALM communities. Several such awareness events have already taken place and this will be a regular aspect of project activity for its duration. The purpose of this is to generate direct interest in the acquisition and use of .museum names.
A smaller number of dedicated conferences are being planned for representatives of associations and other agencies that have leadership or governmental involvement in the museum sector. The purpose of these is to determine appropriate modes for accommodating the often significantly different regional bases for coordinating museum activity. The expected outcome is the ability of the participants in these events to cascade information, conveying the .museum message to their own constituencies.
Beyond this, marketing devices such as direct mailing and insertion leaflets in professional journals are also to be tested. The stand-alone events will also be webcast and some of them may be conducted solely in an on-line forum.
Firmly establishing the museum community's labelled niche on the Internet requires active support of the .museum initiative. MuseDoma 's efforts, not least through the musEnic Project, can do little more than enable further action that can only succeed if museums actively harness the potential that has been provided. It is to be hoped that the preceding material has generated the momentum necessary to send its readers to http://musedoma.museum/ and from there to obtaining and using their names in .museum.
Cary Karp
Director of Internet Strategy and Technology
Swedish Museum of Natural History
Sweden
URL: <http://www.nrm.se/>
Email: ck@nrm.se
Phone: +46 8 5195 4055
Cary Karp is Director of Internet Strategy and Technology at the Swedish Museum of Natural History and President of the Museum Domain Management Association.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For citation purposes:
Karp, C. "The Further Adventures of the .museum Top-level Internet Domain", Cultivate Interactive, issue
9, 7 February 2003
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue9/musenic/>
-------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Waller, editor of this webzine, gives a brief history of its beginnings and its role in the dissemination of the CULTIVATE programme. A few images on the way through the article illustrate the path it has taken in its work.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Cultivate Interactive was set up as part of the CULTIVATE-EU Project which began in February 2000. It formed Workpackage 3 of the proposal. The aim of this workpackage was to provide an electronic magazine which would offer a forum for dissemination and discussions within the area of cultural heritage. Projects funded in the cultural heritage area would make use of the electronic journal to inform the community of their work. The electronic journal would also provide a more general forum for others working in this area.
 |
| Augmented reality from Issue 1 |
Along with other components, such as the mailing list, the Web magazine was intended, as the proposal put it, to "fill a gap existing today, which is precisely the lack of information on project results related to archives, museums and libraries, and its connection with the entrepreneurial side." Given the slightly unwieldy working title, European Archives, Libraries and Museums Matters, the first issue of the Magazine appeared in July 2000 under the editorial leadership of Marieke Napier, UKOLN Information Officer, and under the snappier title of Cultivate Interactive. Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus at UKOLN, was project manager.
With regard to the webzine's design, it aimed to conform to WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) accessibility guidelines, for example by ensuring that images should have a meaningful ALT attribute, that CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) should be used for defining layout wherever possible and that frames should be avoided wherever possible. Features included a search engine for the both and simple and advanced searching of the magazine, links to the Project Web site, help pages, navigation bar to other areas of the issue or other issues and a site map. At the article level additionally all pages provided anchors to the authors' details and in ssi (server side includes) footers there were also details for article citation purposes, links to a translation service and ultimately an annotation service; the latter a recent addition as a means of providing greater interactivity for readers and authors.
 |
| Extract from an archive-quality image from Issue 1 |
As far as the structure of the content was concerned, each issue divided into the following areas to which access was granted by the navigation bar as well as hypertext links from contents pages: Feature Articles: articles about DIGICULT projects and related work; Regular Articles: regular articles (e.g. technology watch, behind the Web site, etc., practical implementations, reports on events and conferences; News and Events: recent news of general interest to the Cultivate Interactive readership and forthcoming conferences, workshops, etc.; and Miscellaneous Articles, for example a competition.
At the centre of the regular articles section the Digicult column has been an anchor for the Magazine and a sound and ready source of up-to-date information for its readership; I take this opportunity to thank Concha Fernández de la Puente, Christine Michaut and Ian Pigott for their telling contributions to this section of Cultivate Interactive. There can be little doubt of course that the feature articles have been at the heart of the Magazine, whilst those emanating from the DIGICULT projects can be regarded as being of primary importance. Combined with those from other areas of work, the range has been considerable. It is difficult to know which to mention as examples other than to mention some which have over time achieved a degree of greater popularity as indicated by the Magazine's statistics package.
