Digital meets Culture

Submit your paper or poster by 13 July 2015

Cloud Forward 2015 calls for papers!

Pisa, Palazzo della Carovana, Scuola Normale Superiore
CC BY-SA 3.0

Authors are invited to submit abstracts for poster and paper presentations related to the Topics of Interest for the Cloud Forward 2015 Conference: From Distributed to Complete Computing. The 2015 edition will take place at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, from 6 to 8 October 2015, in friendship with Internet Festival.

EXTENDED SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 13/07/2015 (hard deadline)

The CF2015 conference (cf2015.holacloud.eu), organised under the auspices of EGI (European Grid Infrastructure) MISE (Ministero Italiano dello Sviluppo Economico), Regione Toscana, CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche), APRE (Agency for the Promotion of European Research), Municipality of Pisa, Fondazione Sistema Toscana (FST) and University of Pisa , is a scientific forum supported by the European Commission under the framework of the HOLA Cloud project (www.holacloud.eu), featuring a number of core research topics in the area of distributed computing (through the Distributed and CLOUD computing track), as well as new technologies beyond CLOUDs, requirements and future goals (through the COMPLETE computing track), while special emphasis will also be on open-source approaches (through the Open-source track).

The conference provides opportunities for posters and demonstrations. Proposals (including title, short abstract and contact information) shall be submitted on the same schedule as the papers.
Each poster must be original and unpublished work, not submitted for publication elsewhere.

Posters will be showcased within the Digital Exhibition on the conference website.

Important dates:

Paper/Poster submission: ~~28.06.2015~~ 13.07.2015 (hard deadline)
Author notification: 02.08.2015
Camera ready: 23.08.2015

For more information and details about the Call for Papers click visit the Conference website.

VIEW THE POST PUBLISHED BY THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION TO ANNOUNCE THIS CALL. CLICK HERE.

MediaArea is pleased to announce the first release of MediaConch (Media Conformance Checker)

Initial release of MediaConch now available

MediaArea is pleased to announce the initial release of MediaConch (Media Conformance Checker). Part of the PREFORMA project, a Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) project co-funded by the European Commission under its FP7-ICT Programme, MediaConch consists of a suite of tools and features to enable comprehensive control, testing, and modification of select archival audiovisual formats, specifically Matroska, lossless FFV1, and LPCM.

At this early stage MediaArea is presenting their first release to facilitate testing, oversight, and feedback to the project as they move forward with development. Currently MediaConch is available as a GUI and CLI application, with support for the following features:

Generation of detailed technical metadata report from audiovisual files in text or XML format.
Generation of ‘MediaTrace’ document which provides an textual reference to the architecture of an audiovisual file by categorizing all bytes of data according to their underlying specification for a highly comprehensive and standard-specific report.
Support for basic policy checking.

MediaConch anticipates including exhaustive means for creating and evaluating policy sets against collections of audiovisual media. Use cases for such policy checks include: assess that a digitization vendors deliverables meet the requested set of significant characteristics, ensuring that files are self-descriptive, and testing for coherencies (such as a file using a PAL frame size if using a PAL frame rate). Expression of policies are being standardized using Schematron (ISO/IEC 19757-3:2006), an XML document assertion language. MediArea has prepared a demo of test files, sample policy sets expressed in Schematron, and instructions on how to use MediaConch to validate such policy. MediaArea anticipate that future releases will make such processes far more seamless.

Feedback and comments on MediConch are invited. Requests, issues, or questions may be directed at MediConch project’s issue tracker at https://github.com/MediaArea/MediaConch/issues. MediaArea development team may be reached at info@mediaarea.net.

Downloads, demo files, and instructions for policy check applications may be found at:

https://mediaarea.net/MediaConch

Join MediaConch mailing list to receive updates on the MediaConch project.

The Spaces of Europeana Space compose an environment for endorsing and incubating new business based on digital cultural content

E-Space technical infrastructure taking shape

On a very sunny 29th of May in Florence, hosted in the wonderful premises of partner FST Fondazione Sistema Toscana, an interesting workshop of Europeana Space took place to discuss further the technical infrastructure developed by partner NTUA and already presented during the preceding public technical workshop realized in Brussels in cooperation with Europeana Foundation.

The Florence appointment was instead reserved to the partners of Europeana Space; after the opening of the day by the technical coordinator Antonella Fresa (Promoter), Eirini Kaldeli and Arne Stabenau (NTUA) widely illustrated the WITH technical infrastructure on which the Technical Space and the Content Space of Europeana Space are based.

E-Space WITH is an innovative concept for an infrastructure, which exposes APIs from different portals and repositories. It allows the user to search content of interest from a single access point into different and disjointed repositories and databases such as Europeana, the DPLA Digital Public Library of America, YouTube.. and of course the Europeana Space own repository, currently under construction.

