Digital Heritage and Cultural Content in Europe

Transcription

1 Digital Heritage and Cultural Content in Europe by Bernard Smith Bernard Smith is Head of Unit, Cultural Heritage Applications 1 of the Information Society s Directorate General at the European Commission. This article is designed to provide the reader with the key references concerning issues on new technologies and cultural heritage. As such it has two basic objectives. The first is to provide a factual guide to achievements of the European Commission s Information Society Technologies (IST) research programme in the field of digital heritage and cultural content. This will include some information concerning the European Commission s new research programme for the next five years. The second objective concerns information on e-europe, and specifically one action relating to the following: The Fifth Framework Programme ( ) The European Commission s Fifth Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development, was divided into five thematic and three horizontal programmes. The IST programme 3 was the largest of the thematic research-and-development programmes with a global budget of C= 3,600 million. The main focus of the IST programme during the period was on enhancing the user-friendliness of the Information Society. 4,5 The focus was thus on (a) improving the ISSN , no. 216 (vol. 54, no. 4, 2002) Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA (USA) 41

2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF A DIGITAL HERITAGE COMMONS : REGIONAL INITIATIVES accessibility, relevance and quality of public services especially for the disabled and elderly; (b) empowering citizens as employees, entrepreneurs and customers; (c) facilitating creativity and access to learning; (d) helping to develop a multilingual and multicultural information society; (e) ensuring universally available access and the intuitiveness of next-generation interfaces; and (f) encouraging design-for-all. Multimedia content held a central role in the IST programme. The objective here was to confirm Europe as a leading force in this field and enable it to realize the potential of its creativity and culture. The IST programme The IST programme brought together and extended the past ACTS, 6 Esprit 7 and Telematics Applications 8 programmes. It provided a single and integrated programme that reflected the convergence of information processing, communications and media technologies. The IST work programme consisted of activities divided up into four IST Key Actions, each playing a key role in achieving the overall objective of a user-friendly Information Society. The four Key Actions for the five-year programme were: 1. Systems and services for the citizen. 2. New methods of work and electronic commerce. 3. Multimedia content and tools. 4. Essential technologies and infrastructures. In this context the focus of this article is on cultural heritage in Key Action 3. 9 Multimedia content and tools This Key Action aimed to improve the functionality, usability and acceptability of future information products and services, to enable linguistic and cultural diversity and contribute to the valorization and exploitation of Europe s cultural patrimony, to stimulate creativity, and to enhance education and training systems for lifelong learning. Work covered new models, methods, technologies and systems for creating, processing, managing, networking, accessing and exploiting digital content, including audio-visual content. This Key Action integrated both applications-oriented research, focusing on publishing, audio-visual, culture, education and training and generic research in language and content technologies for all applications areas. Digital heritage and cultural content was one of the five main areas for research and technological development and the aim was to expand the contribution of libraries, s and archives to the emerging culture economy, and thus encompassed all aspects of economic, scientific and technological development. This work built on achievements 10 under the Fourth Framework Programme that addressed libraries, s, archives and other related institutions. 11 The annual work programmes for cultural and scientific heritage The IST programme provided a flexible framework where focus was developed within distinctive annual work plans. For the 1999 work plan, the research priorities were taken up in two main types of action: (a) access to scientific and cultural heritage; and (b) the digital preservation of cultural heritage. The objective of the first action, access to scientific and cultural heritage, was to select 42 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA (USA)

