e-culture net: a network for preserving european cultural heritage preservation and further...

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e-culture net: a network for preserving European cultural heritage Preservation and further demonstration of cultural heritage content through information technology requires: Coordination at local, national, European and international levels More systematic integration of the related efforts dealing with infrastructure, content, context, and communication Access to cultural heritage content through Internet engines and databases according to cultural semantics

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e-culture net: a network for preserving

European cultural heritage

Preservation and further demonstration of cultural heritage content through information technology requires:

Coordination at local, national, European and international levels

More systematic integration of the related efforts dealing with infrastructure, content, context, and communication

Access to cultural heritage content through Internet engines and databases according to cultural semantics

Structure of this presentation

A survey on:

Current status in USA concerning digitization & exchange of cultural heritage knowledge

Relevant work and directions in Europe, and especially in the Mediterranean Area

Current status in USA concerning cultural heritage

(1)

Two important directions:

Networks for coordinated cultural content digitization and exchange

The next generation Internet and highly demanding applications based on it

Cultural content networks in USA (1)

They attempt to:

Create collective libraries of art from museums worldwide, for educational purposes

Reach the educational community in a coordinated and cost effective way

Assist members to improve their information infrastructures and documentation practices

Negotiate digital rights with artists and artists’ estates and with museums in other countries

Reduce risks through collective decision-making

Adopt common standards and guidelines in the collection and digitization of the content

Share expertise

Cultural content networks in USA (2)

The most considerable are:

The Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO): a not-for-profit organization of institutions with collections of art, collaborating to enable educational use of museum multimedia.

The National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage (NINCH): a diverse, non-profit coalition of organizations created to assure leadership from the cultural community in the evolution of the digital environment.

The ArtsConnectEd (ACE)and the Integrated Arts Information Access (IAIA): complementary, interdependent collaborations between the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center providing online access to the rich collections and reference, archive, media, and curriculum resources of both institutions through one shared point of entry (Web page).

The Museum of Reconstructions: uses computer modeling technology to develop accurate and complete reconstructions of buildings, artworks, artifacts, and sites

Internet II (1)

The main effort was initiated by the Internet II project.

A number of U.S. universities, joined together with government (federal R&D agencies) and industry partners (IBM, Cisco, AT&T, MCI and Sun) to accelerate the next stage of internet development, primary in academia

University representatives urged Congress to cough up millions of dollars to help them build a new, speedier network. It is supposed to solve problems with congestion of private academic networks, and the unreliability of the public. The outcome of this effort is called Internet 2 or Next Generation Internet, was launched in October 1996 and is the main goal of a project known as “Internet II”

Internet II (2)

Objectives:

Through a broadband network infrastructure (high-speed transmissions for voice, video and data), to enable new generation of applications that meet academic requirements in research, teaching and learning

To rapidly transfer new these network capabilities and applications to all levels of educational use and to the broader Internet community, both nationally and internationally.

Indicative applications – services: digital libraries, virtual laboratories, collaborative research, tele-immersion (shared virtual reality), high-definition television (HDTV).

Network Services

QoS guarantees (bounded delay, low data loss, high capacity)

Multicast capabilities

Emerging protocols

the IETF defined quality of service protocols such as RSVP and RTP

the IETF-developed replacement of IPv4 with IPv6

Internet II (3)

Implementation

At the heart of the Internet-II design is a new technology for providing advanced communications services.

The technology, referred to as a GigaPOP, is a complex of technologies developed over the first decade of the Internet integrated with new technologies developed by vendors and the Internet Engineering community.

The fundamental advance represented by the GigaPOP architecture is dynamically acquired "quality of service" in support of a broad range of new applications while maintaining a common interoperable "bearer service". Service characteristics include end-user definable capacity as well as latency.