[Show as slideshow]

The content is called via APIs, and the WITH infrastructure isn’t duplicating existing tools, while it instead shows innovative features, to leverage on for the development of services of E-Space:

MANAGEMENT OF CONTENT: the infrastructure permits to safely access and use both open content available on line (searching different repositories from a single access point) and non-open/not yet cleared content via the Europeana Space Protected Space
MANAGEMENT OF COLLECTIONS: the infrastructure permits to create and to give access to collections of curated content, to be “marked” and shared with other users or potential users.

The Technical Space and the Content Space developed by the project will therefore complement and feed the Innovation Space, an environment for endorsing and incubating new business based on digital cultural content.

The first instance of E-Space WITH is planned to be running on the server, including first version of the APIs and minimum functionalities, by mid of June. The first stable version will be then available in September and the official launch of the platform is foreseen in the mid-term conference of Europeana Space to take place in December 2015 in Tallin.

Photos courtesy of Fred Truyen

A good opportunity to present PREFORMA, TI/A and DPF Manager

Annual conference for memory institutions in Catalonia

PACKED and the University of Girona presented the PREFORMA, TI/A and DPF Manager initiatives at the Annual conference for memory institutions in Catalonia, an event which aims to help reducing this distance and promoting a great number of digital preservation initiatives in the field of archives and document management.

In a networked world, where access to information has become a necessity and also a civil right, the preservation of data and documents has become the main factor in ensuring this access. The creation of digital archives, which makes this information accessible beyond the barriers of immediate use and technological obsolescence, it is now more than ever a service requirement which any organization, public or private, cannot renounce to. This means not only to build passive deposits, where the information is stored using a retrospective. This means to ensure that any organisation who provides a service, public or private, preserves the data and the documents that provide evidence and allow to talk with real and effective transparency. And this involves the use of digital preservation techniques.

Digital preservation or long-term preservation of electronic documents, has evolved for years and belongs to the ICT sector. There is technology, methods and sufficient experience in the world to say that this is a field of knowledge still growing and consolidating. But the strength of the concept contrasts with the lack of experience and operational deployments in many countries, both in the public and private sectors, and especially in the archival field.

Download here the presentation of PREFORMA.

For further information visit http://arxivers.cat/.

Towards the largest repository of accessible and re-usable digital cultural heritage in the world

Europeana Business Plan 2015: Make the Beautiful Thing

Blowing Bubbles, 1700-1722, Pieter van der Werff, Rijksmuseum (public domain)

In May, Europeana has launched its Business Plan 2015. This is the first year of the Europeana Strategy 2015-2020, which outlines how the company will transition into a multi-sided platform: a truly networked organisation working together to create the largest repository of trusted, accessible and re-usable digital heritage in the world. The Europeana Business Plan 2015 reflects this change in perspective.

Europeana’s main aim will be to make sure its core infrastructure, processes and products are fit for enabling people – Europeana members, collaborators and all audiences, from the casual browser to the professional user – can do more and more with the data. In this sense, the most visible change of this year will be the improved user experience and engagement on the Europeana portal, where thematic channels will be introduced, making it easier to find great content.
To this end, the Network will run a country based campaign to bring in the best art pieces of each country; the new pieces collected will be used for the launch of the thematic channel on Art History in the autumn.
In 2015, Europeana we will take the first steps towards a new aggregation model for Europe, making data-sharing easier and more attractive, and will give partners more direct feedback on the results through a Statistics Dashboard. Finally, Europeana will work on improving its entrepreneurial capacity and on developing more creative tools that allow use of the content made available by the network partners.

This year, Europeana starts working on making the beautiful thing.

Balthasar Wigand Josephsplatz 1835, Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Download the Europeana Business Plan 2015

By Karol J. Borowiecki and Trilce Navarrete

Fiscal and Economic Aspects of Europe’s Book Consumption

One of the available tools in cultural policy at the national level includes the reduction of VAT rates for cultural goods and services. Governments can decide, for instance, to lower the VAT rate for books to encourage reading and literacy. These indirect fiscal incentives receive however very little attention both at policy level as well as by the public. To remedy that, we document the standard and reduced VAT rates in European Union member states in the period from 1993 to 2013 and explored the underlying determinants. The results point at the existence of clear fundamental drivers of the standard VAT rates. However, when it comes to the reduced cultural taxes, we fail to find any correlates – it is as if the decision-making was done in a random-like process. This supports the concern that there is no clear directive on how to efficiently design the reduced rates.

