Digital meets Culture

San Diego, US, 9-11 March 2015

Connecting the Data Dots: the Research Data Alliance (RDA) 5th Plenar

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/connecting-data-dots-research-alliance-rda-5th-plenar-hilary-hanahoe

It’s all about Adoption at the RDA Fifth Plenary Meeting, San Diego, US 9-11 March 2015

“The so called data revolution this isn’t just about the volume of scientific data; rather, it reflects a fundamental change in the way science is conducted, who does it, who pays for it and who benefits from it. And most importantly, the rising capacity to share all this data – electronically, efficiently, across borders and disciplines – magnifies the impact.” The Data Harvest: How sharing research data can yield knowledge, jobs and growth (http://europe.rd-alliance.org/documents/publications-reports/data-harvest-how-sharing-research-data-can-yield-knowledge-jobs-and)

The Research Data Alliance (RDA – www.rd-alliance.org) rises to this challenge providing concrete solutions to address some of today’s many, many data challenges. In less than 2 years since its launch RDA has already published tangible outputs all aiming to achieve seamless interoperability, trust and ultimately to provide growth & employment opportunities:

Data Foundation & Terminology with a simple unifying data model facilitating interoperability
Data Type Registry with a registry of data types to facilitate their usage
PID Information Types with a generic interface for PID service providers and users and a harmonized category set
Practical Policies with best practices for a wide number of automatized data management and processing policies

The RDA Fifth Plenary is taking place in San Diego, US from 9th – 11th March 2015 and is open to RDA members and the public, particularly individuals that share the core values of creating the building blocks of common data infrastructures that can bridge disciplinary activities under a community-driven and non-profit model. Data experts, scientists, researchers and other professionals are encouraged to attend, as well as students and early career professionals in industries related to the fields of research data sharing and exchange. https://rd-alliance.org/plenary-meetings/fifth-plenary/programme.html

Adoption Day on 8th March will focus on the current RDA outputs and will see practical examples of European & US adoption. From the European grouping, European Collaborative Data Infrastructure (EUDAT – http://www.eudat.eu), Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure (CLARIN – http://www.clarin.eu/) and the German Climate Computing Center (Deutsches Klimarechenzentrum – DKRZ – https://www.dkrz.de/) are all implementing RDA outputs.

The Large-scale data projects session immediately after Adoption Day (8th March) will address how to advance the goals of RDA Output take up by following up with the tool developers and the researchers in the larger context of large data facilities and projects and identify additional uptake and dissemination possibilities from the side of the data projects with invited speakers from large impact projects in around the world. Interested parties are invited to submit a paper by February 8th https://rd-alliance.org/large-scale-data-projects-meet-rda-rda-5th-plenary-session.html

Leuven, 20 February 2015

Civic Epistemologies Workshop on the ROADMAP for Citizen Science

Developing a Roadmap for broadening e-Infrastructure deployment to support citizen researchers in digital culture is the main objective for the Civic Epistemologies, a project that has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration.

Aim of this Workshop in Leuven was to present the projects results to date, in order to obtain feedback from the partners and from external experts, before finalizing the Roadmap. The Workshop was held in the beautiful city of Leuven, hosted by the Catholic University (Katholieke Universiteit) in the Museumzaal of the Erasmushuis (premises of the Faculty of Arts). The Katholieke Universiteit is a project partner in Belgium.

Partners and relevant stakeholder were invited e.g. the wider cultural heritage community, researchers, Citizens associations, creative enterprises and e-Infrastructure communities beyond the consortium.

More information and the programme of the event are available here.

'The Impact of Digitization on Photographic Heritage: Memories Reframed'. Chronicles from KU Leuven

Europeana Photography Final Conference

by Fred Truyen, KU Leuven (Europeana Photography Project Coordinator)

The EuropeanaPhotography project ended 31st of January 2015. To mark the occasion, we organized a two-day conference in Leuven on Thursday 29 and Friday 30th of January, under the theme “The Impact of Digitization on Photographic Heritage: Memories Reframed“. The conference opened with a keynote by Elizabeth Edwards on “Shifting Assemblages: Scale, Scope and Intensity in the Practice of History“. Elizabeth took mass digitization to task with a plea for “close reading” inspired by Moretti. Using examples of colonial photography, she showed the importance of a careful, historical look at the different meaning layers in photos. The lecture kicked off a series of lectures that all seemed to revolve around the issues addressed in the keynote, as an unfolding, spiralling dialogue that kept everyone glued to his seat until the end of the first day.