Two articles, An Introduction to Streaming Video and Streaming Video: A Look Behind the Scenes clearly attracted interest in their subject as did a follow-up article in that area entitled An Introductory Guide to Audio and Video Encoding. Considerable interest was raised by an article providing a detailed list of the different Content Management Systems currently available, entitled A Content Management and Web Publishing Systems Gazetteer. Standing on the Shoulders of Giants reported on a meeting at which representatives of national and international cultural content creation programmes considered scope for greater collaboration. A second article on the ARTISTE Project reviewed its achievements in developing an image retrieval system based on metadata and content that explores and analyses thousands of images from major art galleries across Europe; this article provided many illustrative examples of the sampling process. An article entitled The Historical Data Warehouse reported on adapting concepts from Information and Knowledge Management and Information and Communication Technology into the field of organising and giving access to metadata about historical archives and collections. This article appeared in English and Dutch. A number of articles on metadata appeared including Content-Based Multimedia Information Handling: Should we Stick to Metadata? in which the authors discuss retrieval and navigation as ways of accessing multimedia information and the use of content as an aid to these activities. An article on Virtual Reference also attracted considerable interest. Naturally one can mention many more, including The Search for the Most Fascinating Library Buildings in the World, but the list has to stop somewhere.
 |
| The Palazzo Ducale of Urbino from Issue 3 |
However it would be unwise to underestimate the value of feature articles that have appeared in considerable numbers over the life of the Magazine, the articles residing under the banner "Other Areas". They certainly could not be faulted for their diversity of subject. Topics ranged right across the board from intellectual property rights, the rationale for e-texts, machine translation, the future of Virtual Reality, techniques of conference presentations including accessibility issues, the failings of 'Eurospeak' and developments in Web technologies. Despite this selective list, these articles on issues have been outnumbered by those reporting on projects operating outside the Digicult umbrella.
 |
| The Upper Side of the Sky from Issue 5 |
Marieke Napier published issue 6 of the Magazine before moving to take up other work within UKOLN. The legacy of her work was indeed clear, not least in the content included in that issue that promoted the new activity starting under the banner of Cultivate Russia. As her successor I was also keen to ensure that readers were aware of developments in that area. Accordingly issue 8 sought to give space and attention to the work of Russian Federation colleagues, including the appearance of issue 1 of Cultivate Russia Web-Magazine.
 |
| The Château de Villandry from Issue 7 |
In October 2002 I attended the annual review of the EU and CEE projects. The outcomes of that review are recorded in greater detail elsewhere, but from the standpoint of Cultivate Interactive, we were naturally pleased at the announcement by the evaluators of one of the two special mentions in respect of the contribution that Cultivate Interactive had made to the Cultivate Project.
However, as I observed to the participants at the review, some of whom themselves had written for Cultivate Interactive, the largest credit in my opinion had to go to all those busy colleagues who, because of their enthusiasm and dedication to their project, had found time to contribute articles to the Magazine.
 |
URL: <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk>
Email: cultivate-editor@ukoln.ac.uk
Richard has provided a valuable summary of Cultivate Interactive. As the project manager for most of the life of Cultivate Interactive, I would like to thank Richard for his work, and also that of Marieke Guy (née Napier) Richard's predecessor as editor. Thanks should also be given to Philip Hunter, Shirley Keane and Eddie Young, who provided additional support for Cultivate Interactive.
Although this is the final issue to be published under the EU's FP5
DIGICULT programme we are currently seeking funding to continue
publication. We hope to return sometime in the near future. In the
meantime the Cultivate Interactive Web site will continue to function
for a period of at least three years from the end of its funding.