3 Digital Heritage and Cultural Content Bernard Smith research projects that would improve access by citizens and by professionals to Europe s science and culture knowledge base. This was expected to involve developing advanced systems and services supporting large-scale distributed, multidisciplinary collections of cultural and scientific multimedia resources. The technological focus was on rich representations, powerful immersive features such as 3-D visualization, real-time virtual object manipulation and group interactivity, whether for multimedia retrieval, virtual galleries, mass-media events or audiovisual distribution. The objective of the second action, digital preservation of cultural heritage, was to find new ways of representing, analysing, manipulating and managing different kinds of digital cultural objects from different media sources. Special attention was given to surrogates of fragile physical objects. Projects were expected to focus on the sustainable development of valuable digital repositories in Europe s libraries, s and archives, and to address the technical and organizational problems surrounding the viability of scaleable digital repositories. A good example of this type of action is the 3-D-MURALE. It concerns the three-dimensional measurement and virtual reconstruction of ancient lost worlds of Europe. The project is developing 3-D acquisition systems for archaeological sites. It is also building precise and realistic 3-D models of the landscapes, buildings and artefacts in a way that allows archaeologists to analyse the findings and reconstruct the excavated site. It is being tested on the Sagalassos site in the province of Burdur in Turkey. 12 For the year 2000 there were three different types of actions: (a) access to digital collections of cultural and scientific content; (b) trials on new access modes to cultural and scientific content; and (c) virtual representations of cultural and scientific objects. The objective of the first action, access to digital collections of cultural and scientific content, was to continue the work started in 1999 and to select new projects aiming to improve substantially access for citizens and professionals to Europe s repositories of cultural and scientific knowledge. The work was expected to contribute to the creation of a sustainable European cultural landscape and address global consensus on common specifications and practices for new data models, architectures, benchmarks and metrics, test suites, meta-data directories and trust infrastructures. A good example was the LEAF project which concerns the linking and exploring of authority files held by archives, s, libraries, etc. The project proposes to harvest existing authority data and person name/company information and create common authority files with links to the original information. 13 The objective of the second action, trials on new access modes to cultural and scientific content, was to foster the adoption and introduction of leading-edge technologies for the access to cultural and scientific content. The focus was on trials using state-of-the-art technologies for memory organizations (archives, libraries, s, etc.) that would add value to collections and associated services. Domains of interest included new navigation tools, wireless access to the Web, improved visualization of artefacts and collections, community building for thematic collections, etc. ISSN , No. 216 (Vol. 54, No. 4, 2002) 43

4 THE DEVELOPMENT OF A DIGITAL HERITAGE COMMONS : REGIONAL INITIATIVES The objective of the third action, virtual representations of cultural and scientific objects, was to provide a specific focus for exploring and experimenting with novel ways to create, manipulate, manage and present new classes of intelligent, dynamically adaptive and self-aware digital cultural objects. Such objects were either to be held by memory institutions (archives, libraries, s, etc.) or to involve directly digitally born objects or art forms. It was expected that projects would address the experiences of learning, exploring and entertaining for the user. A good example, VS (meaning virtual showcases) involves a new stereoscopic display system that will augment existing display showcases in s, etc. The focus is on 3-D augmentation and mixes virtual representations and real artefacts within a shared space providing new ways of merging and exploring real and virtual content. 14 For 2001 there were again two new types of action: (a) heritage for all; and (b) nextgeneration digital collections. The objective of the first, heritage for all, was to foster sustainable online communities in creating and documenting the digital record of their societies, including safeguarding its accessibility for the future. Projects were expected to be innovative and experiment in creating, manipulating or aggregating local resources and making them sustainable, visible and valid in the global context. As a result of the above action, four new research projects have recently been launched. It is hoped that they will form the basis for a cluster to be developed in future programmes. CHIMER, CIPHER and COINE all address the personal views and interests of ordinary people in order to build a living picture of regional heritage across Europe. The fourth project, MEMORIAL, focuses on digitizing a wide variety of paper documents in s, libraries and public records offices concerning the Holocaust and developing a methodology and tools for the creation of personal digital memories. 15 The objective of the second, nextgeneration digital collections, was to improve substantially, both qualitatively and quantitatively, access for citizens and professionals to Europe s repositories of cultural and scientific knowledge. The focus was on advanced digital library applications built on very-large-scale distributed collections and innovative systems delivering adaptive and intelligent scientific and cultural content, integrating new economic, business and navigational models, sustainable over time. Concerning virtual heritage this was expected to involve visualization and virtual reality (VR) as new tools/methods for representation and navigation (e.g. of objects, collections and landscapes). Future research agendas and pioneering research in 2002 For 2002 a new approach was adopted. This involved a generically specified set of actions valid across the whole of Key Action 3. The topics were either aimed at preparing for future research activities, or performing long-term pioneering research. Topics touching on cultural heritage included advanced digital libraries, culture and arts, and digital preservation. The key features of such new projects were to be the specification of future research tasks in the form of a road-map and the building of the new research communities that will be needed to address the challenges identified. 44 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA (USA)

