Digital meets Culture

Survey conducted by the BenchmarkDP project

Open consultation on software evaluation in digital preservation

BenchmarkDP project is carrying out a consultation on software evaluation in the digital preservation field.

Aim of this consultation is to get insights into the current state of software evaluations in the digital preservation field, in particular which are the current practices of software evaluations, challenges faced, limitations and advantages they bring to the running businesses, and which are in the better community-driven evaluation initiatives.

This consultation is open to everybody who wants to participate. If you are a practitioner working with software tools in a memory institution, or a software developer developing solutions for digital preservation problems, or a researcher in the digital preservation area doing research related to software tools, you are most welcome to join.

Take the survey (it shouldn’t take you more than 10 minutes to finish it) at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1cpfUsizBbSC0c8qpXHob91qxpiRBgQhVs8A2HHajJ2w/viewform

BenchmarkDP is a research project funded by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF). It has started in November 2012 and is running until summer 2016. You can find more information at http://benchmark-dp.org.

Study carried out as part of an IMLS-funded project to establish a Software Preservation Network

Software Preservation for Cultural Heritage

This is an invitation to participate in a study entitled “Software Preservation for Cultural Heritage“.

The research is part of an IMLS-funded project to establish a Software Preservation Network. Aim of the study is to better understand cultural heritage practices/experiences surrounding long-term preservation and access to digital primary resources stored in proprietary file formats. While the cultural heritage community has developed tools and workflows for bitstream preservation, the community lacks empirical data regarding the experiences and efforts of cultural heritage repositories to access material stored in proprietary file formats during appraisal, accessioning, description, and reference activities.

As part of this survey, you will also be invited to opt-in for a follow-up semi-structured interview regarding proprietary software challenges. Anonymized data from the study will be made available to the profession and software rights holders, along with analysis of current trends and possibilities for future research.

Take the survey (roughly 20 minutes) at https://utexas.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_eJr7lm1aCaC4McJ.

Questions? Contact:

Jessica Meyerson, Digital Archivist, Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin <j.meyerson@austin.utexas.edu>
Zach Vowell, Digital Archivist, Robert E. Kennedy Library, California Polytechnic State University <zvowell@calpoly.edu>

Brussels, 12 November 2015

Lifestyle and Time Use for a Forward-Looking Europe – GLAMURS workshop

An interesting workshop organized by the European GLAMURS project (Green Lifestyles, Alternative Models and Upscaling Regional Sustainability) will demonstrate the latest findings from GLAMURS, and seek feedback on policy recommendations for the last phase of the project.

GLAMURS aims to explore transitions to more sustainable lifestyles and greener economies in Europe. Involving a team of world-leading psychologists, economists, transition researchers and modellers from Spain, the UK, Norway, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania and Austria, GLAMURS is examining how existing sustainable lifestyle initiatives can be scaled up.

The programme of the workshop is divided in four sessions:

State of the art introduction
What makes people choose and change their lifestyles?
Making time for sustainability
Simulating human scenarios

Download the invitation, agenda and details (PDF, 700 Kb)

Speakers include: Elisabeth Lipiatou / Domenico Rossetti (European Commission, DG RTD – B.6), Ricardo García Mira (University of A Coruna, Spain, Project Coordinator), Adina Dumitru (UDC), Giuseppe Carrus (ROMA3), Lucy O’Shea (UBATH), Michael Finus (UBATH), Ugo Guarnacci (European Commission, DG RTD – I.3), Ellen Matthies (Magdeburg University), Gerardus Klaassen (European Commission, DG CLIMA), Gary Polhill (JHI), Tony Craig (JHI) Jaco Quist (Delft University), Valeriu Dan Dionisie (European Commission, DG JUST), Pawel Swieboda (Deputy Director, European Policy Strategic Center – EPSC).

Date: 12th November 2015

Location: Spanish Centre for Scientific Research (CSIC), 62 Rue du Trône, 1050 Brussels (7th floor, room III)

The entrance is free but for registration please contact moritz.kammerlander@seri.at before 30 October 2015.