Brian Kelly
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For citation purposes:
Waller, R. "Cultivating Understanding:A History of Cultivate Interactive", Cultivate Interactive, issue
9, 7 February 2003
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue9/cihistory/>
-------------------------------------------------------------
By Christine Michaut - February 2003
This column aims to provide news of the European Commission's initiatives in the field of digital heritage and cultural content. Its objectives are to pinpoint the latest developments in programmes, projects and activities and to give a clear picture of progress in the area since the last issue. It certainly does not pretend to be a comprehensive account of what the EC is doing in the area but rather a short summary of some of the key items.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Our unit here in Luxembourg would like to wish all Cultivate readers a Happy New Year. The new year has already brought some changes and will no doubt ring in many more: in the process of restructuring of our Directorate, our unit was given a new title: "Preservation and Enhancement of Cultural Heritage". On 17 December 2002 the first IST call under the sixth Framework Programme was published [1]. This will bring substantial changes, as the call stems from a new workprogramme (2003-2004 [2]) and the instruments [3] and procedures of the new Framework Programme are quite different from those operated during the last Framework Programme.
The last issue of our electronic newsletter eCulture [4] put together the most important information on the new Framework Programme.
In order to spread the news as widely as possible, we already organised one information day in November and have just run a second on 27 January [5]. The aim of these information days was to provide an opportunity for you to learn about the expectations the Commission has for this first call and also obtain first-hand information on the new procedures.
Another meeting entitled "Mapping the Future" brought together participants from projects receiving Commission funding under the previous Framework Programme. The meeting took place in the Luxembourg Commission Building "Jean Monnet" on the 28th January. Its objective was to refine further research roadmaps setting the perspective for the 1st call and to facilitate networking of researchers. The days included one-hour presentation sessions organised around five topics with speakers from different backgrounds - industry, SMEs, research, institutions, etc.
As you may know, the Danish Presidency came to an end this December. Greece has taken over the presidency [6] for the coming six months and research as well as the Information Society seem to be among the priorities. A site on "Research and Innovation Information Service" is already online [7] . We are looking forward to very fruitful work under this presidency.
Our unit is planning two big meetings in collaboration with our projects. The first meeting is organised by TRIS and is aimed at promoting and fostering the exploitation of the results of 25 Take-up Trials launched in 2000 under the Action Line "new access modes to cultural and scientific content". The conference will be the final event to conclude two years of TRIS work on co-ordination and support for the 25 trials seeking to increase their cultural, scientific and commercial impact and exploit their results effectively. TRIS, which will end in October 2003, has now entered the second phase of its project activity focusing on the exploitation of the trials, supporting them with the production of business plans and with the promotion of their results. Details on this event can be found on the TRIS homepage [8] as well as the official invitation issued by TRIS [9].
The second event is EVA 2003 which will take place in Florence [10]. EVA stands for "Electronic imaging and the Visual Arts". This year's first conference will be dedicated to "Il Nuovo Rinascimento" ("The New Renaissance") and will take place from 24-28 March. The key aim of this event is to provide a forum for the user, supplier and scientific research communities to meet and exchange experiences, ideas and plans. Participants receive up-to-date news on new EC and international arts computing and telecomms initiatives as well as on projects in the visual arts field, archaeology and history. Working groups and new projects are promoted.
The third event is MILIA Cannes (26-28 March) where our unit will be represented with its own information stand.
The European Commission has published this guide to the Sixth Framework Programme which is intended as a source of information and assistance to people and organisations wishing to find out more about the programmes and activities included under FP6.
It gives an overview of the fundamental aspects of the objectives and mechanisms of FP6, and is intended as a reference manual rather than an exhaustive guide. This guide is available electronically [11].
This is Digicult's "Thematic Issue 2", issued in December 2002. It highlights the fact that a cultural heritage organisation's ability to harvest, re-use and realise the value of its assets will only ever be as good as the mechanisms that it can put into place for the storage and retrieval of assets from the media vault. It concentrates on the question of how cultural and scientific heritage organisations could enhance their mission-related activities by using a new breed of technologies called Digital Asset Management System (DAMS).
The study is available online in low or high resolution or in paper version (please contact John Pereira [12] ).
Also issued by our DigiCULT Project: DigiCULT.Info - the 2nd issue of their newsletter [13]
(Key Action Line III of the IST programme in the European Union's 5th RTD Framework Programme)
Factsheets from all the projects run under the 5th Framework Programme have been published online and will also be available as an interactive CD-ROM, which will include video showcases from ten projects [14].
