Digital meets Culture

Deadline: Tuesday 13th May 2014

EuropeanaPhotography – Survey on mapping and content delivery

Please Content Providers complete this quick survey. It will help a lot the metadata task force to organize at best the support for the next ingestion period.

DEADLINE: Tuesday 13th May 2014

Discussion is coordinated by Italian Ministry of Instruction, University and Research (MIUR)

An important initiative in Italy with theme “Science, Development and Employment”.

An important initiative coordinated by Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) with theme “Science, Development and Employment” is taking flight.

In the light of the actions needed to achieve the target of 3% of the European GNPs invested in the research field, Italy is discussing the implementation of a biennial event on research and innovation. Such event is intended to boost the quality of research and its results, and to develop the opportunity of research in Italy and internationally.

A round table is organized by SIPS (Italian Society for the Progress of Sciences) to discuss the theme, including high representatives of Italian Government, University and Industry is taking place in Rome on 8^th May 2014, taking into account the major priority for Italy to enhance research and development, through actions aimed at fostering framework conditions where enterprises are encouraged to experiment with innovation and change.

Download the programme of the event – Italian language (PDF, 533 Kb)

Barcelona, 13 May 2014

RICHES first WORKSHOP at UIC

The workshop was celebrated on Tuesday, May 13^th, at The Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC) Barcelona’s Campus and served as the foundation of the RICHES Project research areas. The workshop outcomes established an initial agreement of basic definitions and frameworks which will delineate RICHES’ fields of research and further study on the context of change in which European Cultural Heritage (CH) is transmitted and on the role of CH in the economic and social development of Europe.

RICHES (Renewal, innovation & Change: Heritage and European Society) is a European research project about change: about the decentring of culture and cultural heritage away from institutional structures towards the individual and about the questions which the advent of digital technologies is posing in relation to how we understand, collect and make available Europe’s cultural heritage. With this event, i2Cat and The Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC) joined forces to bridge the gap between the world of change in which the CH is reinventing itself, the academic community (professors, researchers and students) and the CH professionals and institutions. In addition, the event was a unique opportunity to disseminate the RICHES project amongst researchers, educators, scientists, industry professionals and policy makers and to promote the new strategies and fields of research taking place in the European context.

In conjunction with the workshop, the RICHES Consortium Partners joined for an internal Plenary Meeting, held on the 12^thand 14^thof May, in order to discuss the work so far undergone and plan their future research and management activities .

Over the past few months and after the workshop’s announcement, more than 50 attendees have registered to participate in the several open to all discussion sessions that took place during 13 May’s workshop. Apart from the Project partner’s representatives, a wide range of CH professionals, researchers, international guests – key figures in developing the field – and academia from the UIC and other Universities participated and contributed to the taxonomy and definitions of the contextual framework of the RICHES Project.

Such a successful call proves that the themes and issues gravitating around the Cultural Heritage in the digital era and the fields of research which delineate the RICHES project are rising interest and growing awareness.

Barcelona’s workshop enabled all participants to:

– Elaborate and agree on a Taxonomy of Terms and Definitions which will support the project’s research.

– Share knowledge and enrich debate through the Network of Common Interest and its groups.

– Develop a framework of understanding of copyright and IPR laws as they relate to CH practice in the digital.

For more information visit the project website

Download the event agenda here!

Download the workshop’s leaflet!

See the article we published to announce the event

RICHES on Twitter: #richesEU

RICHES on YouTube: www.youtube.com/richesEU

Work in progress: the project foresees 6 different themed pilots which will deliver their prototype outcomes by January 2015.

Europeana Space in Amsterdam: project’s meeting

An important meeting of Europeana Space took place in Amsterdam on 15-16 May, hosted by partner Noterik and coordinated by the WP4 leaders iMINDS and Promoter.

Europeana Space is a very large project coordinated by Coventry University and characterized by experimentation and creativity: in facts its main aim is to trail new ways of re-use for the digital cultural heritage, in order to unlock its potential in terms of business and creation of new jobs. The project foresees 6 different themed pilots which will deliver their prototype outcomes by year 1 of the project (January 2015):

Pilot’s name	Pilot Coordinator	Participants
EuropeanaTV	NISV	LUCE, NOTERIK, NTUA, RBB, PROTONLABS
Photography	KU Leuven	iMINDS, PROMOTER, EUREVA, CUT, CULTURELABEL
Dance	COVUNI	UNL-FCSH, IN2
Games	COVUNI
EuropeanaPublishing	GOLDSMITHS	COVUNI
Museums	FST	EVK, MUSEUMSMEDIEN, LAM, EUREVA, SPK, CULTURELABEL

Several meetings were planned since the project’s kick-off, to coordinate at best the tasks of the pilots, both in terms of common activities and methodologies, and for individual planning. A first meeting was held in Brussels in March 2014 and a final event completed the preparation work for the pilots – that will then be carried on by the respective participants – but this intermediate meeting in Amsterdam is crucial because of its content and agenda.

