Digital meets Culture

The online course “Europeana Space: Creative with Digital Heritage” will be relaunched in 2017, under KU Leuven's coordination.

E-Space MOOC: a successful first run

by Clarissa Colangelo, KU Leuven.
Article originally appeared on the E-Space Photography Pilot Blog.
photo courtesy KU Leuven

On January 10th 2017 the MOOC “Europeana Space: Creative with Digital Heritage” ended. With almost 1000 enrolled learners from 90 different countries and regions, we are very pleased to announce that this first run of the course was a success.

What made this possible was not only the enthusiasm shown by the E-Space partners in collaborating to the development of this course, but also the availability of KU Leuven to host our MOOC on their edX channel and to provide excellent support throughout the whole process; for them this was an experiment with a MOOC that stems directly from a research project rather than being based on existing university lectures.

Grades were not the main focus of the MOOC. What interested us more, was that students could learn and discover useful information and material derived from our experiences within the E-Space project, that would allow them to improve and enhance their creative role in relation to the reuse of digital cultural heritage.

The course raised very positive reactions among the learners. With some minor adjustments, we will soon be able to relaunch the course, which we are confident will be met by the same positive reaction!

“Thanks for offering this course! Very interested to learn this material, glad to know about this information, how to use it, and the future of its use!”

Full article: https://espacephotography.com/2017/01/25/e-space-mooc-a-successful-first-run/

The course: https://www.edx.org/course/europeana-space-creative-digital-kuleuvenx-eurospacex

Visit the E-Space for Education Portal: http://www.europeana-space.eu/education/

a Memorandum of Understanding is launched after the end of the EU funding period, to continue the work done so far with E-Space

E-Space Initiative: Where Culture Meets Creativity

As the EU-funded project ends on 31 January 2017, the partners, affiliate partners and followers of the E-Space project are invited to join the MoU for the E-Space initiative “E-Space: Where Culture meets Creativity”.

LEARN MORE: http://www.europeana-space.eu/network/e-space-initiative/

The partnership’s main objective is to pave the way for the establishment of a sustainable initiative based on the results of the E-Space project, with a longer term vision to support the creative reuse and valorisation of digital cultural content available online. Both individuals and institutions can join the partnership providing their support to the ‘E-Space initiative’ in accordance with their desire and capacity to get involved.

A major outcome of E-Space project is a set of resources for entrepreneurs, creative companies, owners of digital archives and collections, and individuals interested in open digital cultural heritage content.

Content Space and IP: tools for creative reuse of digital cultural heritage

In the Content Space created by Europeana Space project are collected guidelines and tools for clearing copyright and find information about the development of business models for the exploitation of digital cultural heritage content.

The Content Space contains information about licensing, rights labelling and associated new technical standards, guidelines on how to identify re-usable content, and legal advice and tools for the lawful re-use of digital content. An explicative video helps understanding the basic context.

As a final outcome from the Content Space, we are happy to announce the arrival of the IP Case Studies booklet. This contains information regarding intellectual property right within the six Europeana Space Pilots (museums, TV, dance, open and hybrid publishing, photography and games). The booklet contains stories and lessons learnt during the project, the hackathons, the business modelling workshops and the incubation periods.

The booklet is a publication realized and printed in December 2016 with ISBN 9789082636000. It is also available online as a full PDF booklet and the 6 Case Studies are also available individually for download.

The Content Space also includes guidance, tools and resources on openly licensed and public domain materials in the Open Content Exchange Platform.

We would also like to draw your attention to the Online Consulting Kit with a wealth of detailed and professional information that is easily accessible.

Visit the E-Space Content Space: http://www.europeana-space.eu/content-space/

We hope once again that you enjoy the materials and tools we have developed and that you get creative with the amazing cultural heritage that exists all around us!