A nothing short of brilliant overview of early photography by John Balean of TopFoto was followed by Fred Truyen’s explanation of the choices made in EuropeanaPhotography, where the possibilities of digitization to “reframe” and rediscover the early photos were discussed. Indeed, the enlarged, crystal clear reprints in the exhibition, with blistering dynamic range and razor sharp detail, obtained by directly processing the information from the glassplate have little to do with the nostalgic, somewhat yellowish appearance of original prints.

[Show as slideshow]

After an overview of the project by Antonella Fresa from Promoter srl, the afternoon was a mix of lectures and “collection pitches”, in which partners displayed their contributions to the total of 430.000 images that EuropeanaPhotography contributed to Europeana. Prof. Jan Baetens caught attention with his provocative lecture “Against Crowdsourcing”, in which he highlighted some serious issues in the quest to gather crowdsourced input, as is now hyping in many digitization projects.

While Stephen Brown and David Croft showed a smart algorithm to search for similar images in a collection, Alexander Supartono stunned the audience with his “Re-Visiting the Colonial Archive in the Era of Web 2.0“, where he showed how Indonesian artists re-appropriate colonial heritage in an unsettling way that undoubtedly must come as a shock to many archivalists: current Indonesian people are superimposed on colonial pictures, disclosing and disrupting the colonial setting. A better vindication of Elizabeth’s keynote was difficult to imagine. More so, it is a perfect example of the innovative “creative reuse” that Europeana wants to stimulate!

At the end of this long day Joanna Zylinska’s enthousiasm and rethorical talent gave the audience a much needed energy boost. Her Photomediations project is a very convincing example of Open publishing and how this unleashes new creativity.

During the day collections were presented by TopFoto, Lithuanian Art Museums, IMAGNO, CRDI, Parisienne de Photographie, Arbejdermuseet ,United Archives and Gencat.

The second day of the EuropeanaPhotography Final Conference was dedicated to Europeana and its family of projects. James Morley gave an interesting overview of new initiatives Europeana is engaged in, and highlighted the importance of a high quality online experience for the user. This will be enhanced by IIIF technology, now being implemented by some large collections.

The highlight of the day was the enthusing talk by Sofie Taes, curator of the Leuven localization of the All our Yesterdays exhibition. A parade of breath-taking images from Leuven’s City archive was displayed, unravelling the story of “Trading Spaces / Changing Places”, the concept behind the expo. The perfectly choreographed presentation was testimony of the enormous, meticulous work that went in the curation of this exhibition, developed in collaboration with the City archive Leuven and Erfgoedcel Leuven. It also revealed that the City archive does host a collection of images that can stand its ground in the face of the collections of the prestigious partners in Europeana Photography. Captivating moments of past city life stole the hearts of the audience.

[Show as slideshow]

This was followed by a collection pitch of both Leuven collections, the collection of the University and the one from the archive. The university collection is very unique, in the sense that it are all images taken with a didactic purpose, to define the canon of Art History. As such, it shows us what belonged to this canon before the second world war.

Four Europeana related project presentations rounded up the morning session, with presentations of Europeana Space, Europeana Fashion, Daguerreobase and RICHES.

In the second keynote of the conference, Simon Tanner from King’s college London talked about “The Impact of Digitization on Photographic Heritage“. The slides of his presentation are available on slideshare. It addressed many issues as to how museums and collection holders can cope with the digital revolution and adapt their business models to it.

This was followed by a much appreciated lecture by Bruno Vandermeulen, digitization expert of KU Leuven, on his photography for the archaeological Sagalassos project.

Charlotte Waelde concluded the lecture series with a talk about “Digitising photographs: thinking around originality“, where she addressed novel ideas about IPR, an issue of great concern in the EuropeanaPhotography project, to which we are seeking solutions in Europeana Space.

