Digital meets Culture

We are pleased to announce the latest release of veraPDF

We are pleased to announce the latest release of veraPDF. Version 0.8 features a re-designed command line interface (CLI) for validation and feature extraction.

Highlights of this release are:

Refactored plug-in architecture;
Re-designed CLI for PDF/A validation and feature reporting;
Supporting install scripts;
Updated validation profile syntax;
Simplified machine-readable report format;
Synchronization with PDFBox 2.0 RC1 library.

The most important bugs fixed in this release are:

Comparison of Info dictionary and XMP metadata (PDF/A-1);
Support for missing resources and resource inheritance mechanism (PDF/A-1); and
Parsing TrueType fonts with zero-length tables.

Download veraPDF 0.8 at: http://www.preforma-project.eu/pdfa-conformance-checker.html

Release notes are published at: https://github.com/veraPDF/veraPDF-library/blob/release-0.8/RELEASENOTES.md

veraPDF will deliver the definitive PDF/A validator. Please download and test the software. If you encounter problems, or wish to make suggestions, please add them to the project’s GitHub issue tracker. Your feedback is important, it will contribute to improving the software.

About

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.

Amersfoort (The Netherlands), 5 February 2016

Sharing local cultural heritage online with LoCloud services – LoCloud final conference

This conference organised by the LoCloud project provides an opportunity to share, discuss and demonstrate tools, services and content in the context of Europeana. With showcases from LoCloud content partners and interesting speeches, the conference will reflect on the results achieved by LoCloud and look to the future.

Also, during the conference, the LoCloud “My local heritage” competition will be presented and the winners will be celebrated and awarded.

Details on the programme and tickets are available here: http://www.locloud.eu/Events/LoCloud-Conference

A new agreement has been signed between the two projects

Cooperation between PREFORMA and BenchmarkDP

A new agreement has been signed between PREFORMA and BenchmarkDP, two projects working in the field of digital preservation.

Main objectives of this agreement are:

to explore how the methodologies and approaches of BenchmarkDP could be useful in PREFORMA in establishing an objective frame of reference for the evaluation of the conformance checkers, and how the practical challenges in PREFORMA can inform the work in BenchmarkDP over the next months;
to jointly develop and publish specifications for software benchmarks around the PREFORMA focus areas;
to evaluate the use of BenchmarkDP methods and systems to automatically generate synthetic benchmarking corpora for testing the digital preservation tools developed in PREFORMA, starting from PREFORMA ground truth model;
to evaluate possible approaches to ensure the sustainability of PREFORMA OS projects, starting from the work done in BenchmarkDP on Software Engineering;
to monitor the new H2020 calls to identify whether there is the possibility to develop a joint proposal focused on providing memory institutions with useful methodology and tools for benchmarking.

The cooperation between the two project started with the participation of PREFORMA representatives in the benchmarking workshop organised by BenchmarkDP in the framework of IPRES 2015 Conference.

BenchmarkDP (http://benchmark-dp.org/) is an interdisciplinary multi-year research project funded by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF) to develop the first coherent, systematic approach to assess and compare digital preservation processes, systems, and organizational capabilities.

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.

Athens, 22 January 2016

Best Practice for Education Workshop

This workshop is the first celebration of the work Europeana Space project is doing in the domain of Education. During this workshop, current best practices for environments/applications to facilitate re-use of digital cultural heritage content in an educational context were examined. ‘Education’ here refers not only to the general school system but also to educational services in museums or lifelong-learning programmes.

This workshop presented the E-Space Educational Demonstrators, and also served to gain more feedback and see how further implementation of the developed tools in an educational context could best fit. The Europeana Space MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) was also be presented. A Demo room was available and open to allow workshop participants to explore the Demonstrator prototypes.

[Show as slideshow]

photos courtesy of Katerina Komninou and Fred Truyen

The presentation and discussions of demonstrators using digital cultural content innovatively should have a dual impact:

– students, teachers and other education professionals will acquire creative and technical skills through learning how to work with the tools/applications that are offered
– they will also become more aware of the vast and diverse repository of digital cultural heritage content available on line as a basis for teaching and learning materials that they can assemble or develop.