10% discount off annual membership fees

Open Preservation Foundation and BitCurator Consortium Discount Membership Opportunity

Building on the existing strong ties between our organisations, the Open Preservation Foundation (OPF) and BitCurator Consortium (BCC) are pleased to announce a discount trial membership opportunity that offers its members a 10% discount off annual membership fees.

From 1 January 2017, members of the OPF will receive a 10% discount on membership fees when they join the BCC for a year long trial membership, and BCC members will receive a 10% discount when they join the OPF. The offer runs from one year to 31 December 2017.

Ross King, Chair of OPF, Austrian Institute of Technology said:

”The OPF and BCC share a common goal to provide reliable, open source software to support the preservation of digital objects for the long-term. We welcome applications from existing members, as well new organisations who are interested in joining a growing community benefiting from open source tools and resources.”

Matthew Farrell, President of BCC, Duke University said:

”We are delighted to build upon our existing partnership – the BCC and OPF have co-hosted events and webinars, and OPF has carried out code quality reviews for BCC software. Both organisations operate as not-for-profits with funding going directly to software development, outreach and training materials.”

The trial discounted membership provides libraries, archives, museums, and other institutions with an opportunity to experiment with membership in the BCC and OPF and leverage the knowledge, skills, and resources of their highly dynamic and active communities.

About

BitCurator Consortium

The BitCurator Consortium (BCC) is an independent, community-led membership association that serves as the host and center of administrative, user and community support for the BitCurator environment. Its purpose is to support the curation of born-digital materials through the application of open-source digital forensics tools by institutions responsible for such materials.

https://www.bitcuratorconsortium.org/

The BCC is now welcoming institutions in all sectors and nations to join as General Members. Member benefits include:

Access to the BCC help desk
Prioritisation in future feature and enhancement requests
Dedicated educational offerings
Voting rights
Eligibility to serve on the BCC Executive Council and Committees
Service opportunities
Community engagement and networking
Professional development and training
Subscription to a dedicated BCC member mailing list
Special rates for BCC events, including the annual BitCurator User Forum

Read more about the benefits of joining the BitCurator Consortium: https://www.bitcuratorconsortium.org/join

Open Preservation Foundation

The Open Preservation Foundation (OPF) is an international not-for-profit membership organisation that sustains technology and knowledge for the long-term management of digital cultural heritage. The Foundation provides its members with reliable solutions to the challenges of digital preservation. http://openpreservation.org/

OPF’s membership comprises archives, libraries, research institutions, universities, and service providers that share a commitment to advancing digital preservation. Members steer the Foundation’s strategy and activities and benefit from exclusive or priority access to OPF interest groups, webinars, technical clinic and events, as well as support in adopting and using our open source software including JHOVE and veraPDF. Read more about the benefits of joining the OPF: http://openpreservation.org/about/join/

To discuss any aspects of the offer, or the respective member benefits, please contact Sam Meister (sam@educopia.org) or Becky McGuinness (becky@openpreservation.org).

Europeana Space project is proud to announce the official release of a new platform, which provides services for content search, aggregation, interoperability, visualisation, publication and reuse.

Presenting the E-Space Portal: where culture meets creativity

The E-Space Portal is a unique and efficient access point to billions of digital objects and resources from a number of major repositories, integrating the search results into common views, simplifying the search and offering users a set of tools to manage and share digital cultural heritage items. The tools of the E-Space Portal can also be used to upload personal datasets, clean, enrich and aggregate them, as well as to enhance the visibility and reach of digital collections with virtual exhibitions and engaging stories.

Discover beautiful content to engage with, mix and match your own materials and share them with your friends and colleagues.

The E-Space Portal is a great starting point for Users to discover cultural heritage resources that reside in distributed repositories. They can combine different sources with their own material, allowing them to offer new interesting narratives for the appreciation and communication of culture.

Be part of a community and make your content available to potential users, creative minds and new audiences who can enjoy your beautiful collection.

