Digital meets Culture

Limassol, 3-8 November 2014

International Conference EuroMed2014

The audience of Euromed 2014 congress

The 5th International Euro-Mediterranean Conference (EuroMed 2014), devoted to Cultural Heritage (CH), was held on the 3rd-8th of November at the entrance of the ancient Amathus city, by Limassol, in Cyprus island. The EuroMed2014 is under the Patronage of H. E. the President of the Republic of Cyprus, Mr. Nikos Anastasiades.

Conference proceedings and nice photos of the event are available via the congress’ official website: www.euromed2014.eu

EuroMed brings together researchers, policy makers, professionals and practitioners to explore some of the more pressing issues concerning cultural heritage today.

Dr. Marinos Ioannides opening the event

The Conference Chair dr. Marinos Ioannides, announcing the event, said: “The ultimate aim of the 5th EuroMed conference will be to bring together as many stakeholders as possible from different backgrounds in order to achieve a high level of mutual understanding of the needs, the requirements and the technical means of meeting them. Therefore, our common goal is to focus on interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary research on tangible and intangible Cultural Heritage, the use of cutting edge technologies for the protection, preservation, conservation, massive digitalisation and visualization/presentation of the Cultural Heritage content (archeological sites, artifacts, monuments, libraries, archives, museums, etc). At the same time, the event is intended to cover topics of research ready for exploitation, demonstrating the acceptability of new sustainable approaches and new technologies by the user community, SME’s, owners, managers and conservators of cultural patrimony.”

E-Agenda of the Conference (PDF 214 Kb)

Main objectives of the conference were:

• highlighting the role of European CH research within international activities and cooperation;

• assessing the impact of EU policies on European CH and evaluating the positive contribution of CH innovative research to competitiveness and job creation;

• disseminating the results of European CH innovative research and discussing new possible developments;

• discussing coordination of national research within educational programmes for CH in Europe and the world;

• refining, amending and publishing main ideas of any technological platforms opened to the entire field of CH, in the context of preparation of 2016/17’s Work Programme for the EU Horizon2020 FP (2014-2020);

• emphasizing the relation of conservation practice to contemporary legislation, especially experienced by SMEs and especially as regards problems of orphan works, fraud and crime in the movable cultural heritage market, health and safety issues;

• evaluating how research influenced the impact of EU policies on CH and discussing the mitigation of possible adverse effects;

• underlining and discussing the role of current and future developments in international activities, agreements and cooperation:

a) against demolishing and/or looting in CH;

b) on the e-documentation and e-preservation in CH;

c) on the establishment of standards in the field of CH;

d) on conventions (like UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible CH);

e) on documenting, archiving, monitoring, preserving, protecting and presenting CH worldwide using innovative ICT solutions;

f) on the legal and ethical responsibilities of CH Informatics.

For more information: www.euromed2014.eu

Pisa, 4-5 December 2014

RICHES International Conference

PREFORMA project will participate to the digital poster exhibition at the International Conference organised by the RICHES project on December 4th abd 5th in Pisa, at the Museum of Graphics of Palazzo Lanfranchi.

The event, patronised by the Tuscany Region, Municipality of Pisa, University of Pisa and Fondazione Sistema Toscana, is organised by Promoter Srl, partner also of PREFORMA.

The conference, entitled “Cultural Heritage: Recalibrating Relationships” considers the over-arching objective of the project: how to reduce the distance between people and culture and recalibrate the relationship between heritage professional and heritage users. Such recalibration process will maximise cultural creativity and ensure that the whole European community can benefit from the social and economic potential of Cultural Heritage.

For further information visit the official website of the Conference.

Brussels, 17 December 2014

C4BI conference on procurement

The Cities for Business Innovation – network of procurers, also known as C4BI, is a European initiative that aims to provide an integrated answer to the challenge of urban innovation, fostering therefore the development of a consistent and sustainable policy of innovative public procurement within European cities.

The C4BI partners with the support of the Committee of Regions (CoR) invited PREFORMA to attend the conference “Local and regional governance approaches for innovation, economic development and cooperation”, taking place in Brussels on December 17, 2014.

This event will be an unique opportunity for sharing and debating diverse public procurement approaches and instruments that can impact the capacity of local and regional authorities for promoting innovation both internally and within their local communities. In addition, this conference will also discuss the influence and efficiency of authorities to pursue local economic development and social well-being.

A high-level panel of experts from the European Commission and project coordinators from different EU-funded projects will also participate in the conference.

Conference program is available here.

Conference admission is free of charge but with limited sitting. Please register no later than December, 11, 2014, by filling in the registration form available here.

Bozen-Bolzano (Italy), 29-30 January 2015

PREFORMA @ IRCDL 2015 Conference

Since 2005 the Italian Research Conference on Digital Libraries (IRCDL) provides a great opportunity for Italian researchers in the field of Digital Libraries to present and discuss their current research activities and to envision together further developments.