Onasis Cultural Centre in Athens, Greece

Programme is available HERE

This event was also part of the Hack the Book festival, the hackathon event of Open & Hybrid Publishing pilot, exploring the book as an evolving, visual and open medium: designers, artists, publishers, programmers, authors, poets, hackers and entrepreneurs are invited to a marathon on creative programming, design and entrepreneurial innovation which will redefine the book.

cover image: Rok Lipnik CC-BY 2.0

ITN-DCH project seeking for candidates - APPLICATIONS DEADLINE 15 JANUARY 2016

Full Time Early Stage Researcher (ESR) wanted in the field of of 2D/3D/4D Cultural assets.

Applications are invited from candidates who possess the necessary qualifications in order to fill one (1) full time Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher (ESR) Fellow Position in the Digital Heritage Research Lab of the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) in the research fields of 2D/3D/4D Digitalization (automated methodologies for 2D and 3D data acquisition: photogrammetry, Laser Scanning, depth camera sensors, SfM etc.), Computer Vision (Image processing, geometric invariant visual features, data-preprocessing/filtering, Pattern recognition), Computer Graphics (modeling), Metadata enrichment for tangible and intangible Cultural Heritage, Big Data and Cloud Computing applications.

The selected Marie Curie ESR will work for 19 months within the ITN-Digital Cultural Heritage (ITN-DCH) Marie Curie ITN Programme which, is the only EU funded programme bringing together fourteen (14) leading European Institutions as full partners and nine (9) other as associated partners in a transnational network, aiming at implementing a multidisciplinary and intersectorial research and training programme between the academic and the industrial partners.

Download the full call (PDF, 454 Kb)

a set of shared principles for encouraging and supporting citizens’ engagement in cultural heritage and humanities research

RICHES and Civic Epistemologies present the Berlin Charter

During the International Conference “Digital Heritage and Innovation, Engagement and Identity”, held in Berlin on 12-13 November 2015, the partners of CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES (www.civic-epistemologies.eu) and RICHES (www.riches-project.eu) projects proposed the adoption of the Berlin Charter, a set of principles for encouraging and supporting citizens’ engagement in cultural heritage and humanities research in the digital age.

Neil Forbes (RICHES Project Coordinator) and Mauro Fazio (CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES Project Coordinator) confirmed the adoption of the Berlin Charter with a handshake.

The Charter is open to be adopted by all interested parties, namely private organisations, public institutions, artists, professionals, researchers and interested citizens.

Download here the Berlin Charter and learn how to adopt it.

the EC published about IPR Policy Brief, policy seminar and Berlin Charter

RICHES latest outcomes shared

In the EC website of Research and Innovation, at the section of Social Science and Humanities, the latest outcomes of Riches project were just published:

http://ec.europa.eu/research/social-sciences/index.cfm

The European Commission announces today new initiatives Towards a modern, more European copyright framework. EU-funded social sciences and humanities research proposes a right-based approach concerning digitalisation of European cultural heritage to policy makers and heritage institutions.

Research projects also launched the Berlin Charter supporting citizens’ engagement in cultural heritage and humanities research in the digital age.

RICHES policy brief (PDF, 671 KB)
Berlin charter
Policy Seminar: New Horizons For Cultural Heritage

Tallinn (Estonia), 10-11 December 2015

Creative reuse of cultural heritage and contemporary practices: challenges and opportunities in the digital world: E-Space II conference

Represented by the gracious cornflower, the national symbol of Estonia, the II Europeana Space International Conference took place in Tallinn on 10-11 December 2015.

This event, organized by the Estonian Ministry of Culture, intended to generate new perspectives for the wider re-use of cultural heritage and contemporary practices within a framework of creative experimentation and novel dialogue between multidisciplinary sectors. Next to interesting keynote speakers and round tables, the conference focused on the lessons learnt in the development of the project’s outputs and on moving towards sustainable results.

The conference was hosted at the astonishing location of the Niguliste Church in the Old Town of Tallinn. The Church was turned in a museum and also used for conferences and as a concert hall. Among other artworks, it hosts the exceptional Altarpiece by Herman Rode, one of the masterpieces in Estonian cultural heritage.