For Content Holders it offers an easy to use content & metadata repository and management system that can ensure interoperability with standards, best practices and aggregator guidelines. The platform includes a customisable portal for the visualisation of digital collections, exhibitions and stories, while facilitating the public’s access to content available for creative reuse.

E-Space Portal and its features help you to answer the question “what to do now, how to leverage on these digitised collections?”

Cultural Heritage Professionals are offered the tools to compose and contextualise eclectic collections, contributing to the promotion, improvement, and evolution of digital CH knowledge. The Creative Industry is using the platform as a back-end to build applications that reuse digital heritage.

E-Space Portal offers an integrated service for aggregation and metadata manipulation, customizable according to your needs.

For Aggregators, the infrastructure uses the metadata interoperability platform MINT that fully implements workflows for the ingestion, formal mapping, and transformation of metadata records. Services include validation, quality checking, data cleaning & normalisation, and previews, while the platform can implement a variety of publication approaches (such as OAI-PMH, SPARQL endpoint, and REST API) for the resulting repository.

Discover this major outcome of the E-Space Project at http://espaceportal.eu/

Register now and start creating your custom exhibition, collection and spaces and share it with the world!

Florence (italy), 25-26 January 2017

International Workshop on Cinema and Landscape

Filming the Arts, the strategic project of the University of Florence for digital preservation of audiovisual heritage and performing arts, is proud to present the International Workshop on Cinema and Landscape, taking place in Florence at the SAGAS Department on 25th-26th January 2017.

25 January, room 5

Welcome by prof. Andrea De Marchi, coordinator of PhD in Arts and Performance History.

9.00 – 11.00 LANDSCAPE 1, chair Paola Valentini

Cristina Jandelli (Università di Firenze): Da CAPUT a Filmare le arti e Filming the Arts
Sandro Bernardi (Università di Firenze): Paesaggio e narrazione
José Moure (Université Paris 1 – Sorbonne): Les visites au musée Rodin dans Un couple parfait de Nobuhiro Suwa : l’amour de l’art ou l’art de l’amour
Marco Bertozzi (Università IUAV): Emozioni “dal vero” – Il paesaggio italiano nel cinema vedutista

Coffee Break

11.15 – 13.15 ARTS 1, chair Cristina Jandelli

Sandra Lischi, Elena Marcheschi (Università di Pisa): Schermi elettronici su arte e paesaggio
Sandra Lischi: Videopitture in metamorfosi
Elena Marcheschi: Videopaesaggi visionari
Renzo Guardenti (Università di Firenze): Les arts de la rue. Immagini e percorsi
Fulvio Cervini (Università di Firenze): Filmare un paesaggio medievale – A margine dei critofilm di Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti

Lunch break

15.00 – 17.00 TERRITORY, chair Sandra Lischi

Paola Valentini (Università di Firenze): Forme e stili di vita del paesaggio audiovisivo. Luogo, location e ambiente
Farah Polato, Giulia Lavarone (Università di Padova): Quale paesaggio nel film-induced tourism? Riflessioni a partire da un’esperienza operativa
Raffaele Pavoni (Università di Firenze): Play. Stop. Replay. Appropriazione degli spazi pubblici e sordità sociale: il caso di Lola rennt di Tom Tykwer

Coffee Break

17.30 – 19 Selection of the short films in Filming the Arts database, curated by Cristina Jandelli, Luca Ferro, Raffaele Pavoni

26 January, Room aula 8

9.00 – 11.00 ARTS 2, chair Luigi Nepi

Federico Pierotti (Università di Firenze): Il panopticon e l’artista – Filmare la pittura in Jaime di António Reis
Paolo Simoni (Università di Padova): La città amatoriale
Elisa Bianchi (Università di Firenze): La memoria del paesaggio attraversato dall’arte
Nicola Dusi, Ilaria Ferretti, Damiano Razzoli (Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia): Dai cineamatori alla street-art digitale, percorsi di ricerca su tecnologie mediali e paesaggio urbano

