EuropeanaPhotography UK partner Topfoto is doing an amazing job for digitization of ancient photos.

The large fleet of cars on the quayside at Monte Carlo for the purpose of conveying tourists round the sights - February 1925

TopFoto is an independent picture library based 45 minutes south of London in Edenbridge, Kent, England. The archive contains 10 million images from medieval documents to today’s digital files being sent in by FTP from all over the world.

The core of the hardcopy archive comprises of 120.000 negatives from John Topham (an individual photographer and TopFoto’s founder) plus millions of negatives and hardcopy prints from a variety of historic press agencies that have been collected by the current owner, Alan Smith, since 1975.

TopFoto supplies primarily editorial content to clients but is extremely diverse and its pictures are reproduced in all areas of visual publication. TopFoto was a pioneer in digitisation and electronic transfer and through new technologies has formed close links to international partners in over 40 countries around the world.

Holiday makers at Brighton 1937

TopFoto employs 15 people and prides itself on the specialist personal research service that it provides to clients.

For the EuropeanaPhotography Project, TopFoto is digitising negatives (mostly quarter plate glass negatives but including some very fragile nitrates) from its collection between the dates of 1890-1939. After adding metadata, it will make 60.000 images available on the Europeana website.

TopFoto has identified four key collections to concentrate on for the project:

Central News, 1890 – 1930
The collection was the picture library of the news agency of the same name est. 1870. It has world coverage and includes many masterpiece portraits of Royals and famous personalities from the era.
Alfieri, 1914 – 1939 (c.20.000 relevant glass plate negatives)
Was a London based agency that supplied images to the weekly press and magazines. Although it had a global network it primarily covers London and the surrounding area with a specific focus on society and London life during this fascinating period between the wars.
Planet News, 1928 – 1939
Contains a wide range of editorial news events from all over the world. This collection also has some isolated nitrate negatives on important subjects that we would like to rescue, including Russian spy trials and the Spanish Civil War.
John Topham, 1927 – 1973
John Topham’s legacy, the founding collection of TopFoto image library, is over 120,000 negatives of superb social history capturing the disappearance of rural life as the South East of England began to disappear under a swathe of concrete. The Arts Council of England funded a touring exhibition of his work, Memory Lane, curated by the Impressions Gallery in York, and his work is significant to the Imperial War Museum and the Museum of Rural Life, amongst others. Topham began as a policeman in the East End of London in the 1920s. When he sold his first picture for the equivalent of a week’s wage, he quit the Force and from 1931-1973 he photographed, as he put it, the “little things of life – the way it really was”.

John Balean and Alan Smith during EuropeanaPhtography kick off meeting, february 2012

John Balean, international manager, is the key contact for the Digitisation Project at TopFoto; he explains about the work for EuropeanaPhotography:

The job is already started with an excellent workflow, so that it is possible to process 300 images in an eight hour shift at a very high resolution (40MP), thanks to Phase-One digital facilities. We have it set up to only scan negatives but in the downtime we could with extra equipment do flat art. (In the meantime flat art will continue to be done by flatbed scanners.) Our project requires and the practicalities of keywording limit us to 100 images per working day.

John has also given lectures and written about the picture industry including, Editor of the 2008-2009 CEPIC Image Trading International, Chair of Free Pictures – Friends or Foes? at the 2009 CEPIC Annual Congress, a contributor to Photo Archive News (www.photoarchivenews.com), and as the Consultant Researcher to the Press Photo History Project (www.pressphotohistory.com):

We have started with Alfieri and will follow this with Central News, Planet News and the early work of John Topham. All these archives are wholly owned and almost entirely exclusive. This will improve our margin and should create a honey pot for researchers who want to see unique and often never before seen images. These facts and the grant will obviously have a beneficial effect on our operation.

The first 500 images digitised for EuropeanaPhotography (from the TopFoto Alfieri collection) have now been added to www.TopFoto.co.uk.

If you want to take a look at some of the content please visit the page here

Learn more about the work Topfoto is doing in the EuropeanaPhotography project in the dissemination booklet (PDF, 5,20 Mb)

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A long history in teaching & learning meets digital technologies: preservation and wider access to the library resources.