Internet II (4)

Applications demonstrated over Internet II infrastructure (1)

During the IGrid 2000 conference (1)

AccessGrid: Wide-Area Group Collaborative Visualization

ALIVE: Architectural Linked Immersive Environment

Argus: Controlling Real-Time Imaging Sensors from a Virtual

Environment

Cultural Heritage in Virtual Reality

CyberCAD: Internet Distributed Interactive Collaborative Design

Applications demonstrated over Internet II infrastructure (2)

During the IGrid 2000 conference (2)

Digital Cinema 2000: Super High Definition Movie Communication System

Distributed Particle Physics Research

GiDVN: Global Internet Digital Video Network

Haptic Collaboration in Networked Immersive Environments

High Speed Networking with SUBARU Telescope in Hawaii

Human Anatomy Lecture-on-Demand at the National University of Singapore

MediaZine A Combination of Television, WWW, Telecommunications and 3D Computer Graphics

Online Monitoring and Steering of Remote Black Hole Simulations

Shared Miletus

Video Avatar Communication in Networked Virtual Environment

Applications demonstrated over Internet II infrastructure (3)

During the IGrid 2002 conference (1):

Collaborative Visualization over the Access Grid

Distributed, on demand, data intensive and collaborative simulation analysis

Global telescience featuring IPv6

Griz: Grid Visualization over optical networks

High performance data webs

HDTV transmission over IP of a cultural TV production

Image feature extraction on a grid testbed

Kites flying in and out of space

Network intensive grid computing and visualization

Applications demonstrated over Internet II infrastructure (4)

During the IGrid 2002 conference (2):

PAAPAB: Pick An Avatar, Pick A Beat

TACC Quantum Chemistry Grid/ Gaussian portal

TeraScope: Visual Tera Mining

TeraVision: Visualization streaming over optical networks

The Universe: distributed virtual collaboration and visualization

Virtual Laboratory on a national scale

Virtual visit to the site of ancient Olympia

The INET conference

INET, (Internet NETworking) provides an international platform for advancing the development and implementation of Internet networks, technologies, applications, and policies.

During Latest INET Conferences several live demonstrations of Internet 2 applications have taken place.

More specifically the INET 2002 basic tracks were:

Technology-including sessions on security, peer-to-peer applications, grid computing, the wireless Net, etc

Policy including sessions on on-line privacy, intellectual property, domain names, anonymity, etc

Uses of Internet-including sessions on e-government, on-line education, Internet development, etc

Applications demonstrated over Internet II infrastructure (5)

Networks for Virtual Reality based on Internet II infrastructure (1)

In order for participants to collaborate effectively, virtual environments require high bandwidth and low latency, not possible on the current Internet.

Therefore, the research community has begun to investigate network infrastructures suitable for interconnecting distributed participants of a virtual environment. Three noticeable efforts are:

The Science, Technology, And Research Transit Access Point (STAR TAP), a persistent infrastructure funded by the National Science Foundation to facilitate the long-term interconnection and interoperability of advanced international networking. STAR TAP enables network traffic to flow to international collaborators from over 150 U.S. leading-edge research universities and institutions, including supercomputing centers. STARTAP applications are among the most computation demanding and/or data-intensive today, and serve as test cases for the various network features STAR TAP

deploys.

Using Cultural Heritage as an application driver, the goal of the Networked Virtual Environments Collaborative Trans-Oceanic Research (N*VECTOR) project is to link EVL's CAVE® and Tokyo's CABIN in order to better understand the requirements of multiple media flows among sophisticated virtual reality displays over great distances.

The CAVE Research Network (CAVERN), is an alliance of industrial and research institutions equipped with CAVEs, ImmersaDesks, and high-performance computing resources all interconnected by high-speed networks to support collaboration in design, training, scientific visualization, and computational steering, in virtual reality. CAVERNsoft is the common collaborative software architecture for CAVERN. The goal of this project is to develop the next generation collaborative networking infrastructure to sustain collaborative, persistent virtual environments.

Networks for Virtual Reality based on Internet II infrastructure (2)

Relevant work and directions in Europe and

especially in the Mediterranean area (1)

Networks

European projects

Events

Organizations – institutions

Semantic web

Relevant work and directions in Europe and

especially in the Mediterranean area (2) Networks(1)

CULTIVATE is a European network providing a single point of information to the EC’s cultural heritage research activities and to national and regional research programmes. It supports the co-operation of memory institutions, such as archives, libraries, and museums across Europe.