Coffee Break

11.15 – 13.15 LANDSCAPE 2, chair Federico Pierotti

Thierry Roche (Université Aix-Marseille): Paysage et travail dans le cinéma des frères Dardenne
Chiara Tognolotti (Università di Firenze): Filmare il paesaggio: per un’educazione dello sguardo
Chiara Rubessi (Université Grenoble-Alpes): Il paesaggio-specchio nell’organizzazione dello spazio in Deep end di Jerzy Skolimowski

Lunch Break

15.00 – 17.00 PRACTICES, chair Chiara Tognolotti

Luigi Nepi (Università di Firenze): La pratica maieutica. Come nascono le immagini nella didattica di Paolo Benvenuti
Alberto Di Cintio (Università di Firenze): Paesaggi visionari
Gianluca Paoletti Barsotti (Università di Pisa): Il museo multimediale di Barga

Discussion

End of the Workshop

About the Workshop

More information on Filming the Arts HERE

The theme of the exhibition is ‘Vintage Fashion from the Archive’

Visit the Pop-Up Museum at Sound and Vision! From 12 until 19 January 2017

The Pop-Up Museum at Sound and Vision is a special installation with three wide-screen monitors in an interactive setting. You can interact and control the exhibition with your smartphone. The interactive software has been developed by Noterik BV in cooperation with Sound and Vision, and is an outcome of the EU-project Europeana Space.

Demonstration of the Pop-Up Museum from Beeld en Geluid Labs on Vimeo.

WHY A POP-UP MUSEUM?

In the past few years a lot of valuable cultural content has been digitized: millions of photos, videos and sounds have been made available on the internet. In the three year EU project Europeana Space several pilots have been tried and tested – in the field of interactive TV, museums, games, photography, museums and hybrid publishing – to research new possibilities use this digital heritage and make it relevant for new audiences.

While digital cultural content has garnered many online and virtual exhibitions and has been succesfully picked up by Wikipedia, we think that especially the high resolution material can be better viewed in a physical curated space. In the Pop-Up Museum concept digital material can be viewed and culture can be experienced without the distractions of other apps and e-mail on your laptop or desktop computer. Time-based media such as videos, that require the viewer to take some time to view, can be specifically programmed to make sure the viewer can view it in its own right.

Pop-Up Museum installation. © Staalslagerij

HOW IS IT MADE?

The software that can be viewed on the screens and smartphones is developed by Noterik BV. Several interactive applications using cultural heritage have been built and tested within the aforementioned pilots and during the Multiscreen Hackathon in Amsterdam. Noterik uses HTML5 software to produce different interaction and playout possibilities between screens. There is also a special editor being developed to control and set up the exhibition, its content and interactions. The software developed by Noterik for this concept goes by the name of MUPOP.

The physical installation, which is shown on the image above, was built by design studio Staalslagerij based in Rotterdam. It’s about 8 meters wide and 2 meters high, and it can be set up in a modular way.

To test the Pop-Up Museum with a public audience it has been taken in to regular programming activities at the Sound and Vision museum in Hilversum. Currently they are running an exhibition on YouTube with the temporary theme Beauty + Fashion. Thanks to the editorial efforts of Evelien Wolda, Kelly Mostert and Marta Franceschini (of Europeana Fashion) amazing content has been found fitting within the Fashion theme. It shows current and historical fashion and considers the ‘vintage’ hype, looking at styles and customs from previous eras and designers. Together with the help of the museum department at the Institute the pop-up installation has been programmed from the 12th until the 19th of January.

[Show as slideshow]

photos courtesy of Noterik.

WHAT CAN YOU SEE?

Every screen shows a different mini-exhibition and starts with instructions on how to start the screen with your smartphone. Headphones can be used and are available at the installation. When you press ‘start’ you hear a voice-over introducing you to what you’re about to see next.