The meeting was in facts organized in two sessions: on day 1 there was a brainstorming on use cases, that involved the participants in a creative discussion; while day 2 was dedicated to arrange the planning of the pilots and the validation criteria to be applied; moreover, the partners deeper analyzed the relationships of the pilots’ tasks with other tasks of the project, in particular with the progress and results of the market analysis, and the organization of hackathons and monetizing workshops. Another topic to be discussed in this meeting was the technical infrastructure and the Europeana Labs (the new Europeana platform to provide support and tools for using the Europeana APIs).

Visit the Europeana Space website: http://www.europeana-space.eu/

Catania, 9-20 June 2014

School for Application Porting to Science Gateways

The CHAIN-REDS project is happy to announce the School for Application Porting to Science Gateways to be held in Catania, Italy, on 9-20 June 2014:

http://agenda.ct.infn.it/event/chain-reds-sg-school

The school aims at increasing the number of scientific applications running on grid and cloud-based e-Infrastructures.

Applications can be either proposed by the registrants or assigned to the participants at the beginning of the school. Applications can be proposed following the direct link:

https://agenda.ct.infn.it/internalPage.py?pageId=2&confId=1057

The deadline for application proposals submission is the 31st of May 2014.

It’s all about sharing research data …

EUDAT News bullettin – April 2014

With the new release of B2SHARE just last week, which sees the improvement of the metadata creation interface, deposit functions, and the search/browse functionality. Coupled with the existing secure and integrated features, a brand new community extension for BBMRI has been added bringing the community extensions to five now. Presentations from the collaboration projects at the 3rd EUDAT User Forum in Prague lead you to believe that many more will follow over the coming months.

Nowadays it is hard to imagine trying to manage research data without the support of a sturdy and robust network, on a national, European or international level. EUDAT communities, old & new, came together in Prague last week to build another piece of this network – the pan-European Collaborative Data Infrastructure. Communities covering scientific disciplines from maritime research to biobanks, atmospheric monitoring to life sciences, … painted a clear picture of the intense cross-community and multi-disciplinary involvement & engagement in EUDAT.

Community representatives explained why they are signing up to EUDAT including the fact that stakeholders want to use existing European services, resources and skills while at the same time users are seeking common standards & platforms that simplify the efficient exchange & re-use of data. Another point underlined was the community need for support from IT professional supported by a pan-European network of trusted centres. EUDAT in a nutshell, no?

The data issues that the life science communities are facing are common to many others, data is diverse and complex particularly in relation to data coming from different domain. The big data challenge is a serious one and reflections from Elixir include: “Sooner, much sooner, than later producing data will be cheaper than storing it, producing data will be faster than transferring it and the production of data will double faster than computing power”. So teaming up with EUDAT and implementing the B2Service solutions is a natural step for communities towards facing this and other data challenges.

Policy has a large role to play in all this too, researchers need tools and guidance as well as services to ensure that their research data is available but properly managed, secure and properly cited, meaningful and usable over long periods of time. Good data management planning is no longer an option, it’s an obligation and part of EUDAT’s mission is to disseminate and promote best practice in data management. Activities are currently on-going to generate a tool for EU projects to generate research data management.

Another aspect of safeguarding research data is the identification of “trusted” digital repositories. Trust is at the very heart of data sharing and preservation with various stakeholders involved, all for different reasons. The users of data from a digital repository have questions like: Has the data been preserved properly? Is it of high quality? Has it been changed in some way? Does the pointer get me to the right object? The depositors of data want to be sure that in the digital repositories their data is safe and remains accessible, usable and meaningful over time. Finally, the funders want reassurance that their investment in the production of valuable research data is not wasted but will remain also in the future. Certification is therefore fundamental in guaranteeing the trustworthiness of digital repositories and thus in sustaining the opportunities for long-term data sharing. Ingrid Dillo, Deputy Director Policy, DANS, introduced many of these themes both during her presentation on European Digital Repository Certification: the way forward and during the Policy, Sustainability & Certification session she moderated.