During the day further collection pitches were shown by Divadelni Ustav, SGI, ICIMSS, NALIS, Alinari, MHF and PolFoto.

Nicosia, 11-12 March 2015

EAGLE 2015 International Event

Use and Re-Use of Digital Cultural Heritage Assets – Interoperability, Repositories and Shared infrastructures was the fifth in a series of international events planned by EAGLE BPN. The workshop covered many aspects of digital technology applied to inscriptions, from content to management and networking, featuring presentations and hands-on workshops regarding themes of the EAGLE project, led by the project’s Working Groups.

By L.Sergius.Paulus (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The event, held in Nicosia, Cyprus, on 11-12 March 2015, was organised by EAGLE partner Cyprus Institute, in collaboration with Heidelberg University (Germany) and Sapienza, University of Rome (Italy).

The workshop brought together a wide audience, including people interested in epigraphy (digital or non-digital) as well as to the establishment and diffusion of general best current practices for digital cultural heritage.

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EAGLE – Europeana network of Ancient Greek and Latin Epigraphy, will be a new online archive for epigraphy in Europe, co-funded through the ICT – Policy Support Programme of the EuropeanCommission. The EAGLE Best Practice Network is part of Europeana, a multi-lingual online collection of millions of digitised items from European museums, libraries, archives and multi-media collections

Follow EAGLE on Facebook and Twitter!

Leuven, 29-30 January 2015

RICHES at Europeana Photography Final Conference

Neil Forbes, RICHES Project Coordinator, presented the project during the Final Conference of Europeana Photography, which took place in Leuven on 29-30 January 2015, hosted by CS Digital (KU Leuven) and the Lieven Gevaert Centre for Photography in Campus Library Arenberg.

The conference, called “The Impact of Digitization on Photographic Heritage: Memories Reframed“, brought together scholars from the field of photography and professionals from photo-archives, in order to develop an understanding of responsible archival practices towards photographic heritage in the context of the promotion of public access through digital portals.

At the end of the conference, an official vernissage celebrated the Belgian edition of All Our Yesterdays, that will be opened in the period 1 February – 15 March 2015.

For more information on the Europeana Photography conference visit this article.

the event, taking place in Leuven on 29-30 January, was attended by several E-Space partners

E-Space disseminated @ Europeana Photography final conference

The connection between Europeana Space and Europeana Photography is stronger than ever, basing on a Cooperation Agreement and most of all on common themes of reflection and activites.

On 29-30 January, the Final Conference of Europeana Photography was organized in Leuven, hosted by KU Leuven, Coordinator of Europeana Photography and partner in Europeana Space. The title of the conference is: The Impact of Digitization on Photographic Heritage: Memories Reframed.

At the conference were present the Technical Coordinator of both projects Antonella Fresa, and some other partners of E-Space who were invited to participate: Frederik Temmermans of iMinds, who delivered a presentation of the project and announced the upcoming event of the IPR workshop, Joanna Zyliska of Goldsmiths, with a lecture entitled “Curating / Open / Images”, and Charlotte Waelde of University of Exeter with lecture: “Digitising photographs: thinking around originality”.

Also the Advisory Board member Nathalie Doury from Parisienne de Photographie was involved in the conference, in the double role of content provider of Europeana Photography and moderator of a panel discussion around the theme of IPR which is a very important theme for both projects.

Coventry (UK), 2 March 2015

E-Space IPR workshop

Speakers: Sarah Whatley (Coventry University, project’s coordinator), Charlotte Waelde (University of Exeter), Prodromos Tsiavos (Postscriptum), Frederik Temmermans, Peter Schelkens, Ann Dooms (iMinds).

A workshop focused on IPR that considers content rights in a non traditional way. Rather than only focussing on different licensing models, this workshop aimed to make content providers aware of technical frameworks and advances that support better management of licenses.

The workshop took place at h. 9.30 – 17.30; the programme included business lunch and an evening reception with networking session at h. 18.00 – 19.30.