Advanced digital facilities to improve classical studies

KU Leuven is a research-intensive, internationally oriented university that carries out both fundamental and applied research. It is strongly inter- and multidisciplinary in focus and strives for international excellence. To this end, KU Leuven works together actively with its research partners at home and abroad. Founded in 1425, KU Leuven bears the double honor of being the oldest existing Catholic university in the world and the oldest university in the Low Countries. KU Leuven combines a rich tradition with top research & technology. There are more than 38.000 students, about 2.000 academic staff and more than 4000 junior researchers.

History

Pope Martin V issued a papal bull dated 9 December 1425 founding the University in Leuven as a Studium Generale. This university was institutionally independent of the local ecclesiastical hierarchy. From the founding of the university to its abolition in 1797, Latin was the sole language of instruction.

From the founding of the University in 1425 up until 1636, there was no official library of the university. The students had access to manuscripts and printed books preserved in the homes of their professors or colleges. In 1636 a university library was founded in the Leuven Cloth hall, and about a century later it was enlarged in a baroque style.

After the French Revolutionary Wars, once the Netherlands were formally integrated into the French Republic, all universities in France had to be closed by law, and the University of Leuven was abolished. What remained of the university’s movables and books were requisitioned for the École Centrale in Brussels, as the official replacement of the abolished university, although its most precious books and manuscripts were deposited in Paris in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Later, the Central School in Brussels was closed down and a new Catholic University established in Leuven in 1835.

During WWI and WWII the town suffered from bombing and pillage, but the University withstood bravely. The German troops invaded the town and the library was burned in 1914 (indeed it was not the original library of the old University, but the new library of the new Catholic University of Leuven – but a cruel event the same!). In 1940 the town was seriously damaged by bombing… and still survived.

In 1968 the bilingual Catholic University of Leuven split into two “sister” universities, with the Université Catholique de Louvain departing to a newly built, greenfield campus site in the French-speaking part of Belgium and the Dutch-language university becoming a fully functioning independent institution in Leuven.

Bruno Vandermuelen, from the Faculty of Letters, talks about the digitization facilities available at the University digital lab, helping digitization for EuropeanaPhotography EC project and others.

Bruno, digital technology and preservation for the ancient books: what are the most specific issues you meet during every day work at Alamire digital lab?

The Alamire Digital Lab at the University Library has been specially adapted for high-end digitization with for instance controlled climate, dark walls, different sets and setups. The manuscripts we photograph are rare and sometimes extremely valuable. Before photographing, we look at the binding and how the manuscript behaves when turning the pages so we can position the book safely. The equipment for digitizing is camera based as scanners pose a higher risk damaging the manuscripts. It also gives us the flexibility to adapt how we photograph to the way the manuscript behaves. With the cameras and appropriate lightning we can also go to archives as manuscripts sometimes can’t always leave their institute.

Photographing manuscripts closeby with high-resolution digital backs (80-100 million pixels) is also challenging as the tolerances you work within are very narrow. Depth of field, sharpness, vibration due to mirror slab, focus calibration, color calibration, diffraction, alignment, all come into play and can become problematic when not well controlled.

Working in a controlled environment as the Alamire Digital Lab helps to speed up the workflow from capture to archiving. Contrary to for example a fashion shoot where only the best images are processed and kept, we keep and process every image we make. Photographing in a RAW format enables us to work with presets, which we can apply to a set of images. Processing takes time as the final archival tiff file of a single image is about 230 MB; some manuscripts contain 500 pages and more.

Apart from the high-end digitization we also focus on development of visualization techniques for art-technical research in cultural heritage, like UV, IR, 3D. These modules are developed in collaboration with engineers of the KU Leuven. The main advantage is that we can assess the object in a non-destructive way.

With our faculty wide DAM (Digital Asset Management) system dARTS we can annotate, search and retrieve the images is the format we need. Various research and educational projects make use of the central image repository to curate and disseminate their collections, both online and offline.

Nowadays, digital technology applied to photography has opened an unceasing debate about the fact that good digital cameras are easily accessible also to amateurs, and editing software allows almost anyone to get good results, even starting from a poor shot. As a photographer, what is your position: is digital technology improving or damaging photography?