Our "Diffuse" Project (Dissemination of InFormal and Formal Useful Specifications and Experiences) [15] held its Final Conference on Brussels on 12th December 2002. The objective of the Diffuse Project was to provide a single, value-added, entry point to up-to-date reference and guidance information on available and emerging standards and specifications that facilitate the electronic exchange of information. European Commissioner Liikanen, responsible for Enterprise and the Information Society gave a speech entitled "Convergence of Web Services". Our next issue will give you a detailed report on this Final Conference.
The latest business guide published by "Diffuse" for the Dissemination of Informal and formal Useful Specifications and Experiences to Research and Technology Development Communities is the Diffuse Guide to Virtual Reality. After a brief history of the development of virtual reality systems, the guide explains the role of the three standards used to integrate this industry, the Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML), VRML 97 and the recently proposed Extensible 3D (X3D) language, which includes an XML representation for virtual reality systems.
For five days in April 2003 the Pulman-XT Project [16] will hold three training workshops for Public Library Managers and Senior Librarians from Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, F.Y.R.O.M. (former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), Moldova, Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro). This will be hosted in three centres of excellence: Helsinki (Finland), Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Veria (Greece).
The purpose of the three workshops is to provide training and first-hand experience of new developments for public library managers in countries or areas where policies and implementation are less advanced. They also aim to encourage the cascading of workshop findings by the participants. The workshops will focus on management, project management, ICT, communication, international co-operation and new skills in librarianship but will also touch upon topics such as public service, special user groups and library buildings too.
Another highlight of the PULMAN XT Project will be the policy conference in Oeiras in Portugal on 13 and 14 March 2003. The policy conference will be a platform for high level policy makers and decision makers from 36 countries across Europe to share experiences about delivering services locally in the information age. Regular information on the programme will be available on the Pulman site [17], for example, invitees, speakers and so forth. So watch this space!
Successful completion of the European Treasury Browser Project paves the way for the new European Learning Resources (ELR) service starting 2003 [18]. The European Treasury Browser Project, completed in October 2002, was instrumental in consolidating an operational infrastructure for centralised access to educational resources submitted by repositories across Europe. This has enabled the European Schoolnet to open up a new European Learning Resources (ELR) service based on the key achievements of the ETB project. This project was funded by our Unit in the IST programme.
To address issues of interoperability between digital image collections and other important resources of digital cultural information such as digital library collections and the emerging semantic web, ARTISTE supports amongst other topics open standards for information retrieval. There are therefore two new interfaces to the public system, the first using the Open Archives Initiative Metadata Harvesting Protocol, and the second using the Z39.50 Search and Retrieve Web Service.
The project has now issued an open invitation to use these points of access to ARTISTE. The project particularly welcomes your feedback on accessing the ARTISTE system through these new interfaces [19].
Born of exemplary co-operation between the Council of Europe and the European Union through the "HEREIN" Project, the European Heritage Network [20] is intended to bring together those European authorities which work in the cultural heritage sector. Accessible via Internet, the network is the only heritage information system of its kind. If offers:
Last but not least I would like to mention the move of our colleague Patricia Manson to the post of Deputy Head of Unit for Technology-Enhanced Learning. We shall all miss her here but would sincerely like to offer our: Félicitations!
Good luck to everyone in 2003
Christine Michaut
Information & Communication Officer
Preservation and Enhancement of Cultural Heritage Unit
Email: christine.michaut@cec.eu.int
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For citation purposes:
Michaut, C. "DIGICULT Column", Cultivate Interactive, issue
9, 7 February 2003
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue9/digicult/>
-------------------------------------------------------------
By Richard Waller - February 2003
Richard Waller reports on the Autumn project meeting of the CULTIVATE-EU and CULTIVATE-CEE Projects.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
On a crisp and clear Monday morning in the old quarter of Vienna, a persistent stream of visitors made their way into the magnificent interior of the Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Culture [1]. They had come for two days of meetings which would culminate in the final review of the CULTIVATE-EU and CULTIVATE-CEE projects. In the large chandelier-dominated Audienzsaal with beautifully preserved decoration, we were greeted most warmly by Mr Peter Seitz of the Ministry who expressed his government's unreserved support for the aims of the projects and who was most keen to ensure that the participants from all over the CULTIVATE partnership map felt welcome.