	Screen #1: Guess which fashion eraThis screen shows clips from the Polygoon newsreel archives. After seeing the clip, you will be asked to guess which decade the clip is from. After giving the answer you will be taken to the next screen which will show you the clip again with the correct answer and explanation about the fashion of the decade. The screen will also give back how many correct answers have been given.
	Screen 2: From past to presentThis screen shows 5 historical fashion objects as digital images in a cover flow interface. You move through the images by using your smartphone as a touch pad. When choosing one of the images, it will start showing full screen the image of the historical object. Using the touch pad you can swipe left and right to see the modern design that matches the object. The voice-over tells you more about the object, the designer and how the fashion from the past is inspiring the contemporary styles.
	Screen 3: Timeless IconsThis screen shows 6 famous fashion icons in a cover flow interface. You move through the images by using your smartphone as a touch pad. When selecting one of the icons, the image is shown full screen and the voice-over will tell you what you are seeing. Using your touch pad you can swipe left to see which famous icon the story is centered around.

WHERE CAN I SEE THE POP-UP MUSEUM?

The following days the Pop-Up Museum was on show at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision in Hilversum:

Thursday 12 January
Friday 13 January
Saturday 14 January
Tuesday 17 January
Wednesday 18 January
Thursday 19 January

After the Europeana Space project ends we hope to show the Pop-Up Museum in different places. If you are interested in using this concept, please visit www.mupop.net for more information.

[1] Digital content can be found through these platforms:

– Europeana.eu

– Wikimedia Commons

– Open Beelden

– EUScreen

– Europeana Fashion

– E-Space

London, 21 - 23 March 2017

Procurement Week 2017 – Seeing Procurement Differently!

The team at Bangor University’s Institute for Competition & Procurement Studies (ICPS), our Speakers, Global Contributors, Delivery Partners and Sponsors are excited to share with you our programme for Procurement Week 2017: The Pantheon of Procurement – Seeing Procurement Differently.

DOWNLOAD THE PROCUREMENT WEEK 2017: THE PANTHEON OF PROCUREMENT BROCHURE HERE

Procurement Week is an international conference and exhibition that aims to explore the many facets of Public Procurement such as Public Tendering, Business Development, Procurement Law and International Trade. During the week, presentations will be given by leading procurement practitioners, lawyers, economists, innovators, strategists and thinkers. Procurement Week 2017 will bring you the biggest names in ‘procurement’ from around the world, to present and lead discussions on a wide range of procurement topics. Their job is to work with us to address challenging local, national and global issues, whilst proposing innovative and pragmatic solutions to help our citizens.

Procurement Week continues to grow in popularity, with in excess of 850 attendees last year from over 40 countries.

Places at Procurement Week 2017 are limited to ensure that the quality of the sessions are optimised for participants and that the opportunity for audience interaction is maximised, so please book your place as soon as possible to avoid disappointment.

We invite you to spend a few minutes browsing through the official website to identify the days that interest you most. Start by taking a look at the first day in our main programme (Procurement Week Programme), or our first social event (Procurement Week Social Programme – At a Glance).

More information about the event, such as it’s location, purpose, scope can be found at:

Event Brochure: http://procurementweek.org.uk/ProcurementWeek2017.pdf
Event Articles: http://procurementweek.org.uk/2016whitepapers.html
Event Website: http://procurementweek.org.uk/PW2017.html

Padua, 7 March 2017

Registration open for the workshop in Padua

After the two successful events organised last year in Stockholm and in Berlin, the PREFORMA project is happy to invite all the members of the digital preservation community to attend the PREFORMA Innovation Workshop which will be held in Padua on 7 March 2017.

Aim of the workshop is to highlight the importance of standardisation and file format validation for the long term preservation of digtal cultural content, present the open source conformance checkers developed in the project and the business models that can be built around them, and involve memory institutions outside the PREFORMA consortium in testing, using and further developing the software.