After the official opening by Estonian institutions and the welcome speech by the Project Coordinator Sarah Whatley, keynote speaker of day 1 was Mark Coniglio of Troika Ranch, internationally recognized as a pioneering force as an artist, technologist and as a teacher, with an inspiring speech on how creativity and collaborative practice in the artistic field (but not only there) fuels invention and offers the possibility to radically transform appropriated materials into something genuinely new. After that, Milena Popova (Europeana Foundation) and then project’s and Pilot’s representatives discussed on how to boost re-use of digital cultural heritage, in a round table chaired by Antonella Fresa (E-Space technical coordinator).

A networking session and a jazz concert happily concluded the day.

On the second day, heritage and creativity were the keywords. Speeches from international experts explored different aspects of the same topic: Monika Hagedorn-Saupe (SPK) discussed on digitization and its potential to encourage creativity and new cultural experiences in museums, Fred Truyen (KU Leuven) tackled the educational side of Europeana Space, presenting the upcoming MOOC Modular Open Online Course, and eventually Nasos Drosopoulos (NTUA) showcased E-Space interoperable platform for creative reuse of digital cultural heritage.

A final session chaired by Luigi Perissich (Confindustria Servizi Innovativi e Tecnologici – Italian technology Platform Future of Internet) was focused on creativity as an opportunity of growth in the cultural sector, including a speech on the digital single market strategy by Silver Tammik (Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications) and a final round table of experts, fostering interaction with the audience.

Details of the programme, the programme commitee, the complete list of speakers with biography and (coming soon) the slides they presented is available at http://tallinnconference2015.europeana-space.eu

a set of principles for encouraging and supporting citizens’ engagement in cultural heritage and humanities research in the digital age

Berlin Charter – the project’s legacy

During the International Conference “DIGITAL HERITAGE AND INNOVATION, ENGAGEMENT AND IDENTITY”, held in Berlin on 12-13 November 2015, the partners of CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES (www.civic-epistemologies.eu) and RICHES (www.riches-project.eu) projects proposed the adoption of the Berlin Charter, a set of principles for encouraging and supporting citizens’ engagement in cultural heritage and humanities research in the digital age.

Several European organisations and individuals have already agreed to sign the Charter and to advocate its principles in their own operations.

The Charter is open to be adopted by all interested parties, namely private organisations, public institutions, artists, professionals, researchers and interested citizens.

Should you wish to adopt the Berlin Charter, please contact:

Mauro Fazio (the Project Coordinator, mauro.fazio@mise.gov.it)
or
Antonella Fresa (the Project Technical Coordinator, fresa@promoter.it)

DOWNLOAD THE BERLIN CHARTER here: http://www.civic-epistemologies.eu/berlin-charter/

in the image above, Neil Forbes, the RICHES Project Coordinator, and Mauro Fazio, the CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES Project Coordinator, confirmed the adoption of the Berlin Charter with a handshake.

sharing knowledge and best practices in order to provide some answers to the pressing questions related to DCH and technologies

CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES @ Panel session at DISH 2015 Conference

The CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES project is continuing to be disseminated worldwide also after the end of the funding period.

DISH2015 conference is a perfect place for discussing the many challenges faced by cultural institutions, and the needs they have to make strategic decisions about their activities and services. The key aims of the conference were inspiration, knowledge, skills, innovation and networking.

Fred Truyen (from KU Leuven) and Neil Forbes (from Coventry University) continuing dissemination of CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES main results.

So, following the good feedback recently received in similar gatherings, once again Europeana Space, RICHES, Photoconsortium and Civic Epistemologies joined forces to progress on the analysis on the impact that the impressive amount of digitized cultural heritage (DCH) in Europe has, by making cultural heritage more accessible and by generating benefits to the content owners.

Neil Forbes from Coventry University and Fred Truyen from KU Leuven represented the CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES Consortium at the Conference. Neil introduced also the principles of the Berlin Declaration, as a main legacy of the project after the end of the funding period. The slides of the presentations are available for download (PDF, 3.2 Mb).