The Network of Hellenic Academic Libraries (NHAL) is composed of 32 universities and technical institutions, the Athens Academy and the National Library of Greece, aiming, among others, at:

The creation of a Union Catalogue of Greek Academic Libraries and the use of its documents by every member of the network

The development and unification of standards for all kinds of library tasks

The cooperation with similar organizations in Greece or in other countries, for ensuring its participation to international evolutions concerning collaboration of libraries and administration of intellectual rights.

Relevant work and directions in Europe and

especially in the Mediterranean area (3)

European projects:

DIGICULT: Concerns the development of innovative technological tools and systems for the exploitation of both traditional and digital cultural heritage resources.    

The COINE project: Intends to provide tools for creating structured, WWW-based environments, allowing content to be shared locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.Aims, also, at the development of standards for structured deployment and retrieval of digital resources in distributed networked environments.

The Archeoguide Project: Aims to provide new approaches for accessing information at cultural heritage sites through augmented reality, 3D-visualization, mobile computing, and multi-modal interaction techniques.

Relevant work and directions in Europe and

especially in the Mediterranean area (4)

Events:

Amman Cultural Heritage 2002 – “Multimedia for cultural heritage” – Conference, Training, Exhibition

4th European Commission Conference on: “Research for Protection Conservation and Enhancement of Cultural Heritage”, From Cultural Heritage to Business, Strasbourg 22-24 November 2000

Conference on Digitization of European Cultural Heritage (Utrecht, October 20-23 1999). 160 participants, a number of important European projects were presented by speakers from university libaries, archives and research institutes.

Relevant work and directions in Europe and

especially in the Mediterranean area (5)

Organizations - Institutions

The Foundation of the Hellenic World (FHW) is a not-for-profit cultural institution based in Athens, Greece. It uses state-of-the-art, cutting-edge information and computer technology in its pursuit of the research, awareness and understanding of Hellenic history and culture.

Its staff is made up of archaeologists, historians, architects, museologists, museum educators, computer scientists, graphic designers, producers of multimedia programmes and 3D animation modelers.

The Semantic Web (1)

It is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation. Kim Veltman states that the semantic web should be about the meaning of humanity with all the richness of its cultural and historical dimensions. In his paper he reviews four approaches to the semantic web, namely that of:

The W3 Consortium, which focuses on semantics in terms of logic

The Dublin Core (Metadata Initiative), which limits semantics mainly to the meaning of metadata elements and fields rather than the contents of those elements and fields

A small group within the AI community, which sees semantics strictly in terms of machine-readable instructions permitting autonomous software agents and hardware robots to operate and make decisions in the absence of humans

Cultural semantics entailing a commitment to meaning, which takes into account multi-lingual, multi-cultural, and historical dimensions at the local, regional, national and international levels.

He concludes that:

The W3 Consortium approach is important, very useful for transactions, but does not yet answer the needs of human meaning

The efforts of the Dublin Core is an important step forward, but it cannot be seen as a comprehensive solution

The approach of the AI community potentially undermines the vision of the W3 and is ultimately a threat to the human condition

What we need is a semantic web, which embraces cultural dimensions, by providing new levels of access to knowledge at the local, regional, national as well as international levels, without neglecting humans.

The Semantic Web (2)

Conclusions (1)

A few collaborative efforts in the USA, concerning digitisation and exchange of cultural heritage knowledge have been presented.

Because of the inefficiency of the current Internet to cope with the delivery of high quality multimedia content, the next generation Internet has been presented as an answer towards the support of applications based on cultural heritage content. Some noticeable examples, have also been presented.

Relevant work and directions in the European, and especially in the Mediterranean area were enumerated with emphasis put on collaborations for content encoding and exchange.