The technology is there and evolving rapidly, so we better make use of it. It’s definitely improving photography. On the technological side the resolution of high-end cameras and the quality of the files even surpass large format cameras. Software also keeps improving, which is important because you can process your older RAW files with the latest software and possibilities.

In the digital age, as a photographer, you are again in total control of the output. In the film days you selected your films in function of what you photographed or the effect you wanted. After exposure you brought the film to the lab to process and that was the end. Now, with good software available, you can make your own film, or create your own look. With good equipment becoming accessible to the broad public, vision, how you photograph, how you approach your subject, how you present your work has become very important. A camera is just a tool, photography is about what you do with it and that hasn’t changed over the years.

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EuropeanaPhotography project goes on with a technical workshop about digitization.

Digitization systems and procedures in photographic image archives

From Mr. David Iglésias Frank, archival technician at CRDI, Girona City Council

The Centre de Recerca i Difusió de la Imatge (CRDI) of the Girona City Council organized in 22-23 May 2012 a 14 hours workshop about digitisation in the framework of the EuropeanaPhotography project.

prof. Carles Mitjà, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC).

during the workshop

The workshop Digitization systems and procedures in photographic image archives aimed to provide an overview of the available systems for original photographic materials digitization as well as the procedures in order to obtain the best results in terms of image quality and fidelity to the original.

The teachers for this workshop were Carles Mitjà and Bea Martinez, very renowned professionals in Spain. Both are from the Image Quality Laboratory (IQL) by the Centre de la Imatge i la Tecnologia Multimèdia (CITM) located at Terrassa Campus of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC).

Joan Boadas, the CRDI Director

As a result of this workshop, a recommendation paper will be published at the Europeanan Photography website. The goal of this short paper is to establish the main recommendations for partners of the project involved in the process of digitizing. These recommendations come from the explanations that the teachers made during the workshop. They can not be understood as a theoretical corpus, but a procedure in how to work.

The EuropeanaPhotography project aims to digitize and disseminate 500.000 images representing the first hundred years of Photography, from the first pictures of Fox Talbot and Daguerre to just before the beginning of World War 2. The project is participated by institutions from different European countries. In this context, the CRDI has the responsibility to provide standards for digitization and cataloging.

The workshop was attended by 22 people representing 13 partners that are part of the EuropeanaPhotography project, from Italy, England, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, Poland, Slovakia, and Lithuania.

Official board of representatives to support the e-infrastructure programs across European Member States.

e-IRG: e-Infrastructure Reflection Group

The e-Infrastructure Reflection Group was founded to define and recommend best practices for the pan-European electronic infrastructure efforts. It consists of official government delegates from all the EU countries. The e-IRG produces white papers, roadmaps and recommendations, and analyses the future foundations of the European Knowledge Society.

The main objective of the e-Infrastructure initiative is to support the creation of a political, technological and administrative framework for an easy and cost-effective shared use of distributed electronic resources across Europe. Particular attention is directed towards grid computing, storage, and networking.

Important issues within the e-IRG are currently:

e-infrastructures in European Commission’s Framework Programme 7
a policy for resource sharing
a registry/repository for European resources
coordination of new national and EU funding programs
better links and synergies between Europe and other regions (e.g. USA, Japan) engaged in similar activities

The e-IRG was founded during the Greek presidency of the European Union in 2003. A workshop entitled Towards integrated Networking and Grids infrastructures for eScience and beyond – The EU eInfrastructures Initiative was held in Athens on the 12th of June 2003. The event was organised by the General Secretariat for Research & Technology (GSRT), the Greek Research & Technology Network (GRNET), the National Documentation Centre (EKT) and the European Commission.

It was decided that the presidency of the e-IRG was to rotate along each semester with the chairmanship of the European Union.

The e-IRG is formed by official delegations of ministries of science from various European countries, but the e-IRG also coordinates activities with international initiatives outside of Europe.

