Digital meets Culture

DPF Manager Monthly Release #2

About DPF Manager

DPF Manager is an application and a framework designed to allow end users and developers to gain full control over the technical properties and structure of TIFF images intended for Long Term Preservation.

The main objective is to give memory institutions full control of the process of the conformity checks of files. This is a three-step process:

Validation: validating the conformance to a specific normative. These normative can be defined by some standardization organization or specific acceptance criteria based on a locally-defined policy rules.
Modification: modifying the Data Object, preserving the Information Representation, in order to make it more suitable for long term preservation.
Reporting: collecting and submitting the data object structure and metadata as well as validation result with the modification information.

New Release Ready to Download!

The DPF Manager TIFF conformance checker was able to detect the tags inside the TIFF (baseline tags, extension tags and widely used private tags) and handle with embedded metadata as ICC Profiles, XMP, IPTC and EXIF.

The implementation checker validates:

TIFF baseline 6.0
TIFF/EP (Tag Image File Format/Electronic Photography) ISO:12234-2
TIFF/IT (Graphic technology – Prepress digital data exchange – Tag image file format for image technology) ISO 12639:2004E

With policy checker memory institutions can create custom rules to define their own acceptance criteria.

In this release, the metadata fixer is able to manage metadata inside the TIFF adding or deleting tags. Furthermore, the metadata fixer can apply auto-fixes created by developers.

The reporter module now provides a human readable report (PDF and HTML format) and a machine readable report (XML and JSON format) for each file checked. Moreover, the report includes a comparison between the original image file and the new file generated by the metadata fixer module.

This release includes a Command line interface (CLI) and a graphical user interface (GUI) with a wizard to create and save configurations, check files and directories selecting a saved configuration and view the reports generated by the tool.

Download NOW!

Available for Mac OS X, Linux & Windows.

Contribute now!

There’s many ways to join the open source community!

GitHub. All the the code is available on GitHub. If you’d like to add a new feature to DPF Manager, just fork the repository and send us a pull request!

DPF Manager Forums. If you need help or you have doubts on anything related to DPF Manager there is the Users Forum and Developers Forum available for you! Don’t be shy!

IRC Chat. For chat about DPF manager development you can connect on our Developers channel here.

Join the community now!

MediaConch Newsletter No. 2 (2 Nov 2015)

Updates on MediaConch: October release and upcoming events

Hello! Welcome to the MediaConch Newsletter. Here we’ll be providing regular updates on all aspects of MediaConch. MediaConch is part of the PREFORMA (PREServation FORMAts for culture information/e-archives) project, co-funded by the European Commission under the FP7-ICT programme. Learn more about MediaConch here.

MediaConch Release Notes

October’s release of MediaConch (v15.10) features a brand new implementation checker concentrating on Matroska and EBML conformance checks, as well as several illustrative policy sets allowing users to carry out conformance checking on preservation master files, among other workflows. Last month’s release highlighted full user policy creation in the EXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) format. A user can now create XSL-based policies with MediaConch’s selection of conformance metadata and validators, import and export XSL policies for quality assurance across institutions, reformatting vendors, and other community collaborators.

We’ve also added additional output formatting choices for various reports including Text, HTML, and XML. MediaConch’s GUI now includes interactive jsTrees for viewing MediaInfo and MediaTrace reports; a display section for applying XSLs for HTML presentation; policy set editing in both regular and XPath freetext expression; and, refinements to stream and field information for easier policy creation.

MediaConch is available as a command line interface, a downloadable graphical user interface, and a web interface. Download MediaConch on your preferred operating system or try out our online version, MediaConchOnline.

Documentation is available on our website, as well as a follow-along user demo and files for using MediaConch CLI.

Team MediaConch in the News

On October 8, Tessa Fallon presented on FFV1 as a representative of the PREFORMA / MediaArea team at the Fédération Internationale des Archives de Télévision / The International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA) World Conference in Vienna. Along with co-presenters Bert Lemmens (PACKED vxw) and Peter Bubestinger (Österreichischen Mediathek), Fallon conducted a 1.5 hour workshop titled “FFV1 for Preservation,” where she discussed some of the technical challenges with FFV1 and the current technical developments, including features and advantages of using FFV1 for preservation.

The Internet Engineering Task Force recently approved the CELLAR (Codec Encoding for LossLess Archiving and Realtime transmission) working group charter to focus on standardizing Matroska, FFV1, and FLAC file formats for archival use. The working group charter is currently under external review with Tessa Fallon appointed as a working group co-chair. Team leads Dave Rice and Jérôme Martinez, who have been actively working with the Matroska and FFV1 format communities to identify and resolves gaps in specifications, will soon move their work into the newly assigned CELLAR working group listserv. Those interesting in following the discussion progress can join the CELLAR mailing list here.

