The date of the 6th of June is again memorable, but this time it was related to a much more peaceful event - the first meeting of the consortium of the ENUMERATE project. This is an EC-funded project with the important task of monitoring the state of digitisation of Europe’s cultural heritage.

The ENUMERATE project took advantage of Collections Trust’s Open Culture Conference in Birmingham to bring together partners from around Europe for a first meeting where plans for the next three years were discussed and finalised.

Vision

The long term vision of the ENUMERATE Thematic Network is the creation of an observatory, where:

• Statistics and other data on the digitisation of cultural heritage can be submitted and validated at any time;
• Results are available in static documents and as dynamic data (that can be retrieved using visualisation tools).

This observatory would, in state-of-the-art of statistical monitoring of cultural digitization and related activities, be a platform to:

• Support digitisation policies and strategies, benchmarking and accountability;
• Promote networking, collaboration and knowledge-sharing.

Partners

Looking at the cultural heritage in Europe, the ambition of the current project is to create a reliable baseline of statistical data about its:

• Digitisation output;
• Costs of digitisation;
• Digital preservation;
• Online access.

Today statistical data on Europe’s digital heritage is uncertain and scattered at best. The project will bring about major improvements in its availability, quality and accuracy. In this way, it will support and drive strategic decision-making at European, national and institutional level, and therefore support the Digital Agenda 2020.

Partners

The partners in the EC-Funded project are:

• Collections Trust, UK (project coordinator);
• DEN Foundation , Netherlands;
• Digibis, Spain;
• Stiftung Preuβischer Kulturbesitz, Germany;
• Austrian National Library;
• FARO, Belgium;
• Koninklijke Bibliotheek [KB] / The European Library, Netherlands;
• Ministry of Culture and Communication, France;
• National and University Library of Slovenia;
• National Széchényi Library, Hungary.

The partners obviously do not cover the whole of Europe. However the ambition of the Network is to do so. Therefor if your organisation is interested, and able, to act (unpaid) as a National Coordinator for ENUMERATE. Please contact gordon@collectionstrust.org.uk

For the last 30 months I have been working as a work package leader for the ATHENA project. During that time I have made a least one trip to Europe every month in connection with the project, either to attend project meetings or to promote the project and Europeana.

ATHENA aimed, and succeeded in

• Supporting and encouraging the participation of museums in Europeana;
• Produce a set of scalable tools, recommendations and guidelines on:
  • Technical standards
  • Metadata;
  • PIDs
  • Thesauri;
  • IPR issues.
• Identifying digital content in European museums;
• Merging all these different contributions into Europeana;
• Developing a technical infrastructure that will enable semantic interoperability with Europeana.

All the the publication of the project, including a journal called Uncommon Culture are available on the ATHENA website:

http://www.athenaeurope.org

As mentioned above I also took part in the kick-off meeting of the successor project to ATHENA - Linked Heritage.

The main goals of Linked Heritage are to:

• Provide access to large quantities of previously unseen content through Europeana, from both the public and private sectors;
• Demonstrate enhancement of quality of content, in terms of metadata richness, re-use potential and uniqueness;
• Demonstrate enable improved search, retrieval and use of Europeana content.

Partners are from all the key stakeholder groups from 20 EU member states, plus Israel and Russia. These include ministries and responsible government agencies, content providers and aggregators, leading research centres, publishers and SMEs.

Collections Trust is leading a work package called Linking Cultural Heritage Information. This will deal, amongst other things with:

• The state of the art in linked data and its applications and potential;
• Identifying the most appropriate models, processes and technologies for the deployment of cultural heritage information repositories as linked data;
• Considering how linked data practices can be applied to cultural heritage information repositories, to enrich them and to allow them to align with other linked data stores and applications;
• The state of the art in persistent identifiers (both standards and management tools);
• Identifying the most appropriate approach to persistent identification, e.g. a unique standard or a set of different standards.

Another 30 months of fun!

Building on similar events in London, just before Christmas Collections Trust and Museums Galleries Scotland hosted the Europeana-Scotland Conference at the Engine Shed in a snowy Edinburgh.

c50 attended the conference at an excellent venue, with lovely home made refreshments. Attendees came from a range of organisations including:  the national, local authority, university and small, volunteer-run, local museums. All parts of Scotland were represented. A great achivement given the weather!

Part of the funding for the conference came from the Europeana Local Project, one of the Europeana Group projects providing content to Europeana. Europeana Local is funded under the eContentplus programme, a multiannual European Community programme to make digital content in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable.

Museums Galleries Scotland provided the logistical support and expertly handled the organisation for the day.