The structure consists of appointed Member, Accession and Associated States Representatives, and officials from the European Commission; the executive board consists of a chair elected by the members, and three board members representing the rotating EU Presidency: past – current – future presidencies each deliver one board member. Operational support is provided through the European Commission by means of the e-IRGSP3 project.

Current Executive Board:

Gudmund Høst (chair), The Research Council of Norway, Norway
René Belsø (co-chair), DCSC, Denmark
Norbert Meyer (vice-chair), Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, Poland
Kees Neggers (vice-chair), SURFnet, The Netherlands
Pekka Karp (invited expert), EC, Belgium

e-IRG regularly delegates work to Task Forces. e-IRG is also sometimes officially represented in external Task Forces and committees.

The e-Infrastructure Reflection Group organises workshops twice a year in collaboration with the country holding the EU presidency. Workshops are open to all, and function as incubators for feeding new information and trends into the e-IRG plenum work. Internal meetings for the e-IRG delegates are also scheduled four times a year. A tri-monthly newsletter is published on-line to collect interesting articles about e-infrastructure initiatives and reports form meetings and workshops.

The June 2012 newsletter has just been published with following content:

the public summary of the the 28th e-Irg Delegates meeting, by Rossend Llurba, e-IRGSP3
the European Grid Infrastructure’s 2012 Community Forum, by Stefan Janusz, e-ScienceTalk
EGI events in Prague and Munich, by Catherine Gater, EGI.eu
EUDAT and the research communities, by Riina Salmivalli, EUDAT
the terabit research network in Europe, by Paul Maurice, GEANT
Cultural heritage going digital, by Antonella Fresa, Promoter

Download the June 2012 newsletter (PDF, 756 Kb)

Further information about e-IRG: www.e-irg.eu

JCDL 2012, Joint Conference on Digital Libraries

The 2012 edition of this prestigious Conference was held June 10-14 in Washington, DC, hosted by The George Washington University, and it was as usual a very valuable international forum focusing on digital libraries and associated technical, practical, organizational, and social issues.

Professor Maristella Agosti, Italian referent of project CULTURA, presented a short paper during the session dedicated to Preservation.

The title of the paper is “To Envisage and Design the Transition from a Digital Archive System Developed for Domain Experts to one for Non-domain Users”, by Maristella Agosti and Nicola Orio.

The paper was extremely worth to be presented in the Conference, because it touches a very interesting point: it is common practice to develop digital archive systems keeping in mind the requirements of a specific target category of expert users, but the archive content may result interesting also to a wider audience, from scholars in related domains to the general public. In particular, the digital content of a scientific/cultural archive can also be re-used for several different and wider applications in the field of digital cultural heritage.

In this sense, the paper reports on the work that has been conducted to re-design and re-engineer the IPSA system at University of Padua, in order to match requirements and expectations of non-domain users.

The conference was also the occasion to disseminate more in general the CULTURA project to a very valuable audience overseas.

Official website of 2012 event: http://jcdl2012.info/

An european project that aims at developing process of open innovation in real urban environment

SMART CITY: creative, sustainable and user-centred cities

Growing urbanisation, sustainable development, digital challenge, users’ involvement, economic and cultural attractiveness, governance, are part of the main stakes cities have to tackle. To face this plural urban reality, it has become necessary to find adapted means to conceive cities and territorial development. A better consideration of the uses, the creation of real consultation methods have priority.

Thus, the new processes to imagine have to respond to a main stake: to restructure urban places to live and to invent a creative, sustainable and citizen–centred city.

As a laboratory for urban innovation, SmartCity invites people from creative and digital economy, users, academics, local authorities, architects and urban planners to create unreleased ways of approaching and transforming the city. It aims at developing process of open innovation in real urban environment.

The methodology is based on a sensitive analysis of uses and territories stakes; this is acquired thanks to site specific experimentations, intending to test new urban uses, prototypes, technologies and operating process of users’ collaboration.

In France, a full-scale experimentation has been led in the south of Paris since 2007, in partnership with the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris. This exceptional area is turned into a unique observatory for urban, social and technologic innovation.