IRCDL 2015 edition is committed to preserve the traditional emphasis on the multidisciplinary nature of the research on digital libraries which has been characterizing the conference over the years. This multidisciplinary nature ranges from computer science to humanities in the broader sense, including research areas such as archival and library information sciences, information management systems, semantic technoologies, information retrieval, new knowledge environments. This is a continued challenge for the DL field and there is the need to continue to contribute to improve the cooperation between the many communities that share common objectives.

Another focus of IRCDL 2015 will be on the deep changes affecting the world of scientific communication, where new non linear but object-centric products are progressively taking shape, and on the growing role of the integration, publication and preservation of research data.

The aim of IRCDL 2015 is once more to provide the opportunity to explore new ideas, techniques, and tools, and to exchange experiences also from on-going projects. The IRCDL conferences have been launched and initially sponsored by DELOS, an EU FP6 Network of Excellence on digital libraries, together with the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padua. Over the years IRCDL has become a self sustainable event that is supported by the Italian Digital Libraries Community.

A paper about PREFORMA has been accepted and will be presented by the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padua. The title is “The PREFORMA Project: Federating Memory Institutions for Better Compliance of Preservation Formats”.

The 2015 edition is under the patronage and it is sponsored by the Faculty of Computer Science and the Library of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. For further information visit the Conference website.

See IRCDL home page at DEI for information on previous editions and the DBLP entry for information on proceedings and publications of past IRCDL editions.

Post proceedings of the previous edition of the conference held in Padua in 2014 have been published by Elsevier in the Series Procedia Computer Science and are now available as Open Access here.

Brussels, 31 January - 1 February 2015

PREFORMA @ FOSDEM 2015

FOSDEM is a two-day event organised by volunteers to promote the widespread use of open source software.

Taking place in the beautiful city of Brussels (Belgium), FOSDEM is widely recognised as the best open source conference in Europe.

PREFORMA will participate to the FOSDEM conference and one of the suppliers, MediaArea.net will have a developer room: see the Open Media DevRoom at https://fosdem.org/2015/schedule/track/open_media/.

What is FOSDEM?

FOSDEM is a free and non-commercial event organised by the community for the community. The goal is to provide open source software developers and communities a place to meet to:

get in touch with other developers and projects;
be informed about the latest developments in the open source world;
attend interesting talks and presentations on various topics by open source project leaders and committers;
to promote the development and the benefits of open source solutions.

Participation and attendance is totally free, though the organisers gratefully accept donations and sponsorship.

For more information visit the Conference website.

Paris, 12-13 February 2015

Europeana Tech Conference 2015

The second international EuropeanaTech conference will be held on February 12th and 13th 2015 in Paris, France.

The conference will showcase the most recent technological developments and innovations in the context of cultural heritage. From standardisation efforts, lessons from daily practice, fundamental research themes and disruptive innovations as proposed by businesses.

EuropeanaTech 2015 will bring the international network of technical specialists from memory organisations, research institutions and creative industries together to network and share progress. It will discuss topics that the Europeana community should address, and advise on the technical development of Europeana and related initiatives. EuropeanaTech 2015 is aimed at creative innovators in the heritage domain, ranging from staff contributing to institutional strategy, R&D software developers, academic researchers, managers of future oriented projects and so on.

PREFORMA project will be represented at the Conference through The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, community manager of EuropeanaTech and partner of PREFORMA.

Learn more about the conference programme here.

Source: http://www.europeanatech2015.eu/about/

Lleida, 28-30 May 2015

PREFORMA at the XV Congrés d’Arxivística de Catalunya

On 28-30 May 2015, in Lleida, the XV Archive Congress of Catalonia is being held, aimed at investigating and developing best practice for digital preservation.
As PREFORMA Project representative, Bert Lemmens from PACKED (Centre of Expertise in Digital Heritage, based in Brussels) is intervening with a speech on “Selecting Formats for Digital Preservation”.

Hereafter the event programme.

Programme

Thursday 28 May 2015

09.00h – 10.00h Opening

10.00h – 11.00h Plenary Hall: “What do we talk about in talking of preservation?” by Nancy McGovern

11.00h – 11.30h Coffee break

11.30h – 13.30h Round Table: “Catalan experience of digital preservation” by Maite Muñoz, Raimon Nualart, Karibel Pérez, Raimon Nualart. Moderator: Lluis-Esteve Casellas

13.30h – 15.30h Lunch

15.30h – 16.30h Plenary Hall: “Services and technologies for digital preservation” by José Carlos Ramalho
16.30h – 17.30h Round Table: “How does a digital repository work?” by Miguel Ángel Márdero, Jordi Serrano. Moderator: Miquel Térmens

17.30h – 18.00h Coffee break

18.00h – 19.00h Plenary Hall: “Selecting formats for digital preservation” by Bert Lemmens
19.00h – 20.00h Round Table: “Integration of document management and digital preservation” by Empar Costa, Pepita Raventós, Eva Roca. Moderator: Raimon Nualart

Friday 29 May 2015

09.00h – 10.00h Plenary Hall: “What do we talk about in talking of cloud services?” by Ricard de la Vega
10.00h – 11.00h Plenary Hall: “How to plan digital preservation?” by Barbara Sierman