After a warm welcome to the attendees and speakers by Jane Robinson, Head of Museum Development at MGS, the day began with Nick Poole, CEO of Collections Trust giving a Keynote.

Nick’s theme was to highlight Europeana as a network, a cultural heritage research office, and as an away to represent Scottish identity in the wider European environment. He also encouraged participants to take the first step of engaging with Europeana by becoming members of its Council of Content Providers and Aggregators.

After that participants looked at a video (recently shown at a European Commision event). This featured a virtual trip through Europeana highlighting what you can discover there by following the connections between people and events, e.g. Darwin to Wedgwood to Abolition of Slavery. The video can also be viewed on the:

• Europeana website

Next came a couple of presentations on Europeana. The first from Jon Purday, Senior Communications Advisor, Europeana Foundation, on:

• Europeana Strategies

This looked at the: basic facts about Europeana; political vision, Scottish information in the portal (from non-Scottish providers), benefits of providing access to your content, and ended with a focus on users.

The second presentation was from Robina Clayphan, Interoperability Manager, Europeana Foundation, on:

• Metadata and Data Quality

This included a look at the lastest version of the metadata schema, Europeana Semantic Elements (ESE), was explored. This is Dublin Core based ‘application profile’. Next how Europeana is intending to improve the quality of it’s information was looked. Finally the new, RDF based, Europeana Data Model was unveiled.  

Just before lunch there were a series of short presentations from representatives from some Europeana Group projects, each supplying information to Europeana from a diffent area of cultural heritage area:

• Judaica Europeana (Jewish contribution to Europe’s urban history)
• CARARE (Built heritage and the historic environment)
• MIMO (Musical instruments)
• ATHENA (Content from museums)

Each of presentation gave an overview of the project and highlighted the key aspects its work.

After a highly praised ’home made’ lunch Mary Rowlatt, MDR Partners. gave a presentation on:

• Europeana Local

Mary gave an overview of the project which aims to get content into Europeana from local and regional sources. This is not done directly but by ’sensible’ aggregation, either national or regional.

The last presentation was from Phill Purdy, Collections Trust, who introduced:

• Culture Grid

Phill looked at the why, what and how of using this Collections Trust developed system to ‘connect UK collections’.

The last part of the day was a panel session with some of the speakers and covered questions that arose from the earlier presentations. One theme that emerged was the need for a Scots Gaelic interface for Europeana. Europeana offered to facilitate this with the offer supplying the needed text that would need to be translated by Gaelic speakers. Also a number of participants from volunteer-run museums speculated if they had a role in Europeana. Their engagement was actively sort and encouraged, with the work of the Europeana Local project and the support of Collections Trust, through Culture Grid, being given as the first step.

I think everyone who attended enjoyed a stimulating day with much thought for future work in Scotland.

Such a group is tasked with developing a vision and looking the main issues within their remit. The particular one began its work in April, with a report is expected by the end of the year.

This Group is made up of three people:

• Maurice Lévy (CEO of Publicis)
• Elisabeth Niggemann (Director General of the German National Library)
• Jacques De Decker (writer)

They report to EC Vice President for the Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes and Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth Androulla Vassiliou.

The Terms of Reference for the Group identify that they should look into these areas and address a set of questions:

1. Sources of funding for digitisation (e.g. Public funding level?)
2. Maximising the impact of digitisation of in-public domain material for the economy and society  (Should public domain content, digitised with public funds, be free to access and reuse?)
3. Facilitating the digitisation of orphan works and out-of-print works (Who responsible for assuring their online access?)
4. Cross border access (Free access for users in the country of digitisation, via IP address, paid for others?)
5. Long-term preservation (How can it be guaranteed?)

As part of their work they have set up a Consultation and you are invited to take part!

You are advised to look at all the questions first before making your contributions.

Over 75 attended the conference this year, an increase of 25% on 2009. Organisations included the full range from nationals to small local museums, and all parts of the UK were represented.

As with last year the conference was part the work of the ATHENA Project, one of the Europeana Group projects providing content to Europeana. ATHENA is funded under the eContentplus programme, a multiannual European Community programme to make digital content in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable.

The day began with Nick Poole, CEO of Collections Trust giving a:

• Keynote

In it Nick attempted to answer three questions about Europeana: What is it? Why should I care? Do they have any money they can give me?

Next came a couple of presentations on Europeana. The first from Jon Purday, Senior Communications Advisor, Europeana Foundation, on:

• Europeana Strategies

This looked at: The political vision; aggregation model of content delivery, the value of providing content to Europeana; opening up access to the data; and focusing on users.