SmartCity initiates an innovative way of supporting local development:

To invent new means for consultation and conception of the city
To enhance local resources, identities and memory of a territory
To experiment new products and services on digital city
To study new urban uses
To mobilize users, local stakeholders around the territorial project

Experimentation topics:

Innovation, architecture, urban planning

Mobility and digital territories

City, nature and sustainable development

Living together and new collaborative spaces

Activities:

European co-productions

Research-action

Multi-disciplinary workshops

Experimentation and development of new urban devices

Events: encounters, conferences, exhibitions, multidisciplinary evenings

Aims:

To favour exchanges and dialogue between creative communities, experts, users, stakeholders, thanks to a participatory, interdisciplinary and trans-sectorial approach

To create long-term exchanges with cultural, socio-economic actors, users of the studied area

To build a European network for urban and social experimentation

European partners:

CIANT [Prague|Czech Republic], Waag Society [Amsterdam |Netherlands], Plzen 2015 [Czech Republic], Kitchen Budapest [Hungary], Institut français de Riga [Latvia], Hangar [Barcelona|Spain], Moving Closer [Warsaw | Poland], Institut français de Timisoara [Romania], Cité internationale universitaire de Paris [France], Videomedeja [Novi Sad|Serbia]

Official Website: www.smartcity.fr/europe/en

Pane e gelsomini – La rivoluzione tunisina

C/o CIRCOLO DI MONTEMAGNO

località La Corte

martedì 5 giugno ore 20,30

CENA PROFIT

Pane e gelsomini – La rivoluzione tunisina

L’incasso andrà a produrre l’evento che si terrà nei giorni 22-23-24 giugno presso le Logge dei Banchi a Pisa

“Pane e gelsomini”

prende spunto dai lavori realizzati durante i giorni delle manifestazioni a Sfax e dell’assedio del palazzo di Ben Ali a Tunisi dagli studenti dell’Accademia di Arti Grafiche di Sfax e dal loro professore Raouf Karray, che nei giorni della rivolta hanno partecipato alle manifestazioni e all’assedio.

A questi lavori prodotti in loco e affissi di notte nei punti caldi della città, si sono aggiunti i bozzetti di solidarietà inviati da grafici di diversi paesi del mondo che hanno voluto così fornire un concreto appoggio alla Primavera dei Gelsomini.

L’evento in Logge dei Banchi prevede:

Mostra – Proiezioni – Incontri

– la realtà tunisina di ieri e di oggi, con la presenza di Raouf Karray – coordinatore e responsabile del progetto – e di studenti e lavoratori tunisini che vivono in Italia

– mostra espositiva di una selezione tra gli oltre 100 manifesti realizzati al momento delle manifestazioni dai grafici di Sfax e di una parte dei manifesti inviati da altri artisti.

– proiezioni fotografiche e video del materiale grafico non materialmente in mostra e di immagini riprese tra il 17 dicembre del 2010 data d’inizio della protesta – dopo il rogo di Mohamed Bouazizi – e il 14 gennaio del 2011 giorno della fuga di Ben Ali.

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Questo materiale è stato oggetto di mostre in Francia presso l’Ecole Supérieure d’Arts et Médias di Caen, al Centre du Graphisme d’Echirolles e all’Università di Grenoble. In Italia i manifesti tunisini sono stati affissi nel dicembre scorso sui muri del Quadrilatero di Torino.

L’esposizione ha sede permanente presso l’Institut Français de Tunisie.

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L’iniziativa proposta a Pisa è curata dall’Associazione Culturale Imago e da Clemente Manenti.

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Menù cena:

lasagne al forno/zuppa

spezzatino/ sformati di verdure + patate al forno

dolce

costo: 10 euro escluse bevande

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Gli interessati sono invitati a prenotare scrivendo a:

salvoparrinello@gmail.com

Associazione Culturale Imago

Via Bovio, 10 – 56100 – Pisa

Tel. 328 66 10 814

imagopisa@tiscali.it

www.imagopisa.it

Cité International Universitaire de Paris has now a creative app for iPhones

Heritage Experience, Experiential mobile device for heritage mediation

Heritage Experience is an interactive and immersive multimedia device that offers a sensible reading of the Cité International Universitaire de Paris (CIUP) area to the visitors. Thanks to an innovative iPhone application, Heritage Experience gives the public the opportunity to create their own unique and surprising films. The project further develops and enriches the actions carried out by Dédale and the CIUP during the Smartcity project; a vast programme of reflexion and creation on the concept of the “intelligent city”.