For more information about GLAMURS, see http://www.glamurs.eu/.

From William Kilbride of the Digital Preservation Coalition

An invitation to review and reform OAIS

Dear All,

It is my pleasure to invite you to participate in a new initiative that will hold our interest for a couple of years and which we aim to build into a platform for collaboration in the digital preservation community in the future.

The OAIS standard published by both the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) and as ISO14721 has been highly influential in the development of digital preservation. As a reference model it provides a common basis for aligning disparate practice in diverse institutional settings. A range of standards have emerged around and related to OAIS including PREMIS (for preservation metadata), ISO16363 (for certification) and PAIMAS (for exchange between Producers and Archives).

Since OAIS was initially proposed the digital preservation community has grown tremendously in absolute numbers and in diversity. OAIS adoption has expanded far beyond the space data community to include cultural heritage, research data centers, commerce, industry and government.

The digital preservation community has – we have! – a responsibility to keep our standards relevant. The upcoming ISO review of the OAIS standard in 2017 offers a chance for a cooperative, transparent review process. It also creates an opportunity for further community building around OAIS and related initiatives.

Can our community develop an information platform around these common vocabularies, concepts, functions, and standards to develop a common view on the state of digital curation and preservation and provide the basis for a contribution to the OAIS review?

”’We think we can!”’

With your support we have initiated the following:

OAIS Community forum via a wiki: Your feedback and the discussions on this wiki will provide raw material for an editorial committee of the most active participants to formulate recommendations which will result in a formal submission to the 2017 review. So sign in and add your views!
Exploring official mechanisms: Official mechanisms for the review of ISO standards are well established via National Standard Bodies and these will be explored and used to give input for the review.
Active Interaction: Ensuring inclusion for this large, diverse community will mean collaborative virtual meetings are necessary but we all recognize the value of meeting face to face and will seek to enable this.

The outcome from this activity is not simply a wiki nor is it a set of recommendations. By providing a shared open platform for the community that gathers around the OAIS we aim to ensure on-going dialogue about our standards and their implementation in the future.

In this sense the 2017 review is a milestone on the way to an engaged and empowered community rather than a destination.

Join the community and contribute your views on the wiki here:

http://wiki.dpconline.org/index.php?title=OAIS_Community

Read and comment on David Rosenthal’s case for a revision of the OAIS model here:

http://wiki.dpconline.org/index.php?title=The_case_for_a_revision_of_OAIS

William Kilbride

Executive Director, The Digital Preservation Coalition

Posted on TownsWeb Archiving blog by Ryan Kyle

JPEG2000 and Digitisation: Expert round table

With digital preservation, and in particular the preservation of digital assets created by digitisation, very much a hot topic in the archives and libraries communities recently; we are being asked more and more frequently by clients which is the “best” image format to use.

Of course the answer is almost always “It depends on your project’s goals.”

But more specifically, we are finding an increasing number asking about JPEG2000. Some are concerned that they might be unable to access their collections in the future if they don’t digitise to JPEG2000, others have a strong trust in tried and tested TIFF files and have some trepidation at switching to a new format, and yet others aren’t completely sure of the advantages JPEG2000 provides over the original JPEG format…

TownsWeb Archiving interviewed four experts (Dave Thompson – Digital Curator, Wellcome Library, Melissa Terras – Director, UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, Paul Sugden – Senior Digitisation Consultant, TownsWeb Archiving, Michael Pritchard – Director-General, The Royal Photographic Society) to shed light on JPEG2000 as a format, it’s potential role in digitisation, and it’s suitability for digital preservation.

Read here the whole interview…

Source: TownsWeb Archiving blog

A new beta version of JHOVE 1.12 is now available to download

OPF releases JHOVE 1.12 beta

JHOVE (JSTOR/Harvard Object Validation Environment) is an extensible software framework for performing format identification, validation, and characterisation of digital objects. The Open Preservation Foundation (OPF) took over stewardship of JHOVE in February 2015 to provide it with a permanent and sustainable home.