5 Digital Heritage and Cultural Content Bernard Smith An example of a cluster of projects: European film heritage The digital heritage and cultural content of IST has a number of activities in the realm of the application of new technologies in support of access to, and preservation of, film heritage. 16 Supported mainly by Austria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Switzerland, the cluster project is following the Directorate General education and culture activities on cinematographic heritage, specifically by participating in the Groupe de Contact Patrimoine Audiovisuel et Cinématographique established at the general assembly on cinematographic heritage held in Sintra. Organizations dealing with film heritage face similar challenges to other heritage and memory institutions (archives, libraries, s), mainly: (a) physical restoration and cleaning of their assets; (b) digitization and digital preservation; (c) building new digital archive models and services; and (d) intellectual property rights and copyright. In addition they face unique problems of volume, scale and sustainability over time. The main issues of the European Film Heritage s Cluster of Projects are fivefold: (a) development of business models for repurposing and reusing archival films; (b) identifying copyright and access rights in different national contexts; (c) rights management models; (d) cost-effectiveness of digitization in internal workflow of film archives; and (e) improving access to European films, especially those produced in the first half of the twentieth century. Some key projects have been set up like the BRAVA project which aims to digitally restore film and video to high definition (HD) quality to improve use and access to impaired materials. 17 The ECHO project objective is to create a distributed digital library of film collections from national film archives in France, the Netherlands and Italy 18 and the PRESTO project broadcasts archives dealing with film and video materials. 19 The latest addition to this cluster of activities is the creation of a network of European historical film libraries (at present under negotiation). The work described in this article is carried out under the IST programme of the Fifth Framework Programme. IST in the Sixth Framework Programme will be in the form of the largest priority thematic area. One of the key objectives of the future programme will be to find solutions for major societal and economic challenges. This will include work on health, security, environment, learning, e-government, etc., and also preservation of culture heritage.the CORDIS 20 website provides an up-to-date review of progress on the Sixth Framework Programme, and the IST 21 website provides more detailed information on the development of the specific objectives. E-Europe: creating co-operation for digitization Europe s cultural and scientific knowledge resources are a unique public asset forming the collective and evolving memory of our diverse societies and providing a knowledge basis for the development of our content industries in a sustainable knowledge society. This quote is from ISSN , No. 216 (Vol. 54, No. 4, 2002) 45

6 THE DEVELOPMENT OF A DIGITAL HERITAGE COMMONS : REGIONAL INITIATIVES what now has become known as the Lund Principles which refers to the digitization of content. Digitization 22 is an absolutely vital element if Europe is to exploit in the new digital world the rich cultural and scientific resources it holds. Equally, digitization contributes to the conservation and preservation of heritage and scientific resources. It creates new educational opportunities; it can be used to encourage tourism and it provides ways of improving access by citizens to their heritage. The critical role that it plays was recognized in the E-Europe 2002 Action Plan 23 endorsed by the EU member states at the Feira European Council in June One of the objectives of the action plan is to stimulate European content in global networks in order fully to exploit the opportunities created by the advent of digital technologies. One specific action invited member states and the Commission jointly to: create a coordination mechanism for digitization programmes across member states. Why co-ordinate? There is considerable financial and human effort invested in projects and in a variety of digitization campaigns across Europe, but these activities are heavily fragmented (diversity of approaches to digitization, use of inappropriate technologies and inadequate standards, lack of consistency in approaches to intellectual property rights, lack of synergy between cultural and new technology programmes), and there are many obstacles to making such initiatives successful, economic and sustainable over time. Improving the awareness of what is going on in other countries (and within countries) at both policy and project levels is one type of action that can contribute to providing better access to digitized resources and to improving the effectiveness of digitization initiatives. The Lund Principles The Cultural Heritage Applications Unit of the Information Society Directorate General has been actively working with member states since late 2000 on how to co-ordinate approaches to digitization, with the encouragement and support of successive Council presidencies. The framework for the actions was launched at an experts meeting of representatives from all member countries, held in Lund on 4 April The conclusions and recommendations of this meeting were agreed as the Lund Principles 24 and developed into an Action Plan. 25 These established an agenda for actions to be carried out by member states, by the Commission, and by member states and Commission jointly. The approach is one of collaborative inputs and shared responsibilities among the different actors involved, ranging from bottom-up involvement of the cultural institutions themselves, for example in determining cases of best practice, to top-down initiatives on policies. The main conclusions were that the member states could make progress on the e- Europe objective if they: (a) supported the developing of a European view on policies and programmes; (b) developed mechanisms to 46 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA (USA)

