use case stu dies rese arch pil ots - Indicate

48 Pages·2012·6.16 MB·English

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Best practice for applying
research pilots and use case studies
to digital cultural heritage
INDICAT
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Partners
With the support of
INDICAT
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(cid:43)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:76)(cid:87)(cid:68)(cid:74)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:72)(cid:16)(cid:44)(cid:81)(cid:73)(cid:85)(cid:68)(cid:86)(cid:87)(cid:85)(cid:88)(cid:70)(cid:87)(cid:88)(cid:85)(cid:72)
Best practice for applying
research pilots and use case studies
to digital cultural heritage
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FOR FURTHER CONTACTS
This publication is part of a wider Rossella Caffo
initiative aiming to contribute to INDICATE Project Coordinator
the implementation of a federated [email protected]
e-Infrastructure dedicated to the
research community on Digital
Antonella Fresa
Cultural Heritage. Offering an
INDICATE Technical Coordinator
integrated presentation of the best
[email protected]
practices encountered along the
project, this Handbook originates from
the many efforts made by the
whole sector in the last years and by
many people who are working in
this direction.
Design
www.indicate-project.org
Table of Contents
Foreword 5
Rossella Caffo
Introduction 7
Antonella Fresa
Executive Summary 9
1 Background 11
1.1 Research Pilots 12

1.2 Research Use Case Studies 12

1.3 Sources of Content for the Handbook 12
2 Research Pilots 15
2.1 Semantic Search Research Pilot 15
2.1.1 Approach 15
2.1.2 Results 15
2.1.3 Best Practices 16
2.1.3.1 Exploit scalability and processing power
of e-infrastructures (Grid and cloud computing) 16
2.2 E-Collaborative Digital Archives Research Pilot 16
2.2.1 Approach 17
2.2.2 Results 17
2.2.3 Best Practices 18
2.2.3.1 Ease access to and use of e-infrastructures
for non-expert users 18
2.2.3.2 Protect digital cultural content 18
3 Research Use Case Studies 19
3.1 Long-Term Digital Preservation 19
3.1.1 Approach 19
3.1.2 Examples of long-term digital preservation best practice 19
3.1.3 Best Practices 20
3.1.3.1 Establish global long-term preservation
strategies and policies 20
3.1.3.2 Ensure long-term access to digital data 20
3.1.3.3 Ensure certified and stable digital resource
reference mechanism (persistent identifiers) 21
3.1.3.4 Provide adequate training to staff involved
in long-term digital preservation 23
3.1.3.5 Exploit the potential of e-infrastructures
for long-term digital preservation 23
3.2 Virtual Exhibitions 24
3.2.1 Approach 24
3.2.2 Results 25
3.2.3 Best Practices 25
3.2.3.1 Use virtual exhibitions and performances
to eliminate barriers and expand audiences 25
3.2.3.2 Stimulate user involvement/interaction
with virtual exhibitions 25
3.2.3.3 Consider technological aspects of
virtual exhibitions and performances 26
3.2.3.4 Respect copyright rules when preparing
virtual exhibitions 26
3.2.3.5 Use virtual exhibitions to drive commercial
applications of DCH 26
3.2.3.6 Exploit e-infrastructure capabilities for
virtual exhibitions and virtual performances 26
3.3 Geo-coded Digital Cultural Content (GCC) 27
3.3.1 Approach 27
3.3.2 Results 28
3.3.3 Best Practices 28
3.3.3.1 Adopt standards from the digital
geographic information field 28
3.3.3.2 Use e-infrastructures for GCC of architectural
and archaeological digital heritage 29
4 5
3.3.3.3 Use e-infrastructures to exploit GCC
for cultural tourism 29
3.3.3.4 Use Grid computing for geo-parsing 30

