Digital meets Culture

Brussels, 13 October 2015

E-Space at the JPEG workshop on Privacy and Security

by Frederik Temmermans, iMinds

On the 13th of October 2015, the Joint Pictures Experts Group (JPEG) organised a workshop in Brussels on privacy and security support for image data. Privacy and security is becoming steadily more important seen the fact that image collections are increasingly more stored in distributed and cloud repositories rather than in private repositories. Moreover, social media and online photo repositories, for example, are currently offering insufficient means to secure privacy-sensitive information carried by the picture or to signal associated IPR metadata.

Privacy and security concerns and handling IPR is critical when dealing with digitised cultural heritage content; hence they are an important focus of the E-Space project. An overview of state of the art solutions and standards was presented during the IPR workshop taking place in March 2015 in Coventry (UK).

During the JPEG workshop in Brussels roles were reversed. JPEG experts wanted to learn from actors in the field about their needs related to privacy and security and as such shape the development of future standards. The workshop was targeted on understanding industry, user and policy needs in terms of technology and supported functionalities.

[Show as slideshow]

As such, it comes as no surprise that E-Space was well represented during this event. Peter Schelkens and Frederik Temmermans from iMinds are both members of the organising committee; Charlotte Waelde and Fred Truyen, from the University of Exeter and KU Leuven respectively, delivered a presentation during the workshop.

Presentation by Charlotte Waelde, entitled “Cultural Heritage, Copyright and Code: Europeana Space as a case study” focused on lessons learned during the E-Space project related to dealing with intellectual property right in the cultural heritage sector.

Fred Truyen’s presentation, “Publishing Archival Photographs: concerns, pitfalls and their technical implications” (PDF, 4.5 Mb), gave an overview of the experienced challenges related to providing public access to photographic content and announced the E-Space Photography Hackathon on February 2016.

More information can be found on the jpeg.org website.

Additional information on the new Privacy and Security work item is also available here.

Brussels, 13 November 2015

Open ICT Standards for Public Procurement: Fostering Interoperability

The Scenario

Under Digital Agenda, the European Commission commits itself through Action 23 to provide guidance on the link between ICT Standardisation and Public Procurement in order to help public authorities use standards to promote efficiency and reduce lock-in.

As a matter of fact, using open ICT standards results in:

Higher savings when procuring ICT
An increased level of competition among suppliers
Being compliant with EU Public Procurement directives

The Workshop

If you are involved somehow in ICT procurement and want to know how other organizations similar to yours are successfully dealing with ICT “lock-in” when procuring their ICT Systems, you are warmly invited to attend the “Open ICT Standards for Public Procurement: Fostering interoperability” workshop, taking place in Brussels – at DG CONNECT – on November 13th, 2015.

The Workshop will be a great opportunity to meet MSP members, procurement managers, policymakers and ICT suppliers to discuss how to effectively reduce lock-in by using Open ICT Standards.

Main goals of the event:

Present the European Catalogue of ICT technical specification for public procurement and how it will contribute to the Digital Single Market
Provide some suggestions on how to reduce lock-in when procuring ICT
Share good practice examples on how to procure ICT on the basis of standards.

For further information please visit the Workshop webpage.

Amsterdam, 3-4 November 2015

Europeana Network Association AGM 2015

“We are Europeana”

The Europeana Network Association Annual General Meeting (AGM) is an annual key event for Europeana and its network. It provides the opportunity for Europeana and its partners for all to share, discuss and develop specific areas of mutual interest.

The 2015 edition of this event will start on Tuesday afternoon 3 November and will continue until Wednesday 4 November. During the AGM delegates will reflect on the work accomplished in 2015 and look ahead to the challenges and opportunities for the coming years.

Furthermore, part of the meeting will reflect on the Europeana elections, which will have an important role in our future; more information about this topic will be added to this page soon. 31 candidates have come forward to campaign for seven places on the Europeana Network Association Members Council, and the voting begins on 3 November.