All 3rd EUDAT User Forum presentations are available for download from http://www.eudat.eu/3rd-eudat-user-forum

And to stay on the community theme. Join us at the EGI Community Forum in Helsinki where EUDAT is co-organising the Research data and services workshop with RDA, OpenAIRE and ATT on 20th May 2014. Participants to the workshop can expect to get a picture of the Finnish, European and international landscape on research data services, hear from users on how these services are being implemented and why as well as understand what the future holds. For more information, registration and a complete agenda see http://www.eudat.eu/events/egi-community-forum-2014

Some dates for your Diary …

Big Data and Open Data, 7th & 8th May Brussels focusing on the common problems that all data producing large scale research facilities are facing and will face in the years to come, and the ways to elaborate solutions. Peter Wittenburg, EUDAT Scientific Coordinator, will make a presentation entitled EUDAT: Shaping the Future of Europe’s Collaborative Data Infrastructure.

The Open Repositories Conference 2014, is being held in Helsinki from 9 to 13 June 2014 and the main theme of this edition is “Towards Repository Ecosystems”. EUDAT will present the B2SHARE service at the poster session as well as have an exhibition stand.

Save the Date: EUDAT 3rd Conference – Bringing data infrastructures to Horizon 2020 – 24-26 September 2014, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, co-located with the Research Data Alliance (RDA) 4th Plenary Meeting

For a complete list of events featuring EUDAT see http://www.eudat.eu/events/meet-us

Tallinn, 23-24 April 2014

DCH-RP e-Infrastructure Concertation Workshop

On April 23rd and 24th, 2014, an e-Infrastructure concertation meeting has been organised in Tallinn by DCH-RP project (Digital Cultural Heritage – Roadmap for Preservation) to discuss in more detail the strategy and recommendations presented in the DCH-RP roadmap study and the intermediate roadmap and how to prepare for future cooperation.

Following the fruitful collaborations set up during the implementation of the former DC-NET project, including the signature of a series of MoUs, contacts between DCH organisations and e-Infrastructures were continued, expanded and developed under DCH-RP via a series of experiments (the Proof of Concepts), a virtual platform and small workshops held at different occasions.

The workshop was very successful as all the speakers and the participants provided their feedback on the intermediate version of the Roadmap, both from the point of view of the memory institutions (on the first day) and of the e-infrastructure providers (on the second day). This feedback will be analysed and took into account in the final version of the Roadmap which will be published in Semptember 2014.

Here below you can find and download all the presentations that were delivered during the 2-days event. A detailed report is being produced and it will be available on the DCH-RP showcase in the coming weeks.

Introduction to the roadmap (B. Justrell): download PDF

Day 1 (23/04/2014): DCH institutions views on the Roadmap (download all presentations)

Patrimoine Numérique (M.V. Leroi): download PDF
Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana (M. Messina): download PDF
Royal Institute of Cultural Heritage (H. Arijs): download PDF
Ministry of Education and Research (E. Stenskold): download PDF
National Archives of Estonia (K. Aas): download PDF
Digital Heritage Netherlands (M. De Niet): download PDF
DARIAH and CNR (V. Virgili): download PDF
Silesian Digital Library (R. Lis): download PDF
Lithuanian Art Museum (S. Bagdonas): download PDF
Digital Preservation Coalition (W. Kilbride): download PDF
Culture Information Systems Centre (L. Valdovska): download PDF
National Széchényi Library (M. Toth): download PDF
Deutsche Kinemathek (J. Keiper): download PDF
Discussion (chair: R. Ruusalepp): download PDF

Day 2 (24/04/2014): e-infrastructure views on the Roadmap (download all presentations)

e-IRG (L. Laaksonen): download PDF
ESFRI (J. Dubucs): download PDF
EENet (H. Teder): download PDF
EGI.eu (M. Dresher): download PDF
APARSEN (H. Brocks): download PDF
Discussion (chair: T. Devenport): download PDF

Conclusions (J. Moulin): download PDF

The workshop was followed by the fourth DCH-RP plenary meeting, whose main objective was to plan the editing and delivery of the final version of the Roadmap, which will be published in September in the occasion of the DCH-RP final conference as the major result of the project.

Stay tuned on www.digitalmeetsculture.net/heritage-showcases/dch-rp/ to follow the progress of the project!

See SCAPE in action by visiting one of the partners!

SCAPE Project Demonstration Days

The EU-project SCAPE invites you to visit a SCAPE partner to be introduced to some of the developments within the project. The Demonstration visits will take place during May/early June 2014.