We further introduce a theoretical framework explaining how reduced fiscal rates are expected to decrease prices and increase quantities of the consumed cultural goods and services. We show that a decrease in the VAT rate for books by one percentage point is associated with an economically significant drop in the price of about 2.6 percent. Finally, we show the positive effect of a fiscal reduction on household’s book expenditure, where the results imply that a one percentage point decrease in the VAT rate for books leads to an increase in expenditure by about 2.7 percent.

Figure 1. Prices, expenditure per household and VAT rate for books

An improved understanding of the reduced cultural taxes will allow to effectively employ this policy in order to support consumption of, among others, the fast growing digital heritage markets, such as the e-books market. It has been actually the increased use of digital technology for the production, distribution and consumption of cultural goods and services that has raised questions regarding the VAT Directive. Due to the positive externalities associated with cultural consumption, markets fail to provide the optimum quantity of culture at the right price. Tax instruments are thus proposed as effective tools that can be used to change the quantities and prices, in order to tackle market failures. From a policy perspective, this suggests that a reduction in VAT rates can stimulate household consumption and consequently should be designed in conjunction with a national cultural policy.

Paper can be downloaded here.

The study is part of the FP7 EU funded project RICHES: Renewal, Innovation and Change: Heritage and European Society.

The authors:

Karol Jan Borowiecki, Associate Professor at the Department of Business and Economics, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark. E-mail: kjb@sam.sdu.dk (corresponding author).

Trilce Navarrete, Postdoc at the Department of Business and Economics, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark. E-mail: trilce.navarrete@gmail.com.

The Associated Project will share experiences and guidelines and participate on RICHES Project activities

RICHES signs a Memorandum of Understanding with the “EuroVision – Museums Exhibiting Europe” (EMEE) project

RICHES (Renewal, Innovation and Change: Heritage and European Society) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the project “EuroVision – Museums Exhibiting Europe” (EMEE).

This new cooperation will allow exploring synergies between both projects, especially on the case studies addressing the role of museums. The RICHES workshop “The context of change and the move from analogue to digital” (Ankara, 13-14 May 2015) has been the first opportunity to share experiences. Representatives of the EMEE project have attended the event, which has been the framework to discuss risks and opportunities on this context of change and its impact on Cultural Heritage.

RICHES workshop “The context of change and the move from analogue to digital”
Photo: Promoter Srl

The “EuroVision – Museums Exhibiting Europe” (EMEE) project explores an innovative interdisciplinary approach for national and regional museums to re-interpret their objects in a broader context of European and transnational history. The necessary theoretical and practical framework is developed, put into practice and evaluated by an international, trans-sectoral network bringing together the creative excellence of museums and cultural workers in a project based on the scientific expertise of history didactics in mediating culture.

EMEE_Young Scenographers Travelling Exhibition 3

EMEE Young Scenographers Contest, Travelling Exhibition
Photo: Janine Pichler

The project, which runs for four years (2012-2016) and is funded by the Culture Programme of the European Union, was initiated by the Chair of History Didactics of Augsburg University. It is implemented by eight interdisciplinary project partners from seven European countries. The aim of the project is to advance the modernization of museums by re-interpreting museum objects and topics from a trans-regional European perspective as well as by innovative mediating approaches. Thereby, especially national and regional museums shall be encouraged to try out new ideas and concepts through which a timely orientation of the institution “museum” in today’s intercultural, heterogeneous society can be furthered.

EMEE_Project Meeting in Vienna_June 2014

The EMEE project team during a meeting in Vienna, Austria in June 2014
© EMEE EuroVision – Museums Exhibiting Europe

Further information about the new member of the RICHES Network, “EuroVision – Museums Exhibiting Europe” (EMEE) project, at the following link:

www.museums-exhibiting-europe.eu

#EMEEurovision

Bari, 24-25 September 2015

Off the Beaten Track. Epigraphy at the Borders

“Off the Beaten Track. Epigraphy at the Borders” is the sixth in a series of international events planned by EAGLE (Europeana network of Ancient Greek and Latin Epigraphy).

This initiative is organised in Bari, from Thursday 24 September to Friday 25 September 2015, with the support of the Department of Classics and Late Antiquity Studies at the University of Bari “Aldo Moro”.

Aim of the meeting is to discuss issues and raise questions about encoding inscriptions different from those labelled as standard, starting from archaic times to the Middle Ages and beyond, even in languages other than Greek and Latin. Organisers intend to address peculiarities that are due to specific carriers (material supports) and/or executing techniques or also to graphic shapes, non-alphabetical signs and generally visual components relating to the epigraphic texts.

During the event, the EAGLE Portal will be officially launched and presented to the public for the first time, together with the EAGLE Storytelling Application. A training session on how to use the EAGLE Storytelling Application will be offered.