4 Research Pilot and Use Case Study Best Practices 31
4.1 Use research pilots to test new approaches in DCH 31

4.2 Use focused surveys and workshops
for use case studies in DCH 31
5 Conclusions 33

6 Glossary 35
Foreword
INDICATE (International Network for a Digital Cultural Heritage
e-infrastructure) is one of the results of ten years of cooperation
among the Ministries of Culture in Europe in the field of
digitisation of cultural heritage.
There are two pillars for digital cultural heritage on which the
European cultural institutions have undertaken:
• The digitization and long term preservation of digital cultural
content
• The (re)use of and access to digital cultural heritage.
They now reached a valuable experience in these sectors thanks
to the national efforts for the creation of culture portals and to
the role of Europeana as single access point to the European
digital cultural heritage.
However in 2009 some European ministries of culture launched
a new line of projects dedicated to the exploitation of the potential
of digital infrastructure for research (e-Infrastructures) in the field
4 of cultural heritage. In fact, while the use of e-infrastructures has 5
increased in recent years, many cultural organisations remain
unaware of the services provided by existing e-infrastructures
at the national and international level and their huge potential.
The first initiative to explore this new synergy was DC-NET, an
ERA-NET successfully completed in March 2012, which set out
a list of priority services in the field of digital cultural heritage and
the plan of joint actions in the coming years by the participating
countries: Italy, Belgium, Estonia, France, Greece, Slovenia,
Sweden, and United Kingdom.
INDICATE builds upon the results of the DC-NET project in
terms of harmonisation of the European research policies in
digital cultural heritage and coordination of cultural heritage
research opportunities opened by e-infrastructures in countries
all around the Mediterranean region.
INDICATE investigates many fields related to digital cultural
content: virtual exhibitions, geo-referenced systems, the long term
preservation, the use of cloud computing for research semantics,
access to services, grid computing and federations of users. The
vision of the consortium on such topics was sum up in the so-called
Paris Declaration, which is the reference point for the future steps.
The issue of digital preservation is considered central to future
developments. Investments in digitization require great efforts in the
cultural heritage sector; nobody can afford to see “destroyed” the
digital heritage due to the change of operating systems, change the
standard of data representation, or aging or media damage to data
storage. For this reason a new project starting in October 2012, DCH-
RP, will work to define a roadmap for digital preservation shared and
validated through proof of concept in several EU countries.
DCH-RP is coordinated by the Central Institute of the Union
Catalogue of the Italian Libraries (ICCU) of the Ministry for Cultural
Heritage and Activities and involves top level European actors
in the field of cultural heritage and e-infrastructures. DCH-RP is
intended as a stepping stone to Horizon 2020.
In fact, Horizon 2020 will be an opportunity for further research
in the field of the use of digital cultural heritage. The challenge is
to guarantee the quality of content, performance, scalability and
stability of the digital environments; this goal can be achieved
only through the continuous collaboration among all stakeholders,
cultural institutions and e-infrastructure providers, and the constant
relationship with the main European and international initiatives in
the field of research on digital cultural heritage.
6 7
Furthermore, INDICATE and the related projects on
e-infrastructures are tightly connected with the vision of the
Joint Programming Initiative for Cultural heritage (JPI-CH)
which is a wide-ranging programme aimed at enhancing the
impact of Europe’s Cultural Heritage research, conservation,
technological innovation and economic development.
The overall aim of Joint Programming is to pool national research
efforts in order to make better use of Europe’s precious public
R&D resources and to tackle common European challenges
more effectively in a few key areas, including the research in
digital cultural heritage.
This handbook illustrates the best practices identified within
INDICATE for semantic searching, e-collaborative digital
archives, long term digital preservation, virtual exhibitions, and
geo-coded digital cultural content. It represents a concrete
contribution for the development of a vision for DCH shared by
cultural institutions and e-infrastructure providers developed
thanks to the efforts of all INDICATE partners and contrinutors.
Rossella Caffo
INDICATE Project Coordinator
Introduction
This Handbook has been produced in the frame of the INDICATE
project as a synthesis of the results and the lessons learnt
through this work.
The INDICATE project run for about 2 years, from September
2010 to October 2012 with the participation of 10 partners from
8 countries, all belonging to the Mediterranean region: Spain,
France, Italy, Slovenia and Greece from the European Union
plus Turkey, Jordan and Egypt.
The aims of the project were to run pilots, use case studies,
workshops and conferences around the theme of the use of the
e-infrastructures for the digital cultural heritage.
Museums, libraries and archives are moving faster toward the
new technologies and they are bringing their masterpieces and
6 most rare cultural objects to the digital space, but still a lot is 7
needed in terms of new services for this new dimension, related
for example to: improving accessibility, enlarging the number of
users, enhancing the visualisation of the digital reproductions,
enabling more powerful discovery services for the research.
The previous DC-NET project has established a set of priority
services and INDICATE capitalised the work done by DC-NET.
The two projects have progressed in strong synergy. The next
step will be the DCH-RP project, where the legacy left from DC-
NET and INDICATE will be exploited to design and validate a
roadmap for the preservation of the digital cultural heritage.
The starting point of DC-NET and INDICATE is that, in order to
implement and deliver the new services, the instrumental use
of the e-infrastructures can be very valuable for the cultural
sector. In other words, it can be said that the cultural sector
can take advantage of the work already done by the other
sciences in developing and implementing an extremely powerful
connectivity infrastructure delivered by the National Research
and Educational Networks (NREN) together with shared high-
performance computing and storage facilities offered by the
National Grid Initiatives (NGI). The European and international
federations of NREN (GEANT) and NGI (EGI, the European
Grid Initiative) represent a fantastic opportunity for the heritage
sector to make a big step ahead towards the digital dimension of
its cultural research.
At the same time, the e-Infrastructure community can discover
in the cultural heritage a sector that has a strong demand of
its services, opening new opportunities of exploitation of their
existing facilities.
However, these appealing opportunities risk to remain
unexploited and neglected because of the historical “separation”
that exists between the hard sciences (those who developed the
e-Infrastructures in the last years) and the social sciences and
humanities.
It is therefore important to continue the process that has started
to fill the gap between the e-Infrastructure providers (used to
serve the hard sciences, but still not aware of the needs and
requirements of the cultural sector) and the heritage institutions
(who have not a thorough technical expertise, whose demand of
technology is increasing but looking for simple and ready-to-use
technological solutions).
8 9
INDICATE has moved ahead in this complex environment,
developing a practical gateway that allows the museums,
libraries and archives to have access to the grid in a very
simple manner, experimenting the use of the cloud as a mean
to empower semantic research on cultural databases, studying
how advanced services for long term digital preservation, virtual
exhibitions and the geographic information systems applied
to cultural heritage data can be enabled by the adoption of
e-Infrastructure facilities.
The results of these studies and pilot experiences are presented
in this Handbook, that intends to be just the start of a long and
promising work.
Antonella Fresa
INDICATE Technical Coordinator