Digital meets Culture

'All About Imaging: Transactions' symposium was organised by the Faculty of Media, Arts and Design of the University of Westminster

Open & Hybrid Publishing pilot @ Transactions event

Joanna Zylinska

Joanna Zylinska from Goldsmiths, University of London and Jonathan Shaw from Coventry University were invited speakers at the ‘All About Imaging: Transactions’ symposium, organised by the Faculty of Media, Arts and Design of the University of Westminster, London, with the co-operation of the Imaging Science Group of The Royal Photographic Society, on 22-23 May 2014.

They gave two presentations about open access projects, also discussing the Europeana Space pilot on Open & Hybrid Publishing at length.

Jonathan Shaw

The audience was a mixture of academics, professionals and amateurs interested in photography and image science, and was intended to create opportunities for knowledge exchange, demonstration and discussion and to traverse discursive boundaries between disciplines, to build shared vocabularies, mutual understanding and new synergies.

Learn more about the event here: http://www.rps.org/news/2014/april/transactions

Download the relevant slides of the presentations about the Open & Hybrid Publishing pilot (PDF, 573 Kb)

The Coordinator Fred Truyen will be keynote speaker at the congress organized by the University of Sheffield

Europeana Photography @ Digital Humanities Congress

Europeana Photography will participate in this important conference, organized every 2 years in Sheffield, with the keynote speech of the coordinator Fred Truyen (KU Leuven). The purpose of the congress is to promote the sharing of knowledge, ideas and techniques within the digital humanities.

Digital humanities is understood by Sheffield University to mean the use of technology within arts, heritage and humanities research as both a method of inquiry and a means of dissemination. As such, Europeana Photography is a very concrete example of the use of technologies to enhance cultural heritage.

The speech by professor Truyen is:

“All Our Yesterdays”: Europeana and the Phenomenology of Photographic Experience through the Framing of Digitization

When the partners in EuropeanaPhotography embarked on the journey to digitize over 400.000 early photographs for Europeana, few would realize that their very concept of the photograph would change forever.

While sifting through often unseen and unpublished photos from Europe’s top collections, a fascination grew among the collaborators of the involved musea, archives and photo-agencies for what was captured on these dusty glass negatives, daguerreotype plates and albumen prints ranging from 1839 to 1939.

What was there was not only revealed through the digitization, but urrevocably reframed into an new visual experience. Questions about the very nature of what in the end the elusive “photo as object” is, and its ramifications for archival practices, became unavoidable. In this talk, looking through the lenses of old photographers who were priviliged wittnesses of Europe’s history, we will zoom in on different aspects from a Digital Humanities perspective: curation, digitization, metadata provision, rendering and digital preservation.

The conference takes place on 4-6 September 2014.

Registration and more information here: http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/hri/dhc

DEADLINE Monday 16th June

Europeana Space – Questionnaire for the Pilots (technical requirements)

On the 3rd November, a valuable workshop including several EU projects was the occasion to disseminate Europeana Space

Europeana Space at Euromed Congress 2014

Project Coordinator Professor Sarah Whatley spoke about Europeana Space project during a focused workshop, dedicated to analyse the stategies for cultural heritage in the new digital age, held during the important congress Euromed in Cyprus (3-8 November 2014).

Marinos Ioannides, Sarah Whatley and Antonella Fresa

Europeana Space was presented to the congress’ wide audience of international cultural institutions as the new Best Practice Network of allied partners who intend to explore new ways for the creative re-use of digital cultural heritage. The final aim of Europeana Space is to pave the way for unlocking the business potential of cultural heritage for both cultural Institutions and creative industries.

The audience at Euromed 2014 congress

The workshop is organized by Promoter, who is the Technical Coordinator of Europeana Space, and included representatives of several important projects in the domain of digital cultural heritage.

The title of the workshop is “The Digitization Age: Mass Culture is Quality Culture. Challenges for cultural heritage and society” and took place on 3rd November at 4 pm.

Download the workshop’s agenda (PDF, 438 Kb)

Visit the Euromed 2014 Congress website: http://www.culturalheritage2014.eu/

Europeana Space in the poster session of the congress

To define best practices for text digitisation and long term preservation.

MoU between DCH-RP and SUCCEED

A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between DCH-RP and SUCCEED projects for the promotion and presentation of the respective results and for the organisation of joint events and other activities, focusing in particular on the definition of best practices for text digitisation and long term preservation.

DCH-RP (Digital Cultural Heritage Roadmap for Preservation) is a Coordination Action supported by the European Commission under the FP7 e-Infrastructure Capacities Programme, to design a Roadmap for the implementation of a federated e-Infrastructure for preservation of DCH content. The Roadmap will be supplemented by practical tools for decision makers and validated through a range of proofs of concept, where cultural institutions and e-Infrastructure providers work together on concrete experiments.