Further Info:

Event website: http://www.eagle-network.eu/about/events/sixth-eagle-international-event-2015/

Program Committee Chairs
Antonio Enrico Felle, University of Bari, Italy
Silvia Orlandi, Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy

Contact Information
For information on this workshop please contact one of the members of the steering committee.

Steering Committee
Antonio Felle (University of Bari) antonio.felle@uniba.it
Anita Rocco (University of Bari) anita.rocco@uniba.it
Raffaella Santucci (Sapienza, University of Rome) raffaella.santucci@uniroma1.it

Centre for Dance Research of Coventry University seeks highly motivated individuals

Vacancies at C-DaRE: apply within 30 June 2015!

C-DaRE has established itself as one of the UK’s leading Centres for dance research. It brings together artists and scholars, working collaboratively with partners from across the creative and cultural industries, both nationally and internationally, for interdisciplinary research. C-DaRE specialises in an inclusive approach to diverse forms of artistic research in dance, supported by new approaches to documentation, analysis and publication in various formats. Artistic research in dance at the Centre is situated within a range of interrelated areas including: research into the impact of digital technologies on the creation, transmission and distribution of dance; reflexive enquiry into forms of somatic practice; understanding of choreographic creativity; development of alternative sites for performance including screen and site-responsive dance.

C-DaRE is seeking highly motivated individuals, able to contribute to one or more of its research strands at the following levels:

Professors (2) – senior researchers with an international profile, a strong track record in achieving external research funding, excellent publication record and considerable experience in PhD supervision.
Senior Research Fellows (2) able to contribute high level research in a dance field, with a track record in income generation, excellent publication of research outputs and experience of supervising PhD students.
Research Assistants who are early career post-doctoral researchers, eager to provide support for research activities, including support for funding bids, editorial assistance, organisation of research events and other duties in support of the strategic work of the Centre.
Operations Manager –a key managerial role acting as chief operating officer for the Centre responsible for the day to day operations of the Centre; development and delivery of targets; management and reporting of administrative systems, finance, income and recruitment-related activity; building external relationships.

Closing dates for all posts: 30th June 2015
For full details and the application process please click on the headings below to be taken to the Coventry University Recruitment site.
Professor
Senior Research Fellow
Research Assistant
Operations Manager

The Hague, 16-18 September 2015

DiXiT Convention: submission deadline extended!

The deadline to submit proposals for the DiXiT Convention “TECHNOLOGY, SOFTWARE, STANDARDS FOR THE DIGITAL SCHOLARLY EDITION” has been extended to Thursday the 28th of May 2015.

The call for paper is open to everybody (except DiXiT fellows).

The Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands is organising the first of DiXiT’s three conventions, being held on September 16-18 2015 in The Hague, the Netherlands. The convention will be an informal meeting where the DiXiT research fellows will present their first results within interactive sessions. The event will be a lively get-together bristling with new ideas and people working in the field of scholarly editing and digital humanities are warmly invited to participate!

Programme

Monday 14: informal meeting of DiXiT fellows
Tuesday 15: two parallel workshops
– Net7 will present Pundit and Muruca
– Huygens ING will run a workshop ‘TEI and neighbouring standards’
Wednesday 16 until Friday 18 (morning): the Convention proper (“Technology, Software, Standards for the Digital Scholarly Edition”)
Friday 18 (afternoon) DiXiT supervisory board session

Keynotes will be given by Leo Jansen, editor of the acclaimed edition of Van Gogh’s letters, Laurent Romary, director of DARIAH, and Lorna Hughes, chair in digital humanities at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study (SAS).

Call for papers:

In order to broaden the scope and diversity of the meeting, the convention organisers are issuing this call.
While the focus of the convention is on technology, software and standards, topics for the sessions may include anything related to scholarly digital editing, such as:

tools for editing, collation, publication
text mark-up: application, development, advantages, disadvantages
sustainability and preservation of editions: economic and technical
editing as a social endeavour: crowd-sourcing, social editions and other forms of collaboration
the role of the editor in digital editing
other

Organisers encourage exploratory papers. Early-career scholars are welcome.
People interested in presenting a twenty-minute paper please mail their proposal to congres@huygens.knaw.nl.

The proposal should include:

name and email of the presenter
title of paper
abstract (ca. 400 words)

Dates:

call for papers: April 21, 2015
proposals due: May 28, 2015
decision about acceptance: June 14, 2015
meeting: September 14-18, 2015

Dixit Convention website: dixit.huygens.knaw.nl

The DiXiT project is an Initial Training Network funded by the European Commission under the Marie-Curie scheme. Its consortium is composed of many high-profile European universities and research institutions, which work together training a new generation of digital scholarly editors.