Heritage Experience proposes more than just a tour complement, and offers as many unique portraits of the area as films. By integrating a great number of audiovisual resources (archives and recent images), Heritage Experience pins up both tangible and intangible heritage, thus expressing all aspects of the site. A new kind of heritage mediation is under evolution on the CIUP site: the use of an area leaves a shareable and revealing trace!

It works carrying an iPhone that registers one’s stroll thanks to a GPS, the stroller collects audiovisual geolocated fragments. Wearing headphones, the visitor hears the soundtrack of his very own film that he is creating as he walks. He visualizes the editing of the film through the interface of his iPhone, and thus, his stroll will “awaken” and put together the images and the sounds.

The experience takes place in two phases:

> The sonorous route, immersive.

> The film, unique. Once the stroll is over, the visitor may rediscover it on the project’s web-page, and decide to share it with other users and watch their films.

Heritage Experience is an adaptation of the project Walking the Edit of which it is a tourist – and culture oriented adaptation.

Official website: www.heritage-experience.fr

The new cultural places and young digital creation event, it takes place every 2 years in Paris

EMERGENCES, a Festival for digital arts

International festival dedicated to electronic cultures and emerging artistic forms, Emergences brings together, every year in Paris, French and international actors in digital creation (cultural centres, art groups, research labs, multimedia production firms…) all gathered around a prolific and international artistic program at the crossroad of performing & visual arts, multimedia, design, architecture and electronic music.

The programme is based on workshops, lectures, shows, installations and performances.

This festival is called Villette Emergences, and takes place every two year as the local part of the Villette Numérique Biennial.

It aims at making the link with the territory and the local and international actors. It marks the outcome of a work of cultural development led all year round (creation, residency, workshops, projects support).

Emergences festival presents innovative projects (hybridization of the artistic forms, new writings, scenography and the relationship to public, way of production) by giving a particular attention to the “emergent” artists ; Work on an artistic programming stemming from collaborations with the cultural actors of the region Ile-de-France (venues, artistic groups, universities, research laboratories and multimedia production companies) ; Register “Emergences” on the heart of an artistic network of international exchange by narrow and followed collaborations with the festivals and the places dedicated to new media abroad.

Official webiste: http://www.festival-emergences.info

Interview to professor Frederik Truyen, Institute for Cultural Studies at Faculty of Arts, KU Leuven

KU Leuven: ancient tradition and modern technologies

Professor Frederik Truyen is a high-profile University teacher and real gentleman, with perfect politeness and a friendly approach. He is the Head of IT Services at the Institute for Cultural Studies, a research and educational unit linked to the Faculty of Arts at the K.U.Leuven, Belgium. He shared with digitalmeetsculture.net a wide overview about the University activities in the field of digitization.

The Institute for Cultural Studies is involved in projects on digitization of Cultural Heritage. Is it really an unavoidable step for the cultural heritage to meet digital technologies? There are nowadays very big efforts and investments on digitization, are they so necessary as they seem to be?

The importance of Digitization amounts to access, representation, preservation and is driven by cost considerations. Let’s take as an example of the unique glass plate photographs we are working on. Through digitization, it is possible to give access to these precious works to researchers, without the risk of damage or wear. It actually opens them up for study from anywhere, whereas in the past only a limited number of researchers had access, and they needed to be on location.

But the digital image is not just a copy. It is always a representation. This means that we can opt to restore the work as it is on its bearer, but also that we can make more analytical representations, where we e.g. restore the light dynamics or the color depth. Depending on the goal of your representation, you get more options with a digital copy. Most interesting in the EuropeanaPhotography consortium are the different needs of professional Photo houses and Archives. We actually learn a lot from each others’ view on the photograph.