Be sure to also check out this great blog post on MediaArea’s involvement at the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) 46th Annual Conference in Paris.

Upcoming Events

Team leads Dave Rice and Ashley Blewer will be presenting on MediaConch at the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) Conference in Portland, OR, USA (20 Nov). The conference’s schedule-at-a-glance can be seen here.

Feedback

MediaArea is eager to build a community of collaborators and testers to participate in and use the results of the project. You can contact us here for more information.

Best,

The MediaConch team

Heritage photography stimulates creativity: it’s all about telling stories.

Photography Pilot on show at exhibition “Kunst in eigen Huis”

E-Space Photography Pilot was a guest exhibitor at the “Kunst in eigen Huis” (Art at Home) event on 22-23 October 2015 in Leuven, Belgium.

The event was organized by KU Leuven groups of Seniores and students in Cultural Studies and wanted to showcase some of the best examples of creativity. the Photography pilot joined the exhibition exactly because it intends to stimulate “the creative energy that emerges when youths interact with cultural heritage. We decided to show part of the E-Space collection, supplied by Photoconsortium, a beautiful sample of highlights of the photo collection at the City Archive of Leuven, part of the “All Our Yesterdays” exhibition digitized with the help of European subsidies in EuropeanaPhotography.”

All Our Yesterdays: Andere Tijden / Andere Steden – curator Sofie Taes – copyright Stadsarchief Leuven

The exhibition was accompained by opening speeches, including one by Prof. Fred Truyen, coordinator of EuropeanaPhotography and president of Photoconsortium, showing some other top pieces of the All Our Yesterdays collection.

An interesting event follows this one: on the November 27th, at the City Archive Leuven, seniors, students, citizens of Leuven and surrounding towns are invited to a “Bring your own Photos” event, where digitization specialist Bruno Vandermeulen will convert in digital format the photos brought in by the citizens. Moreover, photographer Frederik van den Broeck will do a demonstration about the traditional wet collodion technique.

Read the whole article by Fred Truyen here

Learn more about the upcoming Photography Hackathon.

The latest release of the conformance checker for PDF/A is now available in the PREFORMA Open Source Portal

Complete PDF/A-1b coverage now available in the 0.6 release of veraPDF

The veraPDF consortium is pleased to announce the latest release of the veraPDF PDF/A validation software and test-suite currently under development.

Highlights for this release are:

validation of all conformance criteria for ISO 19005-1 (PDF/A-1), conformance level b;
a complete PDF/A-1b test corpus, including 200 new test-files:
PDF features reporting; and
a cross-platform installer.

Prototype features include:

PDF metadata fixing;
validation model and rules for PDF/A-1a, PDF/A-2 & PDF/A-3;
reporting in XML and HTML.

Download veraPDF 0.6 at: http://downloads.verapdf.org/rel/verapdf-installer.zip

Release notes are published at: https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/blob/release-0.6/RELEASENOTES.md

veraPDF’s goal is to deliver the definitive PDF/A validator for memory institutions. We invite you to download and test the software. A guide for the desktop interface is provided to help you get started. If you encounter problems, or wish to make suggestions, please add them to the project’s GitHub issue tracker.

This release marks the one year point since veraPDF first began the design phase in November 2014. The next release will include release candidates of all eight PDF/A validation profiles. Further details are outlined in our development roadmap.

Keep up to date with the latest developments of veraPDF by subscribing to the veraPDF consortium’s newsletter.

Led by the Open Preservation Foundation and the PDF Association, the veraPDF consortium is developing the definitive open source, file-format validator for all parts and conformance levels of ISO 19005 (PDF/A). The software is designed to meet the needs of memory institutions responsible for preserving digital content for the long term.

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.

invited by colleagues of Civic Epistemologies project, a RICHES workshop will complement the final conference on Digital Heritage and Innovation, Engagement and Identity

RICHES workshop session in Berlin: Community-Led Redesign of Cultural Heritage

The final conference of Civic Epistemologies project takes place in Berlin on 12-13 November 2015: Digital Heritage and Innovation, Engagement and Identity.

Two lines will be explored during the Conference:

Digitisation is producing a big change that is impacting cultural institutions, their practices, the way that the heritage is preserved, accessed and made available on the Internet
The participation of citizens in digitisation activities and co-creation experiences, including the artistic dimension, represents a big potential that is demanding to be unlocked.