This was a very positive start to the work of two days (7-8 October)in which partners were able to discuss current and future issues for the projects and ensure that the review of the next day would run as smoothly as possible. Robin Rickard of the British Council, Warsaw, chaired the first day's project meeting and whilst giving all participants the opportunity to make their contribution, ensured that the business of the day proceeded apace and efficiently.
Jorun Hesjedal of RBT reported on progress of the Archives Libraries and Museums contacts list and the press releases, newsletters and leaflets it had disseminated. She also described the work done a user validation survey as well as a Web tutorial now available covering useful Web sites for libraries, museums and archives interested in the EU and the framework programmes.
Rosalind Johnson reported on behalf of Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries and its subcontractor CILIP with regard to the E-list [2]. Resource subcontracts work on the Cultivate-list to CILIP. Membership of the list is slightly over 600. A number of members left in February and March 2002 following two incidents with message loops. This technical problem was rapidly fixed by UKOLN. She reported the following statistics:
In my turn I gave a brief report on the work of Cultivate Interactive [3] which covered its content, output and our support for Cultivate Russia.
Henriette Kurschel spoke of the document database on behalf of CSC Austria. Its main functionalities are management of data and production of printed or electronic publications. She explained that the Document Database is presently designed for expert users, i.e. CULTIVATE members. CULTIVATE members have all user rights for management of XML documents. There are plans for adaptation of database functionalities for public end users.
Dincho Kraschev's report on Bulgaria referred to the effectiveness of its website. Judy Buchnik, Israel, reported that she would be involved in the IDEALIST booth at IST 2002 in Copenhagen. Klaus Reinhardt reported that Germany planned to be active in FP6 and would have 3 staff looking after libraries, museums and archives. Henriette Kurschel described the extensive activities of the Austrian node. Bronislaw Zurawski described the activities of the Polish node and noted that meetings were underway with the 3 relevant ministries in relation to sustainability. Wladyslaw Stepniak described an international conference organised by the State Archives in June 2002. Dan Matei described work in Romania, including work on sustainability, translations, meetings and broadcasts. Jorun Hesjedal described activities in Norway and drew attention to structural change underway in RBT. Sidsel Hindal would be the main Cultivate contact in Norway in future. Peter Dippold explained that there is a new government in Hungary but that activities continue in relation to sustainability, reaching out to museums and collaboration with other project, including Pulman. Sanita Berzina reported on improvements to the Latvian website. Trine Nielson reported that she was taking over for Cultivate in Denmark where a new National Museums Authority has just been established. She mentioned the recent NAPLE conference and the establishment of a NAPLE organisation. Jana Souckova reported on recent developments in the Czech Republic where the node had been active in developing its website and email list, in liasing with archives and in influencing the development of the "Culture on line" programme to which a future Cultivate would need to relate in the Czech Republic. Rosalind Johnson made a report on behalf of the UK Node Resource and its subcontractor CILIP. Resource adds value as needed in the UK which is well served by generalist functions such as UKISHELP.
David Fuegi, CULTIVATE-CEE Project Manager, reported that Cultivate Russia was about half way through its lifespan. The first issue of the Russian version of Cultivate Interactive had just been published. 20 provincial meetings were planned and an end of project international conference would take place in April 2003 [4].
Later in the meeting David reported on the results of the sustainability questionnaire, which he had circulated. 16 countries had replied. There appeared to be strong support at government and professional level for a successor project. Support was very strong in CEE countries and Russia. There was an encouraging amount of common ground between respondents on what might be needed. EU countries seemed to want mainly the international activities of the network, CEE and Russia wanted both international and local activities. David thought that one message from the questionnaires was that the new Cultivate should be more flexible.
Walter Koch of CSC Austria continued the discussion providing his thoughts on a possible approach for the future of the CULTIVATE organisation. Axel Szauer, European Commission Project Officer, reminded the meeting that only the first call would provide opportunities for cultural heritage and that projects would probably not start before the end of 2003.
David Fuegi reminded everyone that Cultivate CEE terminated at the end of March 2003. It was planned to hold the final meeting of the project in Sophia, Bulgaria 1st-4th March 2003; Local organisation would be provided by Dincho Kraschev. Although Cultivate EU would have finished, members of that network would also be welcome to attend. Members of both networks were requested to put the dates in their diary. A cultural programme and networking opportunities would be included. David and Dincho would produce a draft programme as soon as possible and inform the network.