7 Digital Heritage and Cultural Content Bernard Smith promote good practice and consistency of practice and skills development; and (c) worked in a collaborative manner to make visible and accessible the digitized cultural and scientific heritage of Europe. The Commission could help achieve the e- Europe objectives by: (a) establishing an ongoing forum for co-ordination supporting co-ordination activities; (b) enabling the creation of centres of competence; (c) fostering the development of benchmarking standards for digitization practices; (d) encouraging a framework that would enable a shared vision of European content; and (e) assisting member states to improve access and awareness for citizens through enhancing the quality and usability of content and the development of models to enable e-culture enterprises. An Open Method for Benchmarking Digitization Policies Objectives, Methodology and Indicators 26 has been proposed by the European Commission to member states representatives as a tool to exchange good practices and to improve national practices, co-ordination and investments. Member states have adopted the model, included the benchmarking approach as a basic tool in the Lund Principles, and they have established a Benchmarking Workgroup with experts nominated officially by national authorities. National representatives group A National Representatives Group (NRG), 27 made up of officially nominated experts from each member state, has been established to act as a steering group for the activities related to the coordination of digitization policies and programmes, with special emphasis on cultural and scientific resources and on the contribution of public cultural institutions. Its stated mission is to act as guardians of the Lund Principles and to monitor progress of the action plan. The NRG held its first meeting in Brussels on 11 December 2001, 28 and the second meeting took place in Alicante, Spain on 16/17 May These meetings will continue to take place every six months under the chairmanship of the current presidency. The NRG will share national experiences and create a common platform for co-operation and co-ordination of national activities across the European Union, as well as for their follow-up at national level. It provides a stable, continuing focus for consensus building between member states, for promoting good practice, and for encouraging initiatives to support the visibility of quality cultural sites. As a conclusion of that meeting an important progress of the digitization agenda has been reported and terms of reference 30 have been produced. An evolving agenda Since Lund, work has progressed through a series of meetings, again involving national experts from across the EU, and with the aim of putting into place practical co-operation schemes. These are supported by smaller working groups, which have initially focused on national policy profiles, on sharing national inventories and on meta-data, on benchmarking, and on quality in cultural websites. Each plenary meeting often further develops a specific focus. For example the Lund meeting paid special attention to policy profiles and to benchmarking and the following meeting held in ISSN , No. 216 (Vol. 54, No. 4, 2002) 47

8 THE DEVELOPMENT OF A DIGITAL HERITAGE COMMONS : REGIONAL INITIATIVES Brussels on 17 July 2001 introduced the topic of quality and the proposal to develop the Brussels quality framework. The meeting held under the Spanish presidency discussed digital preservation aspects. Policies National policy profiles 31 have been created on the basis of an initial common questionnaire and all member states have undertaken to publish these on an appropriate national site to which these pages will link. At the European level, these activities have been lent added support from the recent Council Resolutions of 21 January 2002 on Culture in the Knowledge Society (2002/C 32/01) 32 and The Role of Culture in the Development of the European Union (OJ, 2002/C 32/01). More recently the Spanish presidency (first semester 2002) took on the challenge to create a framework for long-term digital preservation. A Council Resolution was prepared and has been accepted by the EU ministers of culture. The resolution entitled Preserving Tomorrow s Memory Preserving Digital Content for Future Generations will soon be published in the Official Journal. Europe s memory institutions: the way into the digital cultural economy Today, archives, libraries and s all over Europe face similar challenges as they try to take advantage of information technologies in the emerging digital cultural economy. While the conversion of all sorts of contents into bits and bytes opens up totally new opportunities for interoperability and information exchange between the formally separated memory institutions, it also causes new problems and difficulties. One of the biggest challenges for Europe s archives, libraries and s in the digital age is to keep abreast of the increasing speed of technological development and to act accordingly. It is for this reason that a major study was commissioned in 2000 entitled Technological Landscapes for Tomorrow s Cultural Economy, or the so-called DigiCult 33 study. This is a strategic study on the state of the art of use, development and research in information and communication technologies for the cultural (and associated) sectors in Europe. The objective is to provide a clear set of action recommendations for cultural institutions Europe-wide. In order to achieve this goal, it provides an in-depth analysis of the state-of-the-art of technologies, content, cultural services and applications as well as (user) demands and policies in the sector. The DigiCult report focuses on four key areas, namely national policies and initiatives, organizational change, exploitation and technology. The results are based upon an online Delphi survey, and a series of twenty-nine in-depth interviews and six workshops. More than 180 international cultural experts from large to small cultural actors provided their personal opinions to the study contractors, Salzburg Research. The study consortium also included nine highly acknowledged European cultural organizations. In addition, and in order to address the need to understand the new social context of 48 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA (USA)