Third, we are seeing that in many cases digitization becomes part of a preservation strategy. It is virtually impossible to guarantee the physical integrity of all the works we have in archival deposits. For valuable but less unique or important works, it can be a cheaper option to keep a digital copy than to try to preserve the original. This frees more money for preservation of the physical masterpieces. Of course, it takes time to convince the archival and (art) historic communities that sometimes we have to choose and opt for digital preservation only. The PREMIS model for digital preservation allows you to gather under one “intellectual entity” different files and representations for one object. For the glass plates, e.g., we also take pictures including the frame and the earlier metadata attached or written on the frame.

This last point shows how digitization also is a part of any archival strategy to reduce cost. Limiting physical access reduces hazards, lowers insurance costs, and allows to optimize storage costs. When tough choices have to be made, the digital copy can be a last resort. It better be state-of-the-art then, making sure the digital copy is not facing obsolescence too fast.

KU Leuven is a very prominent partner in EuropeanaPhotography, what are your contributions to the project?

In the case of EuropeanaPhotography, KU Leuven will contribute to the quality control by providing expertise and guidelines as to the criteria on which collections should be selected for incorporation in the database. For this, the fact that the KU Leuven team is embedded in one of the Arts Faculties with the longest European traditions is welcome. Project members are involved in teaching at both the undergraduate and master level of Cultural Studies, Photography, History and the Fine Arts. Expert opinions of colleagues and researchers can be collected first-hand. The ICS works with European top centres in Early Music (Alamire Foundation) and Medieval Art (Illuminare). KU Leuven is also in the possibility, given its involvement in teaching master classes, to assess the usability of the Europeana materials in an educational context.

Apart from its contribution to the quality standards of the selected content, KU Leuven will assist in benchmarking the photographic quality of the digitization, given its expertise in the Alamire Digital Lab, one of Europe’s leading digitizing centres for the Fine Arts.

KU Leuven will also contribute to the collection, with high-end source images from Archaeology, the Fine Arts and Musicology, as well as collections from the University Archive and Library preciosa collection.

Which other EU projects is KU Leuven carrying on, beside EuropeanaPhotography?

KU Leuven, as a traditional and complete university with about 1500 senior academic staff, is of course involved in a myriad of research projects, in Humanities and Social Sciences as well as Science & Technology and Biomedical Sciences.

This challenging multi-disciplinary context is a fertile ground for the work we do at CS Digital (http://www.culturalstudies.be/digitalculture), bridging the boundaries between Humanities and Technology. Currently we are involved in high-end digitization projects such as IDEM (digitization of Early Music Manuscripts) and RICH (using Multispectral and 3D photography techniques to digitize Medieval Manuscripts). Besides these efforts, we are also involved in projects on Open and Distance Learning and E-Learning such as NetCU, OER-HE, OCW Europe.

As a teacher, what are your most interesting experiences as for digital technology applied to education?

For me, that is a quite important question as I was the chairman of the steering committee for E-Learning at the University for about 5 years. E-Learning – or as we call it – the “integrated learning environment” has been a key pedagogical strategy at our University. CS Digital started in 1997 under its former name “Maerlant Centre” with the aim to bring digital innovation to History teaching. Certainly one of the best experiences in my career was to witness first-hand how students got motivated for the History class by being able to access high-resolution digitized source materials such as historical maps and early illuminated manuscripts on a PC at school.

Today, we are heavily involved in the LACE project, building an international master programme on Literature and Change in Europe. Producing Open Courseware and using an online collaborative envirmonment, students from 7 universities throughout Europe jointly take a course by means of weblectures. Being able to discuss the same content with students from different cultural backgrounds gives a true learning advantage.

Of course, our teaching is always tightly intertwined with research. CS Digital produces the international peer-reviewed Journal on visual narratology and word and image studies, Image [&] Narrative (http://www.imageandnarrative.be). Image [&] narrative does not focus on a narrowly defined corpus or theoretical framework, but questions the mutual shaping of literary and visual cultures. Beside tackling theoretical issues, it is a platform for reviews of real life examples. The relation between text and illustration – often in the form of a photo – has been a recurring theme of research.

Just after we planned the interview, Fred was so kind to post about us in his blog (and we are very proud of it!):

http://fredtruyen.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/digital-meets-culture/