The preparations for the following day in terms of presentation order and timings, ably managed by Klaus Reinhardt, CULTIVATE-EU Project Manager, after the formal meeting, served to ensure a smooth-running annual review [5]. The participants had an opportunity to meet again in the evening, thanks to the hospitality of the Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Culture. It was not only very pleasant for me to meet at last a number of people with whom I had been in email correspondence, but also to listen to people's experiences, challenges and hopes for the Project. As the success of the following day was to testify, much had been achieved. For some of us so gathered together, there was a moment of considerable thoughtfulness: for we, the children of the Cold War, could but remark that such successful co-operation, mutual aspirations and collective endeavour would have been inconceivable even 15 years ago.
My thanks to David Fuegi for providing me with a lot of the material for this article.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
|
URL: <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk>
Email: cultivate-editor@ukoln.ac.uk
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For citation purposes:
Waller, R. "CULTIVATE Meets, Vienna October 2002", Cultivate Interactive, issue
9, 7 February 2003
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue9/viennaproject/>
-------------------------------------------------------------
By Richard Waller - February 2003
Richard Waller provides an eye-witness report of the review process and an overview of the evaluators' findings.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The third annual review took place on Tuesday 8th October in another magnificent room of the Austrian Ministry for Science, Education and Culture. Alex Szauer of the European Commission chaired; the two reviewers were John Fitzgerald and Hervé Le Guyader.
The process broke down into four stages: partner presentations, evaluators' questions, evaluators' deliberations and finally the transmission of their findings. In all 12 presentations were given, by the two Project Managers, Klaus Rheinhardt (EU) and David Fuegi (CEE), the five technical partners, (including myself on behalf of UKOLN & Cultivate Interactive) plus three EU node and two CEE national node representatives.
It is quite possible that the Powerpoint presentations by quite a large number of individuals might have appeared something of a marathon. However, everyone, whether they knew it or not, owed a debt of gratitude to Klaus Reinhardt for his work on rationalising the enthusiasm of all presenters by paring down, with their agreement the previous afternoon, the content of their presentation to ensure that the review did not overrun. So brutal decisions had been made and carried out, with the result that evaluators received the completely essential information and no more. The presentations ended within a minute or two of the planned time.
David Fuegi pointed out to the evaluators that, as they had noted last review the paucity of national node representatives, he was pleased to be able to introduce all 18 representatives. Hervé Le Guyader was particularly keen to hear from the Bulgarian representative, Dincho Krastev, and other CEE partners about what they thought of the network. Their comments were most positive, detailing the benefits they had derived from the project.
Eventually the session closed to allow the evaluators to confer. Then began the waiting in, literally, the corridors of power, whilst the evaluators will have re-read parts of the evidence submitted, considered responses and recalled items from presentations. Never an easy time one would imagine, though I noted a quiet confidence on the part of those experienced participants who had seen this sort of thing before.
That restrained optimism certainly seemed justified when all participants were recalled to hear the evaluators' initial findings, which, though only verbal, could safely be taken as an indication of the content of their formal report. The news was good; the projects were performing satisfactorily, had notched up some solid achievements and overcome previous difficulties.
Of course one of the major advantages of hindsight is when you can quote the actual outcomes in detail rather than attempt to recall from memory and scribbled notes what was said at the time. Below I detail excerpts from the evaluators' reorts which, as you will see, paint a very positive picture indeed. Below I detail highlightsfrom the evaluators' reports which, as you will see, paint a very positive picture indeed, both of CULTIVATE-EU and of CULTIVATE-CEE:
In summary, the [EU] project has achieved excellent results to date (reviewed at month 20 of 24). The quality of the material produced to date is excellent and the achievements of the project are considerable and wide-reaching.
In summary, the [CEE] project has achieved excellent results to date (reviewed at month 18 of 24). The quality of the material produced to date is excellent and the achievements of the project are considerable and wide-reaching in all of the states concerned.