The second presentation was from Robina Clayphan, Interoperability Manager, Europeana Foundation, on:

• Europeana Metadata - ESE to EDM

The lastest version of the current metadata schema, Europeana Semantic Elements (ESE), was explored. This is Dublin Core based ‘application profile’. A discussion of Europeana’s content ingestion followed. Finally the new, RDF based, Europeana Data Model was unveiled.  

Just before lunch there were a series of short presentations from representatives from some Europeana Group projects:

• Kate Fernie, MDR Partners - CARARE
• Lena Stanley-Clamp, European Association for Jewish Culture - Judaica Europeana
• Mary Rowlatt, MDR Partners - EuropeanaLocal
• Margaret Birley, Horniman Museum - MIMO

Each of gave an overview of the project and highlighted the key aspects their work.

After hearty lunch I gave a presentation on:

• ATHENA

Here I gave an overview of the project and introduced the new ‘harvesting schema’ LIDO (Light Information Describing Objects.

Next we had a presentation, by Steve Luther (Evolutions), Michael Selway (System Simulation) and James Stevenson (V&A), on the

• ICON project (the movie slide is not active)

This aims to look at the exploitation of 3D models that have been created by cultural organisation in commercial situation such at film and TV post-production.

The last presentation was from Phill Purdy, Collections Trust, who covered the:

• Culture Grid

This included the why, what and how of this UK national content aggregation, together with its relationship to Europeana.

The last part of the day was a panel session with some of the speakers and covered questions that arose from the earlier presentations. In particular there was a spirited discussion on the use of SKOS and terminologies in general.

So did the conference meet its objectives - of informing the UK cultural community about Europeana and how the work of Collections Trust fits in?

A year on there is still an audience that needs to be informed, or reminded, about Europeana and what in can offer to them. In general I think we succeeded in doing this. In particular I would highlight the new Culture Grid which in some ways is in advance of what Europeana is doing at the moment. However they are catching up so Collections Trust needs to stay on its toes!

Europeana has just harvested, and put online in its portal two major collections. Both were harvested from our national aggregator - Culture Grid. The first is c93,000 records, from many organisations, in the Vissual Arts Data Service collections. At the same time the c55,000 English Heritage’s ViewFinder images were also made available.

VADS has served the academic community for over 12 years and has published a large set of visual art collections that are available free and cleared for use in the UK for learning, teaching and research.

Highlights of the c50 collections available on VADS include:

• African and Asian Visual Artists Archive
• Central Saint Martins: Museum & Study Collection
• Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland
• Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi
• Crafts Study Centre: University for the Creative Arts at Farnham
• Design Council Archive: Design Archives, University of Brighton
• Design Council Slide Collection: Manchester Metropolitan University
• Imperial War Museum: Concise Art Collection
• Imperial War Museum: Posters of Conflict
• John Johnson Collection: Political Prints
• NICE Paintings: The National Inventory of Continental European Paintings
• Peter King Archive: London Metropolitan University
• Public Monuments and Sculpture Association
• Sir Henry Dryden Collection
• Textiles Collection: University for the Creative Arts at Farnham

English Heritage ViewFinder are historic photographs of England held by the National Monuments Record (NMR). The earliest are from the 1850s, and are for those with an interest in social, industrial, architectural and archaeological history.

Taken together these two collections represent a significant contribution to UK material on Europeana.

Today the results of the elections to the Europeana Council of Content Providers and Aggregators were announced.

We are pleased to announce that Nick Poole, CEO of Collections Trust was one of six persons elected. Nick was in the most hotly contested section of the election, that for cross domain bodies.

The Council is a new body within the governance of Europeana and represents a voice within it for those who are actually providing the content.

In addition to Nick here are the others who were elected to the council.

• Francisco Barbedo (Portuguese Archives);
• Anne Bergman-Tahon (Federation of European Publishers);
• Kjell Nilsson (National Library of Sweden);
• Henning Scholz (Museum für Naturkunde, Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity);
• Hans van der Linden (Flemish Government).

The first meeting of the Council will take place later in the year when 3 of its members will be elected on to the governing body of Europeana Foundation. This last is a new change of name from EDL Foundation which reflected the Foundation within European digital libraries.

It is also a major venue for the dissemination of the Italian led ATHENA project.

The main aim of the annual event is to:

“Provide a forum for the user, supplier and scientific research communities to meet and exchange experiences, ideas and plans in the wide area of culture and technology. “

The attendees get up to date news on EC and international arts computing initiatives. Projects in the visual arts field, archaeology and history are showcased. Technical demonstrations are given.