The event will include:

keynote speeches by international experts in digital preservation and open source business modelling;
a panel to reflect on how to measure the impact of a project and to ensure its sustainability;
live demonstrations of the software developed by the three suppliers (the veraPDF consortium, Easy Innova, MediaArea);
an informal networking event where attendees can share experiences, meet the PREFORMA developers and learn more about the tools.

Check out the full programme of the event and the invited speakers and panellists.

Register now for free at http://www.preforma-project.eu/workshop-in-padua.html and don’t miss this opportunity to meet the PREFORMA developers, share your experiences and learn more about the tools.

This workshop is aimed at anyone interested in digital preservation and cultural heritage: memory institutions or other cultural heritage organisations involved in (or planning) digital preservation initiatives and willing to integrate the PREFORMA software in their infrastructure, the open-source community of researchers and developers interested in contributing code to the PREFORMA tools, the community of enterprises interested in developing services around the PREFORMA tools, the standardization bodies looking for feedback on how to improve and advance the specifications of the standard preservation file formats.

The day before the workshop, on 6 March 2017, the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padua will host the fourth edition of the Networking Session for EC projects in the cultural heritage field, a successful initiative launched in the framework of the RICHES project and continued under the auspices of Europeana Space and PREFORMA.

An open-source industry-supported PDF/A validator

veraPDF 1.0 released

The veraPDF consortium announced the release of veraPDF 1.0, an open-source industry-supported PDF/A validator. Led by the Open Preservation Foundation and the PDF Association, veraPDF validates all parts and conformance levels of ISO 19005 (PDF/A). The software is available under a MPLv2+/GLPv3+ license.

Carl Wilson, Technical Lead, Open Preservation Foundation said: “Identifying a file’s format and establishing that it conforms to the format specification is an essential step for memory institutions with responsibilities for long term preservation and access. veraPDF helps users to evaluate their files against the standard. A PDF feature reporter and a customisable policy checker allows organisations to enforce institutional policy beyond the scope of PDF/A.”

Duff Johnson, Executive Director, PDF Association said: “The release of veraPDF 1.0 is a significant milestone for both the PDF industry and the digital preservation community. For the PDF industry, the project to develop veraPDF facilitated the identification and resolution of ambiguities in the PDF/A specification, improving interoperability and utility to end users. For the digital preservation community, veraPDF delivers authoritative information about the nature and long-term reliability of digital holdings while providing more tools to help preservationists advise contributors on their software and workflows.”

veraPDF now enters its contracted acceptance testing phase, which runs until July 2017. Users are encouraged to report any bugs or other concerns to the project’s GitHub issue tracker: https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/issues.

Version 1.0 has the following enhancements and fixes as compared to the final beta release:

Application enhancements:

fixed default values for extracted PDF features; and
fixed removal of temporary files.

Conformance checker:

fixed cmap table parsing in TrueType fonts.

Test corpus:

changed metadata file provenance test files from FAIL to PASS (as resolved by the PDF Association’s PDF Validation Technical Working Group); and
fixed xref table in test case 6-3-3-t01-pass-a.

Download veraPDF 1.0:

PDFBox version: http://www.preforma-project.eu/downloads/veraPDF/bin/all-platforms/verapdf-1.0-20170109.zip

Greenfield version: http://www.preforma-project.eu/downloads/veraPDF/bin/all-platforms/verapdf-1.0-GF-20170109.zip

Release notes:

https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/releases/latest

Please help us improve the software by downloading and testing it. If you encounter problems, or wish to suggest improvements, please add them to the project’s GitHub issue tracker https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/issues, or contact us through our mailing list: http://lists.verapdf.org/listinfo/users.

About

The veraPDF consortium is funded by the PREFORMA project. PREFORMA (PREservation FORMAts for culture information/e-archives) is a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) project co-funded by the European Commission under its FP7-ICT Programme.