As one can see from even just highlights, both projects have managed to impress reviewers and what they had to say about the future of the CULTIVATE projects was also heartening:
... it is nevertheless this reviewer's perception that solid chances exist to see the Cultivate network, as a whole (EU, CEE and Russia) play a key role in FP6 Network of Excellence priority.
The rationale for this perception is twofold:
... but a strong potential exists for a new project, built upon the experience of the most committed partners of the three components of the Cultivate concept.
... Clearly the main deliverables of this project will require to be maintained if they are to be of continuing use, namely the WWW site, the e-zine, the discussion list and the ALM contact list, etc. The inclusive approach to sustainability, including all three CULTIVATE projects is commendable as the CULTIVATE name possesses significant positive "brand" value in the European/CEE/Russian cultural heritage sectors. ...
There can be little doubt in anyone's mind after reading such positive remarks that the evaluators were impressed with the work of the projects. The most telling comments in my view have been those remarking on the efficacy of the combined approach of CEE and EU projects over a number of matters and the improved chances for sustainability if they work together to ensure the CULTIVATE movement, 'brand', whatever we call it, makes further strides. Certainly from Cultivate Interactive's standpoint, the support and encouragement received from both projects have been instrumental in its own success throughout the project's lifetime.
|
URL: <http://www.ukoln.ac.uk>
Email: cultivate-editor@ukoln.ac.uk
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For citation purposes:
Waller, R. "Cultivate Annual Review, Vienna October 2002", Cultivate Interactive, issue
9, 7 February 2003
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue9/viennareviews/>
-------------------------------------------------------------
/end of commenting out-->The content of this page is current at the time of publication (February 2003).
ERPANET works to enhance the
preservation of cultural and scientific digital objects through raising awareness,
providing access to experience, sharing policies and strategies, and improving
practices. To reach these objectives ERPANET has set up a number of services.
Some of the most important of these are based in cyberspace and accessed through
the ERPANET Web portal. Two new services have been announced which will be
available through the Web and called erpaAssessments and erpaAdvisory.
ERPANET offers erpaAssessments as authoritative commentaries on key articles, monographs, and projects in the field of digital preservation. More detailed than abstracts, these value-added commentaries offer critical insight and contextualise literature within the field. The service offers:
ERPANET states that its editors have reviewed some 200 key articles and a large number of important projects and initiatives. Part of their work is to keep a constant check on over 100 journals for new and critical information on Digital Preservation. It is intended to update this resource regularly with commentaries. Access to the erpaAssessment service is only available to registered users; however registration is free.
erpaAdvisory is a fully Web-based advisory service open to all those with a
stake in the preservation of, and the provision of access to, digital materials.
This service:
ErpaAdvisory is proposed as the next stage in the ERPANET cross-sectoral exchange of information,skills, and knowledge. ErpaAdvisory is intended not only for newcomers to the problems of digital preservation, but also those that have been working in the field for a number of years. Questions can be asked in English, Italian, French and German. Access to erpaAdvisory is available to registered users. Registration is free.
Further Information?: See the Web site
or see the
LIS-EUROPEAN-PROGRAMMES list archive
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Workpackage 1 of
the TEL project which focuses on relations between national
libraries and publishers, held a workshop at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in
The Hague on December 14, 2002. In this special workshop "Digital deposit:
libraries and publishers reaching agreement" speakers from the national
libraries of Germany, France and the United Kingdom have delivered an update
of the state of the art of their (legal) deposit of electronic publications.
Further Information?: See the
workshop report
as well as the overall
TEL Web site.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Where?:Luxembourg
When?:13-14 February 2003
The European
Commission, DG Information Society, in co-operation with the EC funded accompanying
measure TRIS,(Trials Support) is organising an
Exploitation Event aimed at promoting and fostering the exploitation of the
results of 25 Take-up Trials, launched in 2000 by the Cultural Applications Unit
of DG Information Society, under the Action Line 'new access modes to cultural
and scientific content'. The event will conclude TRIS 2 years' work of co-ordination
and support of the 25 trials aimed at increasing their cultural, scientific and
commercial impact and at exploiting their results.