Integrated in the conference programme, a RICHES workshop will be held on the theme “Community-Led Redesign of Cultural Heritage“.

Date: FRIDAY 13 November 2015 – Venue: Hamburger Bahnhof

09.30 – 09.45 Introduction to the RICHES project: Overview of the project aims and objectives – Neil Forbes, Project Coordinator, Coventry University, UK

09.45 – 10.00 Introduction to the topic of Community-Led Cultural Heritage – Moya Kneafsey, Coventry University, UK

10.00 – 11.30: Sub-session 1: Strategies for the Co-Creation of Cultural Heritage

The Spanish-speaking community in Berlin and the use of ‘diasporic’ media – Swenja Wirtz and Monica Hagedorn-Saupe, SPK, Germany

Co-Creation of Cultural Heritage Strategies – Robin van Westen and Dick van Dijk, WAAG, The Netherland

Plenary Discussion

coffee break

11.30 – 13.00: Sub-session 2: Community-Led Culture Economies

Community-Led Commodification of Food Cultures – Moya Kneafsey, Coventry University

The Commodification of Community-learned Skills in the Digital Age: The Case of Craft – Amalia Sabiescu and Martin Woolley, Coventry University, UK

Community Participation in the Redesign of Urban Built Heritage: the case of Palazzo Pretorio, Italy Antonella Fresa, Promoter, Italy

Plenary discussion

The whole conference programme and registration is available here.

The presentation drew upon the work Europeana Space that is concerned with the role of dance within European society.

E-Space at SOIMA 2015 conference

Unlocking Sound and Image Heritage was the theme of SOIMA 2015 conference held on 3rd-4th of September in Brussels, Belgium at the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and Arts, organized by ICCROM (International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property).

Europeana Space Dance Pilot (COVUNI) and the project’s Legal team (Exeter University) presented a paper “Challenges at the Europeana Space Project; Copyright Law and Implications” looked at the role that dance content plays within the records of digital cultural heritage across Europe and how these new tools encourage reimagination, reuse and the challenges that arise in the process. The presentation by Coordinator Prof. Sarah Whatley (Coventry University) and Prof. Charlotte Waelde (University of Exeter) drew upon the work of the European Commission funded project Europeana Space that is concerned with the role of dance within European society. By working with artists, researchers and other cultural industry experts across the European community, the project is exploring the impact of digital technologies on dance and cultural heritage.

Audience was comprised dance artists, graphic and material artists, graduate students, academics and other Arts and Cultural heritage professionals and practitioners from all over the world. The objectives of this presentation were to disseminate Pilot information, materials and tools; to encourage people to learn more about E-Space and Europeana Foundation and to follow on twitter and other social media outlets; to identify local test-users and finally to gather feedback on the E-Space Pilot ideas.

The impact is hard to measure but it is known that all of the individuals understood the nature of the E-Space Pilot, the project and the Europeana Foundation. Attendees were interested and eager to learn more. The dialogue generated was constructive and useful for the Dance Pilot and the participants. It was an occasion to gather information on the digital technologies practicioners are familiar with or currently using, the IPR issues they face and the potential that Dance Pilot prototypes could have on their work. It was possible to share the usability testing results and disseminate about the Dance Hackathon scheduled for Nov 2015.

Conference website: http://soima2015.kikirpa.be/

To integrate the conformance checkers in the Technical Space developed in ESpace

MoU between PREFORMA and Europeana Space

A new agreement has been signed between PREFORMA (represented by the Project Coordinator Borje Justrell) and Europeana Space (represented by the Technical Coordinator Antonella Fresa).

The main objective of this agreement is the integration of the open source tools developed in PREFORMA (that control if a file complies with standard specifications and with other acceptance criteria specified by memory institutions) in the Technical Space of Europeana Space.

This would have the following benefits:

For Europeana Space, the Technical Space could offer to its users a new functionality, i.e. to control if a file complies with the standard specifications and with other acceptance criteria specified by memory institutions. This is very important to ensure the long-term preservation of the digital data, which is a key aspect to be taken into account when creating, migrating and ingesting file into archives.
For PREFORMA, this experiment could represent a proof of concept / test case where to try to embed the newly implemented software into a specific environment, as it is the ESpace web-based technical platform.

Europeana Space (www.europeana-space.eu) is a Best Practice Network project funded by the EC within the framework of the CIP BNP Programme, and its aim is to create new opportunities for employment and economic growth within the creative industries sector based on Europe’s rich digital cultural resources.