Early Bird Registration: please register here

Draft agenda

Pakhuis De Zwijger, Tuesday 3/11/2015
09:00-14:00 Pre conference meetings (Invite only)

14:00-14:10 Welcome and Agenda overview
14:10-14:50 TRACK 1: Europeana Network Association General Assembly
14:50-15:30 Keynote: Colin Moon
15:30-15:45 Comfort break
15:45-16:15 Ignite Talks – Round 1
16:15-16:45 TRACK 2: Taking a Commons approach
16:45-17:30 Speaker: Michel L. Roger Jr. (tbc)
17:30 End of day 1
19:00 Social event

Pakhuis De Zwijger, Wednesday 4/11/2015
10:00-10:10 Day introduction and agenda
10:10-10:40 Ignite Talks – Round 2
10:40-11:10 TRACK 3: Europeana towards 2020
11:10-11:40 Task Force updates
11:40-12:10 BP 2015 to 2016 – Europeana team leads
12:10-12:45 Re-Use best practices
12:45-14:00 Lunch
14:00-14:10 TRACK 4: Europeana Innovations
14:10-15:00 Europeana towards 2016
15:00-15:20 Speaker 3: Laurent Gaveau
15:20-15:45 Comfort break
15:45-16:30 Speaker 4: European Commission: Mr. Javier Hernández-Ros
16:30-17:00 Wrap-up, AGM 2016, Next steps
17:00 End

Half a day of pre-conference meetings on 3 November will be arranged for specific Network activities.

AGM 2015 Event page: http://pro.europeana.eu/event/europeana-annual-general-meeting-2015

An open source validator for different file formats and Submission Information Package (SIP)

KOST-Val released by the TI/A Standard Initiative team

KOST-Val is an open source validator for different file formats (TIFF, SIARD, PDF/A, JP2, JPEG) and Submission Information Package (SIP).

It has been developed by KOST-CECO, is a Swiss coordination office which is member of the TI/A Standard Initiative team, a group of experts focussing on the definition of a specification of a Archival TIFF Format

For futher information visit the KOST-Val page in the Community Owned digital Preservation Tool Registry (COPTR).

Funtional Principle

KOST-Val complies with the following requirements.

TIFF validation: KOST-Val reads a TIFF file and uses JHOVE to validate the structure, the content, and ExifTool to validate the key properties such as compression, colour space, and multipage. These properties can be configured.
SIARD validation: KOST-Val reads a SIARD (eCH-0165 v1 ) file and validates the structure and the content.
PDF/A validation: KOST-Val reads a PDF or PDF/A file (ISO 19005-1 and 19005-2) and uses 3-Heights? PDF/A Validator by PDF-Tools or PDF/A Manager by PDFTron to validate the structure and the content of the PDF file. KOST-Val organises the different error messages into main categories such as fonts, graphics, and metadata. KOST-Val supplies only a limited version from 3-Heights? PDF/A Validator by PDF-Tools. Module J extracts (with iText) and validates the JPEG and JP2 images contained in the PDF file (depending on the configuration). It is also possible to configure whether the JBIG2 compression is accepted or not.
JP2 validation: KOST-Val reads a JP2 file (ISO 15444) and uses Jpylyzer to validate the structure and the content.
JPEG validation: KOST-Val reads a JPEG file (ISO 10918-1) and uses Bad Peggy to validate the structure and the content.
SIP validation: KOST-Val reads an SIP (eCH-0160 v1 as well as Swiss Federal Archives SFA v1 and v4 ) and validates the mandatory requirements of the SIP specification. The validated requirements are organised into groups such as folder structure, schema validation, and checksum validation. At the outset, a file format validation is performed.

The results (including information on inconsistencies and errors) are output for every step and written into a validation log. The validation steps are executed sequentially. Whenever possible the validation shall continue after an error has been detected in order to reduce the number of correction cycles.

Third-party applications

KOST-Val uses unmodified components of other manufacturers by embedding them directly into the source code. Users of KOST-Val are requested to adhere to these components’ terms of licence.

The TIFF validation module uses JHOVE and ExifTool and evaluates its output further.
For the PDF/A validation module PDF-A Manager or 3-Heights PDF/A Validator are used.
The JP2 validation module uses Jpylyzer and translates the failed tests into appropriate error messages (DE/FR/EN).
The JPEG validation module uses Bad Peggy and evaluates the error message “Not a JPEG file” further.
To extract the JPEG and JP2 images from PDF/A the iText library is used.
For the file format identification DROID is used. For performance and granularity reasons an own SignatureFile is used instead of the official PRONOM registry.