9 Digital Heritage and Cultural Content Bernard Smith Europe s cultural institutions, a new study will be launched in the coming months. This study entitled Social and Economic Inclusiveness: the Role of Cultural and Memory Organizations, will identify areas where the cultural institutions already contribute to social inclusion. It will specify which issues deserve particular attention for new or further research, develop models and identify examples of best practice as a basis on which to build new applications and services over the next ten to fifteen years, and it will indicate future trends and provide a clear road map of issues, challenges, etc., that need to be addressed over the next five years. Results are expected in the second semester of 2003 and can be expected to influence actions to be undertaken in the Sixth Framework Programme. Conclusion This article has tried to summarize some of the formal aspects of the ongoing programme on digital heritage and cultural content. It has not attempted to outline in a systematic way the results obtained so far. The service managing the issues on digital heritage and cultural content issues a newsletter every two months that outlines progress and summarizes ongoing initiatives. Along with the website, the newsletter represents the most effective way to keep up-to-date on calls for proposals, projects being launched, and results obtained. With respect to development of the Sixth Framework Programme the reader is encouraged to consult the website regularly. NOTES 1 See the team at 2 Detailed information to be found on: Cordis, the Community Research and Development Information Service at Europa, the European Union s server has a section describing the Research Directorate General; index_en.html/; Information Society on information_society/index_en.htm/. 3 By Decision No. 182/1999/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 December 1998, a specific programme on a user-friendly information society was adopted by Council Decision No. 99/168/EC of 25 January 1999 (Official Journal, L 64, 12/03/1999 p ). 4 See EU Policies for the Knowledge Society which provides a broad overview of ongoing policy activities in e-europe: 5 See speeches/index_en.htm for the collected presentation of Commissioner Liikanen, who is responsible for the Directorate General services of both Enterprise and Information Society. 6 See 7 See 8 See 9 See 10 As an example of the work done in past projects, ELVIL2000, had the objective of creating a model for parliamentary information services. Both the Czech and Polish national parliaments have adopted this information infrastructure. 11 See the brainstorming section backgrd.htm#a concerning key background information in the sector (archives, libraries and s) ISSN , No. 216 (Vol. 54, No. 4, 2002) 49

10 THE DEVELOPMENT OF A DIGITAL HERITAGE COMMONS : REGIONAL INITIATIVES 15 See and DIVERSITY AND CULTURAL PRACTICES: LEADING LANGUAGES See 23 See index_en.htm/. REPARTITION BY CONTINENT Population Number of % leading In the languages world Asia 3.8 billion Africa 858 million Oceania 31 million Americas 853 million Europe 727 million Total 6.2 billion Source: UNESCO WCR, : available in all EU languages available in all EU languages To be posted soon on the DigiCult site. LANGUAGE DIVERSITY: TOP 16 LEADING LANGUAGES See to download a copy of the executive summary (in English, French or German) or the main report (in English only); printed versions can be obtained on request. NUMBER OF USERS (IN MILLIONS) English and Chinese Mandarin 1000 Hindi and Urdu 900 Spanish 450 Russian 320 Arab and Bengali 250 Malay and Indonesian 160 Japanese 130 French and German 125 Punjabi and Chinese Wu 85 Source: UNESCO, :7 50 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA (USA)

11 Digital Heritage and Cultural Content Bernard Smith INTERNET LANGUAGES MUSEUMS AND LANGUAGES ON THE WEB ONLINE LANGUAGE POPULATIONS (%) English 40.2 Chinese 9.8 Japanese 9.2 Spanish 7.2 German 6.8 Korean 4.4 French 3.9 Italian 3.6 Portuguese 2.6 Dutch 2.1 Source: :8 NUMBER OF LANGUAGES BY NATIONAL MUSEUM WEBSITES Museum website Number of languages on this website Louvre Museum (Paris, France) 4 Tate Museums (London, United Kingdom) 6 Rijks (Amsterdam, Netherlands) 6 Modern Museum (Stockholm, Sweden) 2 Narodni Gallery (Prague, Czech Rep.) 1 National Gallery (Washington, USA) 1 National Art and Crafts Museum (Havana, Cuba) 1 National Museum of Anthropology (Mexico City, Mexico) 1 National Museum of Namibia (Windhoek, Namibia) 1 Abomey Historic Museum (Lome, Benin) 2 National Museum (Beirut, Lebanon) 2 National Museum (Jakarta, Indonesia) 1 National Museum (New Delhi, India) 1 (English) National Museum (Tokyo, Japan) 2 Source: UNESCO, :9 ISSN , No. 216 (Vol. 54, No. 4, 2002) 51