11.00h – 11.30h Coffee break

11.30h – 13.30h Round Table: “Digital preservation as a service (SaaS: Software as a Service)” by Antonio Guillermo, Pep Lluís de la Rosa, Ramon Ros, Mario Yélamos

13.30h – 15.30h Lunch

15.30h – 16.30h Plenary Hall: “And all that is left out? What do I archive when I say I archive?” by Thomas Risse
16.30h – 17.30h Round Table: “Is it safe to outsource the digital custody?” by Ramón Miralles, Javier Prenafeta, Oriol Torruella. Moderator: Nacho Alamillo

17.30h – 19.00h Coffee break

17.30h – 19.30h Parallel Round Table: “The new ISO 9001:2015: An opportunity for improvement of document management”. Activity organised in cooperation with the XV Spanish Documentation Day

17:45h General meeting

Saturday 30 May 2015

09.00h – 10.00h Plenary Hall: “Digital archives in a networked world” by Luís Antonio Castrillo, Aránzanzu Lafuente
10.00h – 11.00h Plenary Hall: “Impact of the new state legislation” by Nacho Alamillo

11.00h – 11.30h Coffee break

11.30h – 13.00h Round table: Public policies of digital preservation by Enric Cobo, Miquel Estapé, Eugènia Serra, Ingrid Gómez. Moderator: Jordi Serra

13.00h – 13.30h Closing

For further info visit the event website (Catalan language)

Vienna, AIT, 29 May 2015

BitCurator Digital Forensics workshop

This one-day workshop, being held on 29 May in Vienna, at the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), offers the opportunity to learn how digital forensics and the use of disk images can support your digital preservation workflows. Supported by expert facilitators Cal Lee and Kam Woods from the University of North Carolina, participants will get hands-on experience using the BitCurator tools including the latest developments with BitCurator Access. The BitCurator Environment is a suite of open source digital forensics and data analysis tools to help collecting institutions (libraries, archives and museums) process and provide access to born-digital materials.

The workshop is organised by Open Preservation Foundation and addressed towards archivists, manuscript curators, librarians or others who are responsible for acquiring, transferring and/or providing access to collections of born-digital materials, particularly those that are received on removable media. It will be assumed that participants are familiar with basic digital curation issues and practices.
Though it is not mandatory, participants will ideally know how to create disk images, generate and verify cryptographic hashes of files and examine the contents of a file in a hex editor. It will also be helpful to be familiar with the role and purpose of file systems, file headers and file signatures. Knowledge of Linux command line operations will also be beneficial, but is not a necessary prerequisite for participation. The organiser will be on hand to help with tasks and many of the tools will have graphic user interfaces.

Participants will learn and get experience of the use of BitCurator environment tools, useful to support various phases of the digital curation, including pre-imaging data triage, forensic disk imaging, file system analysis and reporting, identification of private and individually identifying information, export of technical and other metadata.
They will also learn about tools (currently available but undergoing significant further development) enabling access to data from disk images and redaction of sensitive contents. Participants should leave with a practical understanding of how to apply these tools in their own institutions and with contacts of peer institutions undertaking similar work.

View the workshop agenda here.

Registration is open! For registering click here.
OPF members are invited to attend free of charge. The price for non-members is 75 Euros.

Organiser: Open Preservation Foundation

Venue: AIT Austrian Institute of Technology
Donau-City-Straße 1, 1220 Vienna, Austria

For further info visit openpreservation.org

Brussels, 5 March 2015

Second concertation meeting for on-going PCP projects

PREFORMA has been invited to the second concertation meeting for all on-going PCP projects in DG Connect, organised by the European Commission in Brussels on the 5^th of March 2015.

During this event the EC wants to give the opportunity to the attendees to network and share experiences on common issues that they face while implementing PCPs.

Taking into account that in the first concertation meeting all PCP projects already presented their project scope and planned activities, this year’s meeting will focus more on practical issues that concern the actual execution of a PCP.

The topics that will be discussed during the workshop are:

The transition from PCP to PPI
How to prepare a PCP call for tender
The link between PCP projects with other innovation policy measures (standardisation, venture capital and others)
The transition between the different phases of a PCP project

Download here the agenda of the meeting.

Cardiff, 16-20 March 2015

Procurement Week 2015

Bangor Law School is home to the Institute for Competition and Procurement Studies (ICPS). Each year they organise a National Procurement Conference in partnership with the Welsh Government. In 2015 the event will take place at the St David’s Hotel in Cardiff, Wales.

This event is attended by delegates from no fewer than 25 different countries. The attendees come from the world of business, the public sector, legal practice and academia. As part of next year’s events, on Tuesday 17th March 2015, it will be organised a ‘Game Changing Exhibition’. Innovation will be at the heart of the discussions.

PREFORMA project will be represented at the Conference through the Greek Film Centre and Riksarkivet and a poster of PREFORMA will be displayed during the whole Procurement Week.

Download here the Procurement Week 2015 programme brochure.

Download here the ‘Game Changing Exhibition and Innovation’ event brochure.

More information on the event can be found at the official website.