For more info: www.europeana-space.eu/ipr-workshop/

PDF flyer of the event

Learn More about Europeana Space: www.europeana-space.eu

Pisa (Italy), 23-25 January 2015

Pisa Game Jam 2015

A Game Jam is an event where people from all over the world meet driven by a common, insatiable, passion: making videogames.

In Pisa, a 3-day event including an opening workshop, where videogames veterans, people with decades of expertise in the field, as well as young students who just started a BSc in Computer Science or Arts (or any other faculty of course) met and accepted the challenge of creating a videogame in 48 hours.

The event was organized with the aim to enhancing the video-gaming culture in Italy, which is currently really hidden. Pisa Game Jam is an opportunity to bring it up to surface and make our country an awesome nest for young creative entrepreneurs.

Learn more: http://pisagamejam.org/

The seminar approaches the opportunities of European funding to Anagni and the Lazio Region.

L’Europa in Comune: Funding opportunities seminar

Representatives of the city of Anagni, the neighbouring municipalities, local associations and SMEs participated in the training sessions “L’Europa in Comune” held on the 16, 19 and 20 January at Anagni. During the events, organized by the Municipality in collaboration with the Lazio Region and Promoter Srl, were presented the funding opportunities by the European Commission and the ways to access these forms of funding.

The seminar trained the participants in order to navigate the various funding opportunities, use a proper methodology for the construction of European proposals and manage funded projects in all their various stages.

Fausto Bassetta, Mayor of Anagni, declared that “to promote information days and training activities, and therefore create tools for the effective use of the resources made available from Europe is not only a political and cultural choice, but a necessity and a priority, especially in a period of social suffering widespread. The attention aroused by the event and the participation of municipal employees, cultural associations and representatives of other municipalities confirms that we are on the right track”. Raffaella Santucci, commissioner responsible for policies of the Structural and European Funds, expects that “these seminars will be a first step towards the transformation of the local realities (citizens, SMEs, public and private institutions), which must be the key actors of this change”. As expressed by Claudio Prandoni, Head of Projects at Promoter and lecturer of the seminar: “The European funding opportunities are real. It is important to be familiar with the new programs and prepare an action plan to provide access to municipalities, local authorities and SMEs to these funds. For us it is a pleasure to transfer our knowledge and long experience in this field by contributing to local and regional development and its internationalization.”

The Municipality of Anagni, through the “Assessorato per le Politiche dei Fondi Strutturali e di Investimento Europei”, has launched strategic plans to ensure the municipality access to European networks and funding, as well as gain visibility at international level.

For more detailed information, check the presentations delivered during the training sessions:

European-Commission-funding-opportunities

Funding opportunities – H2020 and other programs

Euopean projects – How to participate

in Amsterdam, on 8-9-10 May, be ready to experiment with Europeana TV pilot!

Europeana Space first Hackathon announced

The Europeana TV Pilot (interactive television) of Europeana Space has made significant progress on the realization of two scenarios to experiment with, being:

Local scenario, for the smaller scale media outreach;
Broadcast scenario for the larger scale media outreach.

Both scenarios are generating prototypes, and the pilot is getting ready for a big Hackathon event in Amsterdam on 8-9-10 May.

Local scenario

The work on the local scenario is in full progress. Two workshops took place between the pilot members in the past months, to work out the details of the scenario, the needed features, the wireframes for the interface, and a design document detailing all user requirements. Particularly useful and outcome-generating was the workshop held in November 2014, where the ReWind app was presented.

Broadcast scenario

Work on the broadcast scenario is also progressing according to plans. In this scenario, workshops were held too: at the first workshop in August the “Chance discovery of rich cultural content” use case was discussed with the partners. A version of the Smart TV app “The Berlin Wall” was created and has been publically available since the 3rd October 2014 on rbb fernsehen, RBB TV channel. The idea was to create and test a model app, to provide certain requirements and to serve as the basis for further work on the broadcast scenario, and use this input for workshops.

Another workshop was planned in February 2015 in Berlin. The plan is to re-create an app similar to “The Berlin Wall” app using tools provided by the partners to curate content from European and create a broadcast standard application for Smart TV (HbbTV).