A new beta version of JHOVE 1.12 is now available to download at http://downloads.opf-labs.org/dev/jhove-xplt-installer-dev-latest.jar

The focus of this release is on stability of the code base, so very little code has changed. The JHOVE README provides an overview of the steps we have taken to put in place automated build, testing and deployment, and mavenisation of the code base. The main functional change is that JHOVE now has a dedicated cross-platform installer.

Installation instructions for Windows, Mac and Linux users are here in the README.

Instructions are available for developers to try including the new Maven version in their own projects. It should continue to work identically to the previous version apart from one or two small output details (e.g. version number, mentions of OPF).

We welcome feedback on the new release. Please tell us whether the installer is an improvement on the previous zip distribution package and what we could do to make installation and configuration of JHOVE easier. The best method for providing feedback is by using the JHOVE issue tracker on GitHub. Here is an example of a recently logged and fixed issue.

The JHOVE web page has been restructured to make it easier to navigate. The logo has been refreshed and work will continue on the look and feel over the coming weeks.

A new mailing list for the discussion of use and development of JHOVE is being set up and will be available shortly.

This JHOVE beta release and plans for future development have been made under the guidance of the JHOVE Product Board. OPF members received a preview of this release to test and provide feedback.

To find out more about becoming an OPF member or software supporter visit: http://openpreservation.org/about/join/.

the expert meeting organized by Waag on co-creation was awarded with a wide audience and very interesting insights which feed RICHES research and tools.

“HACK THE AUDIENCE!” event was a success

On Monday October 5th 2015, almost 60 heritage professionals gathered in the Waag’s Anatomical Theatre in Amsterdam and discussed how co-creation can be applied in the heritage sector to create new stories or new connections with audiences.

The session was organized as part of the EU funded RICHES project, the main objective of which is to reduce the distance between people and culture: the focus of the afternoon was, therefore, on the audience and what their potential new relationships with heritage institutions might look like, and on how a co-creation approach could potentially drive this process.

Museum representatives delivered their experience and lessons learnt on co-creative projects in museums; while others talked about inclusiveness and non-exclusivity, citizens/visitors participation and involvement, user-generated new heritage and new meanings of collections and other interesting topics.

[Show as slideshow]

Photos CC BY-NC-SA courtesy of WAAG, more available here

The experts at this meeting gave a beautiful overview of important, co-creation values, and the various pitfalls encountered while trying to uphold these values, which will be integrated and used in the co-creation part of the upcoming RICHES Resources webiste that is currently under construction, which aims to provide heritage professionals with inspiration about how to implement this in their own work

Read more about the day on the entire WAAG’s blogpost here.

Stockholm (Sweden), 13 - 17 June, 2016.

Presenting the Theatrical Past. Interplays of Artefacts, Discourses and Practices

This conference addresses questions concerning our relationship to theatre history, i.e. the relation between present and past. How and why do we deal with history? What do we do with history? To what extent is historical research an exploration of our present?

Organized by the International Federation of Theatre Research, IFTR 2016 focuses on critical perspectives on theatre history. The theatre of the past is accessible to us via historical objects, theoretical discourses and archive materials. But we can also experience it through performance practices that keep traditions alive or engage in re-enactments of theatre events and representations.

Conference takes place in Stockholm on 13-17 June 2016.

A wide Call for Papers was open for the various sections and working groups of the conference, and of particular currency is the call on Digital Humanities in Theatre Research, by the working group with the same name. Papers are welcome that:

explore the theoretical implications of Digital Humanities for our research into
theatre and performance
describe existing cyber projects in theatre and performance research
propose needed digital projects in these fields
explicate problems relating to the pedagogy and technology of such projects (and
perhaps propose solutions to them)
focus on digital theatre history and historiography

Santa Clara, California (USA), 29 October 2015.