About the TI/A Standard initiative

The TI/A Standard initiative is promoted by the Digital Humanities Lab of the University of Basel, the Agents Research Lab of the University of Girona and Easy Innova with the support of many interested memory institutions.

This standard will be created in parallel with DPF Manager, an open source TIFF format validator that, in addition to the current TIFF ISO Standards, will be the first conformance checker for the TI/A new standard.

This initiative has been boosted by PREFORMA, a PCP project that aims to address the challenge of implementing good quality standardised file formats for preserving data content in the long term.

Tuesday 13 October 15:00 BST / 16:00 CET

From the Toolbox: veraPDF webinar

veraPDF 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 webinar covers the work the veraPDF consortium have done so far on PREFORMA project. This includes the initial implementation of the PDF/A-1B validation model, the details on the latest 0.4 code release and plans for upcoming releases. We also discuss the integration points and extensibility of the framework to cover additional requirements on PDF documents.

For more information on veraPDF visit http://verapdf.org/

Session lead

Boris Doubrov, Dual Lab

Registration

https://openpreservation.clickwebinar.com/from-the-toolbox-verapdf/register

All the project's partners met at Scuola Normale Superiore

PREFORMA Plenary Meeting held in Pisa

PREFORMA partners met in Pisa on 8-9 October 2015 to discuss the current status of the project and to plan the next steps.

The meeting was hosted by the Scuola Normale Superiore and it was held jointly with the Cloud Forward 2015 Conference organised by the H2020 HOLA CLOUD project and in friendship with the Internet Festival 2015.

Several topics were discussed by the consortium, among which:

How to address the recommendations made by the EC reviewers during the first review meeting.
How to evaluate the results of the first prototyping phase, which will finish at the end of October 2015.
How to plan the second design phase which will start on November 1st and last 4 months.
How to plan the evaluation phase, which will involve memory institutions inside and outside the PREFORMA consortium who are interested to test the prototypes that are being developed by the suppliers.
How to address the issues related to the interoperability of the different conformance checkers.
The organisation of the Open Source Workshop, to be held in Stockholm on 7 April 2016.

For further information visit the PREFORMA project’s website and Open Source Portal.

Vienna, 8 October 2015

PREFORMA presented at FIAT/IFTA 2015

Bert Lemmens from PACKED, Peter Bubestinger from the Austrian Mediathek and Tessa Fallon from MediaArea presented the PREFORMA project at the FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2015.

The presentation, which is available for download here, covered th following topics:

PREFORMA challenge brief
Standard specifications selected
FFV1 for preservation
FFV1 features
FFV1 standardisation
MediaConch conformance checker

The 2015 FIAT/IFTA World Conference took place in Vienna from October 7th until October 10th 2015. This year theme was: “Audiovisual Culture, a bridge to the future”.

Audiovisual Culture is in all places and activities; and our society uses and generates an increasing number of content. The more audiovisual archives interact with society and internet, the more questions arise on how to advance, which decisions to take and how to maintain the spirit of archiving in an ever-changing environment.

The 2015 FIAT/IFTA World Conference provided a unique occasion in which archives can discuss & learn about the many challenges and innovations for archives in their quest towards the future. Different aspects of the archives life, use and potential value were presented permitting participants to grasp what has been done and what we will be able to do in the future.

Results of the panel organised by Promoter Srl involving EU projects RICHES, Civic Epistemologies, E-Space, PREFORMA and the international association Photoconsortium

From Digitization to Preservation, Creative Re-Use of Cultural Content, and Citizen Participation

On 1st October 2015, in Granada, the European projects RICHES, E-Space, Civic Epistemologies, PREFORMA and the international association Photoconsortium met in a panel organised by Promoter SRL under the title “From Digitisation to Preservation, Creative Re-use of Cultural Content and Citizen Participation”.

The panel was hosted by Digital Heritage 2015 (28 September-2 October 2015) as part of the conference programme and attracted cultural managers, ICT experts, researchers, service providers from all over Europe as well as and other European projects.

Antonella Fresa, from Promoter srl, introduced the objectives of the panel and the projects involved.