Conclusions (2)

There are still many things to be done in the field of preservation and dissemination of cultural heritage knowledge, through information technology

Further digitization of the available cultural heritage content, preferably in a standardized way in order to also facilitate exchange

Development of applications based on this content

Relative demonstrations to the public and to scientific community through exhibitions and conferences

Establishment of networks of excellence for cultural heritage within the FP6

Stronger cooperation between the Ministries of Culture of the involved European countries

Establishment of connections with countries, such as the USA, for knowledge transfer to Mediterranean countries

NUMBER OF INSTITUTIONS AND COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN

5 5

12

8126

42

531

10

1

Algeria

Cyprus

Egypt

Greece

Israel

Jordan

Lebanon

Malta

Morocco

Palestinian Authority

Syria

Tunisia

Turkey

1

4

37

16

1

3

7

2

4

2

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

Universities

Research institutes

Educational institutes

Government institutes

Non governmentinstitutes

Museums

Libraries

Networks

Cultural foundations

Ministries

TYPOLOGY OF THE INSTITUTIONS CONTACTED

Axes of the analysis

• Educational activities

• Digitalization activities

• Distribution activities

• Content development activities

• Other activities

• On-line services

• Known existing facilities

Annex I – Collection of the existing institutions specializing in digital culture content creation and promotion

Country GreeceName of institutioninvolved in e-cultureactivities

National Technical University of Athens (NTUA)

Kind of institution(public, private,museum, e.t.c.) andgeneral info

Public institution

Web adress www.ntua.grLink collaboration withFHW

NTUA and FHW have collaborated in a series of EU funded projects

Known existingfacilities Libraries and reading rooms, NTUA press services, Network Management Center,

Computer Center, PC labs, high performance computing unit, remote training &multimedia rooms, dial up service, FTP servers, netnews server.

On-line services Network Management Center: The integrated (voice & data) communication network ofthe National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) has been epeatedly presented inGreece and abroad as a successful example of an advanced Academic Network. Itprovides high quality facilities to support both teaching and research. Very fast access tothe Internet as well as to national and international sources of information is provided forall members of NTUA's Academic community. The Network Management Center (NMC)of NTUA is responsible for the management of this network as well as the promotion ofthe networking culture among NTUA students and staff. It also provides the technicalsupport for the advanced teleteaching infrastructure of NTUA

Educational activities Teaching and Research, seminarsDigitalization activities Web site, CD Rom etc.

Distribution activities Web siteContent developmentactivitiesOther activitiesInvolvement in ICTprojects

Indicative list: (ACTS and IST) European projects: WATT – AC235, OPENISE – IST-1999-11590, SHUFFLE – IST-1999-11014, HERMES – IST-2000-26429, CREDO – IST-2001-33093, ADAMANT – IST-2001-39117

Remarks and generalcoments

The National Technical University (NTUA) is the oldest and most prestigious educationalinstitution of Greece in the field of technology, and has contributed unceasingly to thecountry's scientific, technical and economic development since its foundation in 1836.

Classification UniversityInformation [email protected] , tel: +32107721639

Annex II-Institutions that were contacted by FHW

NATIONAL NETWORKName ofinstitution /network

Contact person e-mail / telephone Institution /network hasbeencontacted(YES/NO)

Letter of intent profile(YES/NO)

National TechnicalUniversity ofAthens

Prof. N. Mitrou, Prof.G. Stassinopoulos

[email protected],[email protected]

YES YES

FORTH Prof. P.Konstantopoulos

[email protected] YES YES

University ofPiraeus

Ass. Prof. Th.Panagiotopoulos

[email protected] YES NO (Letter of intent expected)

University ofEconomics -Athens

Androutsopoulos [email protected] YES NO

Institute ofLanguageProssessing

A. Vacalopoulou [email protected] YES YES

National Center forBooks

M. Roussaki [email protected] YES NO (Letter of intent expected)

Computer andTechnologyInstitute

M. Koutlis [email protected] YES NO (Letter of intent expected)

MEDITERRANEAN NETWORK

Country Name of institution/ network

Contact person e-mail /telephone

Institution/network hasbeencontacted(YES/NO)

Letter of intentprofile (YES/NO)

Egypt BibliothecaAlexandrina

[email protected]

YES NO (Letter ofintent expected)

Egypt Cultnat - NationalCentre forDocumentation forCultural and NaturalHeritage

Dr. Fathi Saleh [email protected] ,[email protected]