III Workshop on Big Humanities Data

Santa Clara convention centre, California, USA

The third IEEE Workshop on Big Humanities Data will be held on Thursday, 29 October 2015, in conjunction with the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (IEEE BigData 2015), which takes place between October 29 and November 1 2015 in Santa Clara, California, USA, and which provides a leading international forum for disseminating the latest research in the growing field of “big data”. This workshop will address applications of “big data” in the humanities, arts, culture and social science and the challenges and possibilities that such increased scale brings for scholarship in these areas.

The use of computational methods in the humanities is growing rapidly, with the increasing quantities of born-digital primary sources (such as archives of emails and social media) and the large-scale digitisation programmes applied to libraries and archives. This has resulted in a range of experiments with new methodologies and new applications. At the same time, humanities and culture research is itself challenged by interpretative issues raised by applying such data-driven methods for answering humanities research questions.

Moreover, the questions and concerns raised by the humanities themselves have consequences for the interpretation in general of “big data”, the uses to which it is put and the challenges of producing quality (meaning, knowledge and value) from quantity. The workshop will thus also address complementary research that uses the humanities and its methods to provide a critical appraisal of “big data” in other areas, both inside and outside academia.

Research topics covered – Topics covered by the workshop include, but are not restricted to, the following:

Text- and data-mining of historical and archival material.
Social media analysis, including sentiment analysis
New research objects for humanities analysis such as digital music, film
Cultural analytics
Social analytics
Crowdsourcing and big data
Cyber-infrastructures for the humanities (for instance, cloud computing)
NoSQL databases and their applications in the humanities
Big data and the construction of memory and identity
Big data and archival practice
Corpora and collections of big data
Linked Data and Big Data
Constructing big data for research in the humanities

Programme Chairs:

Dr. Mark Hedges Department of Digital Humanities King’s College London, UK
Dr. Tobias Blanke Department of Digital Humanities King’s College London, UK
Prof. Richard Marciano College of Information Studies – “Maryland’s iSchool” University of Maryland, USA.

For more info click here

Gathering people from both creative industries and ICT fields in order to exchange ideas on shared strategic collaboration.

E-Space invited in CRe-AM networking session at ICT Lisbon 2015!

In force of the cooperation with sister project CRe-AM, E-Space representatives were invited to join a networking session organized by this latter in the huge EU event ICT 2015, taking place in Lisbon.

The CRe-AM networking session aims to gather people from both creative industries and ICT fields in order to exchange ideas on shared strategic collaboration. It focuses on the role of technologies and actors working as bridges between creative sectors and ICT Research & Development. Representatives of related European large clusters and initiatives will present key examples and analyses, in order to raise awareness among the ICT community about the most recent trends in the creative one. Delegates coming from Design, Art, ePublishing, Gaming, Art and Architecture industries convened to exchange ideas with ICT researchers and developers and to contribute to the discussion.

The session agenda and information are available here, and E-Space is represented by Technical Coordinator dr. Antonella Fresa (Promoter SRL) and Prof. Carla Fernandez (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), who presented the project in general and the Dance Pilot in depth. Particularly the Dance Pro tool was illustrated as a video annotator to work as digital note-book to support choreographic processes.

Other speakers at the session were Jean-Dominique Meunier (NEM) Silvia Boi (TISP project), Luis Miguel Girao (Artshare) and Frederik de Wilde (University of Hasselt).

The main outcome of the CRe-AM networking session will be a set of recommendations for the future ICT European Agenda, in order to maximise its impact on the development and adoption of new technologies for supporting the creative processes, as well as enhance existing tools and platforms to better correspond to the needs of specific creators’ groups. The session will allow the coordination of different EC initiatives working at the bridge of technology and creative industries, and its outcomes will enrich CRe-AM roadmaps with a better understanding of cross-sectorial trends and engagement with potential users.

More info: http://www.cre-am.eu/join-cre-am-at-ict2015/

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