SUCCEED (Support Action Centre of Competence in Digitisation) is a support action funded by the European Union that promotes the take up and validation of research results in mass digitisation with focus on the textual content. Succeed aims to improve the availability of tools and resources, fosters the transfer of knowledge, the creation of research consortia and explores the role of emerging business models, funding opportunities and public-private partnerships to improve large-scale text digitisation techniques. The action will be implemented through the Impact Centre of Competence in Digitisation, an output of the IMPACT FP7-project which gathers and exposes digitisation tools and resources. The Centre will sustain the actions beyond Succeed since a legal entity will be substantiated and a roadmap for its long-term sustainability will be defined during the action.

To promote the use and quality check of common standards for text digitisation and long term preservation.

MoU between PREFORMA and SUCCEED

A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between PREFORMA and SUCCEED projects for the promotion and presentation of the respective results and for the organisation of joint events and other activities, focusing in particular on the use and quality check of common standards for text digitisation and long term preservation.

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.

SUCCEED (Support Action Centre of Competence in Digitisation, http://succeed-project.eu) is a support action funded by the European Union that promotes the take up and validation of research results in mass digitisation with focus on the textual content. Succeed aims to improve the availability of tools and resources, fosters the transfer of knowledge, the creation of research consortia and explores the role of emerging business models, funding opportunities and public-private partnerships to improve large-scale text digitisation techniques. The action will be implemented through the Impact Centre of Competence in Digitisation, an output of the IMPACT FP7-project which gathers and exposes digitisation tools and resources. The Centre will sustain the actions beyond Succeed since a legal entity will be substantiated and a roadmap for its long-term sustainability will be defined during the action.

Paris, 28 November 2014

Succeed in digitisation. Spreading excellence

The Succeed project is organising at Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) the conference “Succeed in digitisation. Spreading excellence”, to be held on November 28th, 2014.

Succeed is an EU funded project that promotes the take-up and validation of tools and resources for mass digitisation.

The conference schedule will focus on the following blocks based on the main outcomes of Succeed:

Libraries’ experiences in the take-up of tools.
Results on competitions.
Roadmap for the future of digitisation in Europe.
Interoperability of tools for text digitisation.
Recommendations on formats, standards and licensing schemes related to digitisation.
Panel discussions on digital humanities / digital conservation

The attendance to the conference is free, but registration is required. To register, please follow this link.

For further information, please visit http://succeed-project.eu/succeed-digitisation

Muscat, Oman, 10-11 December 2014

e-AGE 2014 Intercontinental Connectivity of the Pan Arab Network

Under the Patronage of His Highness Sayyid Taimur Bin As’ad Al Said, the Arab States Research and Education Network – ASREN, announced its fourth annual event “4th International Platform on Integrating Arab e-Infrastructure in a Global Environment – e-AGE 2014” taking place on 10-11 December 2014 in Muscat, Oman. The platform was hosted by The Research Council (TRC) of Oman.

What is e-AGE all about?

Integrating Arab e-infrastructure in a Global Environment, e-AGE, is an annual international event organized by the Arab States Research and Education Network, ASREN. e-AGE is in line with ASREN’s major objectives related to creating awareness, promoting R&E collaboration and joint activities and establishing human networks in order to facilitate collaboration and cooperation among researchers and academicians in the Arab region and the rest of the world.

In e-AGE 2014, the main theme was “Intercontinental Connectivity of the Pan Arab Network”. ASREN started concrete steps towards interconnecting researchers and academics across the Arab States by launching its first PoP in London Telicity and working with its partners on new PoPs in UAE, Egypt and the Maghreb region. ASREN is also supporting the development of NRENs in some Arab countries. ASREN aims to give special attention and more focus on users and how the e-Infrastructure can support their needs in terms of services and applications. More sessions are dedicated to the users to present their research and education activities and then to identify how these users can be better served by NRENs.

Topics of interest

Research collaboration in energy, environment, health, climate, water, agriculture, biology, economy, medicine and other pressing global issues and problems.
Perspectives on NRENs, including challenges, operation, sustainability, funding, governance, business models, security and services.
Access to research and education resources, repositories, libraries and contents, clouds, grids and HPCs.
Connectivity options including technologies, services, cables, circuits and equipment.
Internet developments and impact on R&E networks.
e-Services like e-Science, e-Government, e-Libraries, e-Learning, e-*…
Virtual Research Environments, Science Gateways, Federation of Identities, eduroam, eduGAIN …

Events and Activities

ASREN is becoming more visible and more active in the region and beyond. It has developed a new shareholder scheme with more Arab NRENs joining as well as more supporting organizations. Following on the success of e-AGE in 2011, 2012 and 2013, e-AGE 2014 included events, workshops, meetings centered on the following themes:

The 7th Event on Euro-Mediterranean e-Infrastructure
The 4th annual meeting of ASREN
AROQA 6th Annual Conference
EUMEDCONENCT3 Meeting
Technical Workshops on R&E networking (to be announced)

Moreover special sessions were dedicated to specific domains, mainly focusing on experiences in connectivity and e-Infrastructure, applications and services in variety of scientific domains and case studies with impact indicators and measures. It is also important to show how research infrastructure created benefits to communities and collaboration. It is still critical to show how research connectivity can promote collaboration and innovation. Different discussions were stimulated during e-AGE to drive outcomes and concrete results on practical steps towards developing a regional e-Infrastructure.