YES NO (Letter ofintent expected)

Egypt American ResearchCenter in Egypt (ARCE)

[email protected]

YES NO

Jordan The American Center ofOriental Research(ACOR)

[email protected] YES NO

Jordan Amman University [email protected]

YES NO

Jordan Royal Scientific Society [email protected]

YES NO

Annex II-Institutions that were contacted by FHW

Annex III-Letters of intent and profiles of new

members

• CIPA• The ICOMOS / ISPRS Committee for Documentation  of  Cultural Heritage

• Cypriot Delegation• Marinos Ioannides• Nikou Kavadia. Str. 1; CY 2200 GERI, NICOSIA, CYPRUS

• To:

• Foundation of the Hellenic World

• Attn Georgios Giannoulis-Giannoulopoulos

– Nicosia, 06.11.2002

• Dear Sir,

• I hereby signed Marinos Ioannides, legally representing Cypriot CIPA Delegation, declares the

• interest of my delegation to participate to the thematic network "e-culture net" as associated

• member.

• The Name of the organization will be represented to the network by the following researcher

• Marinos Ioannides Email: [email protected]

• Best Regards,

• Marinos Ioannides

• CIPA• The ICOMOS / ISPRS Committee for Documentation  of  Cultural Heritage

• The International Committee for Architectural Photogrammetry (CIPA) is one of the international committees of and it was established in collaboration with .

• Its main purpose is the improvement of all methods for surveying of cultural monuments and sites, specially by synergy effects gained by the combination of methods under special consideration of photogrammetry with all its aspects, as an important contribution to recording and perceptual monitoring of cultural heritage, to preservation and restoration of any valuable architectural or other cultural monument, object or site, as a support to architectural, archaeological and other art-historical research.

• ISPRS and ICOMOS created CIPA because they both believe that a monument can be restored and protected only when it has been fully measured and documented and when its development has been documented again and again, i.e. monitored, also with respect to its environment, and stored in proper heritage information and management systems.

• In order to accomplish this mission, CIPA will:

• · establish links between architects, historians, archaeologists, conservationists, inventory experts and specialists in photogrammetry and remote sensing, spatial information systems, CAAD, computer graphics and other related fields ();

• · organise and encourage the dissemination and exchange of ideas, knowledge, experience and the results of research and development (  and );

• · establish contacts with and between the relevant institutions and companies which specialise in the execution of photogrammetric surveys or in the manufacture of appropriate systems and instruments ();

• · initiate and organise conferences, symposia, specialised colloquia, workshops, tutorials, practical sessions and specialised courses ();

• · initiate and co-ordinate applied research and development activities ();

• · undertake the role of scientific and technical expert for specific projects ();

• · organise a network of and Committee Delegates;

• · submit an annual report on its activities to the ICOMOS Bureau (Secretary General) and the ISPRS Council (Secretary General) and publish it in the internet (Annual Reports);

• · publish also its Structure, its and Guidelines in the internet.

Ministries or other governmental organizations (<DEER)

The digital content of these institutions ranges from country to country:

• These official data bases contain mainly archaeological and cultural information addressing a wide range of users (students, tourists etc.).

• They provides links to the most important memory institutions of each country such as museums, galleries, libraries and universities.

• They develop more specialized programmes (like the Photographic Heritage Programme of the Ministry of Communication and Information of Egypt).

Networks (<DEER)

• Continental networks (encompassing institutions from all African countries)

• Regional networks (an attempt by academic nationals resident in the Middle East to open, promote and sustain intra-regional channels of communication and cooperation)

• “Religious” based networks • National networks • “Independent” networks (which are not based –

exclusively- in their countries)

Memory institutions (<Research Matrix)

• Libraries: national libraries with on line services

• Museums: archaeological and folklore-local art museums

• Archives: specialised archives (mainly national archives, e.g archives of manuscripts, natural history archives etc.)

Universities with relative faculties and departments (<European Masters and

Doctoral Programmes)

FHW’s research focused on Faculties of – Arts– Education– Fine Arts – Technical Universities.

**Many departments have started to design and develop on line courses.