This year’s subjects included:

• 2D - 3D image acquisition;
• Leading edge applications in galleries, libraries, education, archaeological sites, and museums;
• Mediterranean initiatives in technology for cultural heritage;
• Integrated digital archives for cultural heritage and contemporary art;
• Management of museums by using ICT;
• Impact of new mobile communications;
• Human computer interaction for cultural heritage;
• Copyright Protection;
• Culture and e-government;
• E-learning;
• Application of digital terrestrial television;
• 3D developments and applications;
• Cultural tourism and travel applications;
• Art and medicine.

Even running over three days and with a technical exhibition running over the period to cover all this in any depth was an herculean tasks. Luckily there are a set proceedings for the papers presented and they will make interesting reading.

The ATHENA project was presented in a joint session with STACHEM project.

STACHEM stands for ‘Science and Technology for Archaeology and Cultural Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean’.  Its goal is to:

“.. contribute to a regional strategic plan for research infrastructures devoted to archaeological sciences and digital heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean, and simultaneously to support and complement the design and planning process….”

Presentations were on:

• GIS 2D/3D in the knowledge process of cultural heritage;
• Integrating archaeological excavation diaries with GIS and 2D/3D data in the CIDOC CRM framework;
• A novel approach to GIS 3D documentation and description of of archaeological features.

ATHENA gave presentations on:

• GIS Guidelines for Digital Cultural Content;
• SIGECWEB: the Italian national informative system for cataloguing cultural heritage;
• LIDO - Lightweight Information Describing Objects.

As you can see there is some overlap in the area of GIS, but this is not a large part of the ATHENA.

On LIDO I answwered the questions:

• Why LIDO?
• What is LIDO?

For those who cannot wait for a full publication of LIDO, which will take place later in the year, here is the:

• Text of the LIDO presentation.

The EVA conference also served another pupose. Because the event gave the opertunity to have many people from many countries at the same time it allowed us to discuss the next EC-funded project proposal the ATHENA network want to put in. More later….

For the UK this process has been relatively simple because of our lead, when compared with most of Europe, in having a national aggregator. The Culture Grid has an OAI-PMH feed which allowed Europeana to harvest content directly without human intervention at our end.

The first work that needed to be carried out was the mapping of the metadata in the Culture Grid to the Europeana Semantic Elements (ESE) format being used by Europeana. With this in place it was possible for us to provide OAI URLs for the separate collections in the Grid. Europeana ingests the data, produces indexes and caches a thumbnail image where available.

On the Europeana portal only the descriptions of a provider’s content is held and a small preview image are stored. Links are given to the content on the provider’s own website directly. This means that Europeana does not hold the content itself.

Organisations with content in Europeana via Culture Grid are:

• Beamish Treasures;
• Bedes World;
• Bowes Museum;
• Durham County Council;
• iSee Gateshead;
• Kirklees Images;
• Lambeth Landmark;
• Leodis (Leeds);
• Picture The Past (East Midlands);
• Portable Antiquities Scheme;
• Tyne and Wear Imagine.

As content becomes available it will also be ingested by Europeana. Already planned is content from:

• Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge);
• Visual Arts Data Service;
• Wiltshire Heritage Museum (Devizes).

 The adoption of SPECTRUM will help Ukrainian museums manage their knowledge and information more effectively, as well as supporting greater mobility of collections between the Ukraine and the UK.

Vladyslav Pioro, Chief of Information and Analysis Department, Ukrainian Center for Museum Development commented:

“There is an ongoing process of revision of the regulatory system in the field of museum work in Ukraine being undertaken by a working group of the Ministry for Culture and Tourism. New editions of standard documents, in particular in the areas of conservation, accountability and the use of museum valuables are being developed. SPECTRUM, which has been adopted as a standard for museum work in many European countries, is a key input to this process. It will be translated into Ukrainian and given a broad presentation in the professional environment here. The Center thanks the Collection Trust for the readiness for cooperation“

The Ukrainian agreement follows on from a similar one a few years ago with Flanders (Belgium) and the Netherlands to produce two Dutch language versions. Nick Poole has written recently visited the Netherlands to brief museum directors on developments in the UK.

SPECTRUM is an open standard, maintained and developed as part of our mission to promote best practice in the heritage sector. CT has over 6 thousand free non-commercial licences in over 100 countries with individuals and organisations (both large and small). Commercial use of SPECTRUM is only open to SPECTRUM Partners.

Collections Trust welcomes the translation and localisation of SPECTRUM by anyone. The first stage of this does not need to be a formal agreement with us. You can translate and localise parts of SPECTRUM or a relevant factsheet (see: http://www.collectionslink.org.uk/manage_information).

To download the UK version of SPECTRUM, and agree to the non-commercial licence, go to:

http://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/spectrum