To schedule a visit, please send an email to Jette Junge (jgj@statsbiblioteket.dk), explaining which partner and/or topics you would like to see presented as well as preferred dates for the visit.

SCAPE addresses long term digital preservation of large-scale and heterogeneous collections of digital objects. Learn more about SCAPE at www.scape-project.eu.

A number of partners will demonstrate the tools and services developed in SCAPE and used in their own environments. The demonstration assets include:

The SCAPE Platform
SCAPE Preservation Components
Preservation Watch
Commercial Products

Choose your visit by topic: http://wiki.opf-labs.org/display/SP/Visiting+Opportunities+by+Topic

Decide which partner to visit by location: http://wiki.opf-labs.org/display/SP/Visiting+Opportunities+by+Institution

Or browse the ever growing list of planned events: http://wiki.opf-labs.org/display/SP/Planned+Events

We are looking forward to showing what SCAPE can do for your organisation!

On behalf of the SCAPE Demo Team,

Jette Junge
Statsbiblioteket, Denmark

Cambridge, (Trinity College) 27 April 2014

DiXiT Supervisory Board Meeting

The DiXiT Supervisory Board will take place in Cambridge (Trinity College) on Sunday, 27 April (10am – 1 pm).

The External Experts Advisory Board (EEAB) consists out of four members:

Arianna Ciula, Research Facilitator in the Department of Humanities at the University of Roehampton (London), consultant for and previously science officer (Humanities) at the European Science Foundation (Strasbourg), member of the TEI board of directors and secretary of the European Association of Digital Humanities.

Gregory Crane, Professor in Computer Science and chair in the Dept. of Classics at Tufts University and currently holding a Humboldt professorship at Leipzig University

Hans-Walter Gabler, Prof. em. for English Studies and Editorial Science at the Ludwig-Maximilian University, Munich

Espen Smith Ore, Head Engineer at the Institute for Linguistics and Nordic Studies, Oslo

Agenda:
– Camp 1 (supervision, deliverables, financing)
– Camp 2 in Graz
– further events (e.g. DH conference in Lausanne)
– Consortium Agreement
– Finances, especially:
— Consortium Finance Plan
— Accounting procedure (receipts, bills etc.)
— Eligible costs & redistribution from Category 3 (Training)
– Deliverables
– Secondments
– Announcement of ER fellowships
– Reports (… Mid-Term)
– other

The meeting is scheduled in the framework of the Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age 2014.

By Neasan ONeill

Networking for Digital Preservation

We live in a digital age we no longer commit knowledge to vellum or paper, storage solutions that have stood the test of time. Now everything is created, consumed and, hopefully, stored on computers. It is this last area that is of particular concern, how can we ensure that valuable digital information will remain accessible and usable? This is where digital preservation comes in.

EGI: What is the goal of the Networking Session?
Claudio Prandoni: Our aim with the session is to present to the whole digital preservation and e-infrastructures community the new opportunities offered by the pre-commercial-procurement launched by PREFORMA project. We are interested in engaging with everyone from the open source community and developers to standardisation bodies and memory institutions. At the end of May we launch a call for tender to develop and deploy a suite of open source tools that allow memory institutions to check that the files stored in their archives conform to a specific standard.

EGI: Who would you like to attend the session?
CP: The tender is quite broad and we want to have a wide range of stakeholders involved. So at the session we would love to see any potential supplier like SMEs, research centres or universities that have some experience in the field of standardisation and quality checks. However they are not the only people who should come along, we are interested in memory institutions and cultural heritage organisations coordinating or representing them, developers, research organisations, standardisation bodies, funding agencies, best practice networks and other projects in the digital culture, e-Infrastructures and policy arenas. There is a place for anyone interested in preserving our digital heritage.

EGI: What will attendees learn from attending?
CP: We hope attendees will have a better understanding of what PREFORMA does and how they can get involved, including funding opportunities. But most importantly for us is the opportunity for them to give us feedback and advice and ask specific questions around the issues and challenges that PREFORMA is addressing, helping us to improve and refine the requirements and the specification of the tender

The “Pre-commercial procurement on digital preservation” networking session will be held at 11am on Wednesday 21st at the EGI Community Forum in Helsinki.

You can find more information on the PREFORMA website at http://www.digitalmeetsculture.net/article/preforma-egi-community-forum-2014

Source: http://www.egi.eu/news-and-media/newsfeed/news_2014_014.html