PREFORMA (www.preforma-project.eu) is a Pre-Commercial Procurement project co-funded by the European Commission within the framework of the FP7 ICT Programme with the aim to address the challenge of implementing good quality standardised file formats for preserving data content in the long term and to give memory institutions full control of the process of the conformity tests of files to be ingested into archives.

C-DARE Centre for Dance Research of Coventry University seeks for highly motivated researchers

Researchers needed at Coventry University

C-DaRE is pleased to announce that we have been awarded a number of fully funded full-time PhD Studentships available for highly motivated postgraduates wanting to undertake research from January 2016.

We welcome applications that propose topics that align with one of our research themes and which explore different methodological approaches, including practice-as-research.

Applicants will need to complete the application form and submit a covering letter together with a 2000-word expansion of the proposed topic that addresses one of the research themes. Applications are welcomed from home/EU and international students.

Closing date for applications – November 30 2015.

Research Themes:

Dance documentation
Experimental choreographic practices
Choreographic practice with reference to political, social and economic conditions
Performing the (dance) archive
Creative coding and dance (material, design and form)
Screendance
Dance and collective trauma from the 19th century to the present day
Dance dramaturgy
Somatic practices in performance, somatics and cultural context, and the impact of digital technologies on the soma
Transcultural and intercultural identity in dance
Improvisation
Dance and wellbeing
Dance and cultural studies
Inclusive dance practices and pedagogy within the professional dance environment

To apply online, please visit the Coventry University Website.

If you would like to discuss any of these opportunities please contact Sarah Whatley on s.whatley @ coventry .ac.uk

Last chance to submit your ideas in the strands My Local Heritage and My LoCloud Services

LoCloud international competition – deadline 1 November!

LoCloud is a Best Practice Network that brings together a strong group of technical partners with network and regional aggregation service providers, and a number of partners representing specialised museums, public libraries and archives. LoCloud’s overall goal is to support small and medium-sized institutions in making their content and metadata available to Europeana and provides guidance, training and support services to meet the needs of content providing institutions.

Now, LoCloud is launching an international competition focussing on local heritage and culture. The competition has two strands:

My Local Heritage – invites people to explore a favourite place or part of their local history through Europeana and to present their experience online in webpages, a blog or video.
My LoCloud Services – invites developers, aggregators and individual cultural institutions to showcase their use of LoCloud services.

The finalists will be invited to present their entries at the LoCloud final event, which will be held in Amersfoort, Netherlands on 5th February 2016.

Winners of the My Local Heritage competition will receive a prize of a tablet computer; winners of the My LoCloud Services competition will receive a prize of a smart watch. All winning entries will be publicised by LoCloud and Europeana.

Contacts

For any additional information on the LoCloud competition, please contact: competition @ locloud.eu

Find out about the competition in your country.

using the Europeana Digital Library collections to create products for educational or commercial use around the theme of food and drink.

Europeana Food and Drink Open Innovation Challenge – 2D & 3D Product Design

Europeana Food and Drink would like to invite you to get involved in our third and final Europeana Food and Drink Open Innovation Challenge “Reworking Digital Heritage of Food and Drink to Create Material Productions”

We’re looking for creatives and craftsmen all over Europe to use the Europeana Digital Library collections to create 2D or 3D products around the theme of food and drink. This can vary from all kind of objects such as glasses, wine bottles, boxes used for product packaging, tools, stickers & logos or handicraft products for educational or commercial use.

Europeana Food and Drink aims to enhance knowledge and highlight the value of the European food and drink heritage, promoting artisan food productions and their relation to cultural identity. The project is part of Europeana, a database of some 30 million digitised cultural and historical documents, images, sound and video files from Europe’s museums, libraries, galleries and archives. The Europeana API allows you to access most of the collections and incorporate them into objects in many fields such as design, advertising and marketing, digital 3D reproduction tools or other traditional printing techniques.

The call for applications is open now!

How to apply? Create your food and drink product, document the production by a max. 11 minute video and upload this until 20^th December 2015 on http://contest.upeurope.com.

The prize? Each of the two winning products – one for 2D category and one for 3D category – will receive € 2.000,00 in cash, funded by the Europeana Food and Drink Project. Our expert jury will evaluate all video applications and winners will be invited to Sevilla, Spain (29^th January 2016) to present their work at our 3rd Challenge Award Event.

Need some inspiration? Check out these mouth-watering Europeana Food and Drink Pinterest and Europeana Pinterest Boards.. Stay tuned about the project at @foodanddrink_eu and via the Europeana Food and Drink facebook page.

For additional information have a look at our Open Innovation Challenge Factsheet and visit our website to find out more on how to enter the challenge