Antonella Fresa from Promoter Srl introduced the objectives of the panel and the projects involved. From the growing amount of digitised cultural heritage, open questions are raised by the change and impact they brought in any field of our society. Therefore there is the need to establish the path towards a more advanced society, that makes use of the full potential of digital technologies to foster cultural and societal progress.

Neil Forbes, from Coventry University, presented the RICHES project. Neil Forbes it the Project Coordinator.

Neil Forbes from Coventry University presented the RICHES project, providing the humanities point of view and giving an introduction about the wide context of change that the cultural sector is facing, with a particular attention to the changes derived from the introduction of the digital technologies.

Sarah Whatley, from Coventry University, is the EUROPEANA SPACE Project Coordinator.

Sarah Whatley from Coventry University talked about EUROPEANA SPACE, looking at the encounter of content providers and creative industry to show experiments and options for a real exploitation of the CH when it is offered in digital form, in various sectors.

Sy Holsinger, from EGI.eu, presented the CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES project.

Sy Holsinger from EGI.eu introduced CIVIC EPISTEMOLOGIES, focusing on the societal aspects and tackling the question of how the civic society can participate and engage with the digital transformation of cultural heritage, not just for fun and entertainment, but also to participate in the research activities.

Fred Truyen, from KU Leuven, presented the PHOTOCONSORTIUM International Association.

Finally, Antonella Fresa, who talked on behalf of Börje Justrell from Riksarkivet, and Fred Truyen from KU Leuven presented PREFORMA and PHOTOCONSORTIUM to touch two technical questions that are at the basis of the whole digital cultural heritage, namely: the digital preservation and the high quality digitisation.

Download here the full presentation.

The Panel will be hosted to the DCDC2015 Discovering Collections, Discovering Communities, in Manchester on 14 October 2015 and to the DISH – Digital Strategies for Heritage conference in Rotterdam on 7 December 2015.

a perfect occasion to present Blinkster as an ‘easy to handle’ app solution.

Museums Pilot at the EDV Tage in Theuern (Bavaria, Germany)

CC BY-SA 3.0 Jacquesverlaeken

by Marlene Scholz, SPK

From the 16^th to the 18^th September 2015 the annual conference “EDV Tage” (EDP Days) took place in Theuern, a picturesque village between Nuremberg and Regensburg. At the 27 years old event German representatives of both the cultural industry and museum professionals such as the State Office for Non-state Museums in Bavaria but also small non-profit associations got together. Under the conference subject “Media (use) in Museums” they presented different exhibition models using applications, web services and electronic devices. Every presentation was followed by intense discussions where costs, durability and extra work played an important role.

The “EDV Tage” were for the E|Space Partner SPK a perfect occasion to present Blinkster as an ‘easy to handle’ app solution. Offering the prospect of an upcoming evaluation of the app in combination with guidelines how to implement the app, SPK got a very positive feedback from the audience. Many of the listeners got interested in following the E|Space activities.

A next event where SPK will present E|Space is the “Berliner Herbsttreffen zur Museumsdokumentation” (Annual Berlin Autumn meeting – museums documentation) (12-14/10/15). The Fachgruppe Museumsdokumentation (Museum Documentation Professional Group) was founded at the general assembly of the German Museum Association in 1994. It organizes conferences at least twice a year, offering a professional forum for information exchange about questions of conventional and IT based museum documentation.

On this occasion, SPK will also start a first evaluation of Blinkster with the working group “Multimedia”. SPK is already excited about the end users’ feedback.

the Coordinator Sarah Whatley will be presenting the project in a panel at Discovering Collections Discovering Communities 2015 RLUK event

E-Space @ Manchester DCDC15 conference

DCDC (Discovering Collections, Discovering Communities) is a collaborative conference hosted by The National Archives and Research Libraries UK that explores inter-disciplinary, cross-sector approaches and opportunities to developing and widening access to the wealth of our collections through partnership and collaborative working, across the heritage, cultural and academic sectors.

E-Space coordinator prof. Sarah Whatley will talk about how digital cultural data need to be re-used at best, to unlock their business potential for fostering economic growth. The creative industry is the key stakeholder to leverage on DCH for creating new tools/services, thus generating new employment and economic rewards; but a bigger dialogue should progress with cultural institutions, for developing mutual benefitting public-private-partnerships.

Sarah’s speech will take place in a panel workshop including E-Space and other projects and initiaves on 14th October.