Further Information?: Visit the
TRIS Web site
or see the information on the
TRIS and Take-up trials
Exploitation Event including preliminary agenda
or see the
LIS-EUROPEAN-PROGRAMMES list archive
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Where?:SZTAKI, Budapest, Hungary
When?:6-7 March 2003
This workshop will provide an
introduction to the use of RDF to describe metadata vocabularies in the form of
machine-understandable schemas. It will focus on the publication of these schemas
in the CORES Schema Registry. Practical sessions will allow participants to learn
to use the CORES Schema Creation Tool to prepare schemas and submit them to the
Registry, and to navigate the schemas submitted via the Registry's Web
interface. The workshop is targeted at those with an interest in creating and
managing metadata vocabularies.
Further Information?: For further details and to register: visit the
UKOLN Events Web page
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Where?:Humboldt-University, Berlin, Germany
When?:27-29 March 2003
The workshop will
explore specific requirements to be considered when
a digital media archive is made available via the Internet. It will
discuss approaches to interoperability for media repositories,
libraries,archives and other information resources using the Open
Archives Initiative (OAI) technical framework for metadata harvesting.
An introduction to OAI is offered on the afternoon of 27 March, prior
to the main workshop on 28-29 March.
Further Information?: Further information and registration can be found at:
Open Archives Forum workshops
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Where?:Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), The Hague, The Netherlands
When?:14-15 April, 2003
Over the last years the role of microfilming in collection management has
been somewhat overshadowed by the rise of digitisation. Digitisation has
rapidly become popular as a way to open up collections for wider use, but
its role in preservation of collections remains as yet debatable.
Microfilming has long been an established surrogating method for
preservation purposes, but seems less attractive than digitisation in terms of access.
This workshop aims to clarify the position of microfilming and digitisation by presenting an overview of the possibilities and requirements for combining the two approaches in preservation projects. It will look at the technical and organisational issues involved in developing methods that exploit the strengths of both approaches in an economical manner. Topics like producing microfilm to standards that allow subsequent digitisation and the production of microfilms from digital masters will be discussed.
This meeting will combine elements of a conference and of a workshop. Apart from plenary sessions and presentations, there will be on-site demonstrations for smaller groups. It is intended for collection managers in libraries and archives, managers of preservation and digitisation projects, microfilming and digitisation companies.
Organisation:
- LIBER Preservation Division
- Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), The Hague, The Netherlands
- European Commission on Preservation and Access (ECPA)
Location:
Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), The Hague, Auditorium and Strata
Preservation microfilming and digitisation units
Fee
Euro 70,- (incl. coffee/tea + lunch) / Dinner Euro 35,-
Fee must be paid into the bankaccount of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek.
Account: Postbank 425131
Please state "LIBER workshop".
Further Information?: Visit the
Workshop web page site or see the posting
in the
LIS-EUROPEAN-PROGRAMMES list archive.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Where?: Zagreb, Croatia
When?: 24-27 April 2003
CIRCLE and CULTURELINK are
jointly organising a Round Table meeting on E-Culture and Cultural Policy
Information Systems to be held in April 2003 in Zagreb. The Round Table is intended to
discuss existing on-line resources, existing and future cultural policy strategies,
e-culture and the new economy and includes a wider debate with key people from
the e-community and the business community.
The Round Table will also point to cultural information gaps in Central and Eastern European countries.
During the ten years of transition in the CEE countries,
there has been a real change in the landscape of cultural information,
institutes, publications, mobility etc. It is hoped that the use of before
and now scenarios will identify where cultural information deficits might be
appearing.
Further Information?: Visit the Web site of
the Culturelink Network
or the the Circle Web site
or see
the conference homepage.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Where?:University of Bath, England, United Kingdom
When?:4-6 September 2003
This workshop will
focus on emerging best practice and the
organisational and technical practicalities of implementing
interoperable repositories and services based on them, using the Open
Archives Initiative (OAI) framework for metadata harvesting.
It is organised with the collaboration of LIBER and SPARC-Europe.
Further Information?: Either visit the
Open Archives Forum Web site
or if you are interested in receiving more information about this event
please contact s.hassen@ukoln.ac.uk
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The winner of the issue 8 competition was Petri Hintukainen of Helsinki, Finland. Congratulations Petri!! A book token is on its way to you.
Below are two sets of four pictures. Each set of four represents a different European city. You needed to decide which cities were being shown.
    |
    |
The answers were:
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
|
|