Venue

Grand Hyatt Hotel, Muscat, Oman

Important dates

1st October: Submission Deadline (Papers, Posters and Presentations)
15th October: Acceptance Notification
27th November: Final Pdf posters, Word papers and Presentations slides
4th December: Registration Deadline
10th-11th December: e-AGE 2014

Registration fees

Speakers: Free
Papers Authors: 50 Euro
ASREN Members: 150 Euro
ASREN non-members: 250 Euro

Further information

Conference official website:

http://asrenorg.net/eage2014/

Papers and Poster submission:

Salem Al-Agtash, alagtash@asrenorg.net, Mobile: +962 77-720-1998
Federico Ruggieri, federico.ruggieri@roma3.infn.it, Mobile: +390 65-733-7232

Proposals, Presentations and Program:

Yousef Torman, torman@asrenorg.net, Mobile: +962 77-990-7900

Registration, Payment, Reservations and Others:

Ola Samara, osamara@ASRENOrg.net, Mobile: +962 78-868-6802

Coventry (UK), 5-7 September 2014

Ludi Lunt now open for Applications

We are preparing for a very 21^st Century event to be held at the Lunt Roman Fort in Coventry, aimed at helping to breathe new life into the historic Fort – and applications are now open for people to get involved in a unique weekend of creativity, invention and fun.

Ludi Lunt (roughly translated from Latin: ‘public games at the Lunt’) will run from 6pm on Fri 5^th September 2014 to 4pm on Sunday 7^th September, and is a hackathon-style event. The event aims to bring together creative people from around the UK to devise ways to improve the visitor experience, reveal more of the site’s fascinating past and breathe new life into this cultural gem, helping to re-establish the Lunt as a major Roman visitor attraction.

Ludi Lunt is being organised by staff from the Lunt and its management team, who are working with a diverse group of local historians and hackathon experts to put this very special event together. They are now looking to recruit people with a range of skills to take part in the event, including historians, artists and illustrators, technologists, engineers, hackers, gamers, app-makers and coders, writers, performers, designers, social media whizzes, educational professionals and craftspeople, students – as well as anyone who feels that they have ideas to contribute to a weekend of innovation and creativity.

In return for your efforts, you will have the unique opportunity to spend a weekend with other creative people at this amazing location, including camping, eating and working in the grounds of the Lunt. There will also be prizes for the best ideas generated over the course of the weekend, as well as the opportunity to be involved in the implementation of selected projects.

There is no charge for you to be involved in the Ludi Lunt hackathon and applications are open now. Subscribe here!

For more information visit http://www.ludilunt.co.uk/

EU projects panel workshop at congress Euromed 2014 (Limassol, Cyprus, 3 November 2014)

A strategy for cultural heritage in the new digital age.

A panel workshop to disseminate the latest achievements and to foster collaboration in the digital cultural heritage sector was organized by Promoter Srl on Novermber 3rd, 2014 in the framework of the important congress Euromed 2014.

EU projects, organizations and professional operating in this field were invited to participate in the discussion.

Title of the session: The Digitization Age: Mass Culture is Quality Culture. Challenges for cultural heritage and society

The amount of digitized cultural heritage in Europe continues to grow: the digitization activities have a positive impact on the society, by making the cultural heritage more accessible for the citizens, and by generating benefits to the content owners. Several questions arise about digitized cultural heritage: how can digital cultural data be re-used at best, what is the impact on society, and how to preserve it in the long term? This panel discussion will try to answer these questions, and to present the latest EU projects that wish to identify a strategy for the cultural heritage in the new digital age.

The project that particpated to the workshop are both advanced projects such as ITN-DCH, Europeana Photography and Preforma, and newly launched projects as Europeana Space, RICHES, and the brand new Civic Epistemologies (kick-off meeting on 1st September 2014).

[Show as slideshow]

Starting from digitization, which produced such a big amount of cultural data, there are different areas of impact: to use such digitized materials, the e-infrastructures and preservation standards are needed, mostly for allowing to manage and search digital cultural objects and metadata, in terms of creative re-use and scientific research.

An analysis about the impact of digital cultural heritage on the society at large is necessary to understand how the society itself is changing, and how the role of citizens, who become an active part in the science and humanities, is crucial to guarantee a real development and participation in the research and educational fields.

A creative re-use of digital cultural content and repositories can also act as a leverage to unlock the business potential of European cultural heritage, generating benefits for companies and creating new job opportunities.

For more information:

Article “The Digitization Age: Mass Culture is Quality Culture. Challenges for cultural heritage and society.”, by Valentina Bachi, Antonella Fresa, Claudia Pierotti, Claudio Prandoni, Promoter srl (PDF, 1.2 Mb)

AGENDA Panel Workshop – The Digitization Age Mass Culture is Quality Culture

Workshop announce

Congress website with more photos of the Euromed 2014 congress