1. GISELA & CHAIN Workshop Digital Cultural Heritage Network
EGI User Forum
Antonella FRESA
DC-NET Technical Coordinator
GISELA & CHAIN Workshop
Digital Cultural Heritage Network 1

2. Table of content
The Digital Cultural Heritage community: who, where, what
The needs
The vision
Priorities
Services for content providers
Services for managing and adding value to the content
Services for the virtual research communities

3. Digital Cultural Heritage community: who
Composed by the cultural institutions:
Museums
Libraries
Archives
Audiovisual repositories
Archaeological sites
Central institutes of the Ministries (catalogues and research)
In general :
very limited experience in the ICT
limited knowledge of what e-Infrastructures are

4. Digital Cultural Heritage community: where
Dispersed along the whole countries
With different access to connectivity and computing resources
Generally using in-house data centres

5. Digital Cultural Heritage community: what
As content providers:
Digitisation and cataloguing
Aggregation of content from different repositories
Hosting digital content repositories
Protect IRP of digital content
Provide access to other communities (e.g. education)
As content consumers:
Search on federated repositories
Processing of data (e.g. statistical analysis)
Integrate with data from other sciences

6. What the digital cultural data need
high quality information technology management (to ensure trust, availability, reliability, long term safety of content, security, preservation and sustainability);
access facilities offered to the final users who will search into the DCH e-Infrastructure for their research and to the cultural institutions that will deliver their data to the DCH e-Infrastructure;
interoperation of cultural heritage data with non-cultural heritage data and other research data.

7. The vision: toward a Digital Cultural Heritage e-Infrastructure
To implement a seamless data and services infrastructure for the research of the cultural heritage virtual community, which provides key services such as:
preservation and backup,
authentication and data integrity,
collaborative research environments,
advanced (cross-collection, multilingual and semantic) search and retrieval
intellectual property management and authorised use of DCH content.

8. Priorities from Digital Cultural Heritage
Networking and Training
ICT Research and Validation Pilots
Best Practice
Network of excellence, competence centres, labs and innovation areas

9. Key networking requirements
Knowledge of user needs
Who is who
Programmes and policies profiling
Best practice Handbooks and Technical References
Consensus building
Seminars, workshops and dissemination activities
How the e-infrastructures can help:
videoconferencing services,
cooperation in awareness and information activities
addressing jointly the political stakeholders 9

10. Training: a multi-disciplinary syllabus
Digital cultural heritage experts are required also to be knowledgeable about ICT and e-Infrastructures
A new generation of professionals will need training in a truly multi-disciplinary syllabus which includes:
Digitisation and creation of digital resources
Collection and digital repository management
Management and curation of digital objects
Long term preservation
Multilingual information access
IPR
Usability
End user interaction and target analysis 10

11. Research and Validation pilots
ICT Research:
Data curation, quality and preservation
Indexing searching and navigation
Interoperability, distribution and access
DCH ecosystems
Validation Pilots
to validate technologies integrated into new services, validation within real-world conditions:
Whether the new services actually meet the needs of the DCH community (both content providers and content consumers)
Where the new services are sustainable over time 11

12. Best practice Sharing of information across DCH initiatives,
Building consensus
Gathering and disseminating examples of best practice
This will support content providers:
to learn from one another
to develop of skills within the DCH community
to enable new research to be carried out 12

13. Networks of excellence & innovation areas
Services and facilities which can support the DCH community in its interaction with e-Infrastructures
the digital cultural heritage community requires experts and knowledge transfer which combine traditional cultural heritage skills with ICT expertise and awareness of repurposing opportunities such as eLearning
Cost reduction in digitisation
Application of standards 13

14. Typical DCH research workflow
Find: accessing information
Process: tools for manipulating information
Publish: make the results visible online
Conference: discuss and annotate published information
Preserve: maintaining access to content over the longer term
Security
Plus lower-level “basic digital services” such as , data storage, web hosting, etc. 14

15. Services priorities
Priorities for the Digital Cultural Heritage sector has been put together with the typical workflow of the DCH research, in order to idetify the DC-NET services priorities
For this scope, services are divided into 3 categories:
Services for content providers, which are related to the creation of online data resources for DCH
Services for managing and adding value to the content itself
Services which enable, support and enhance virtual research communities and the activities of content consumers 15

16. Services for content provides and data resource creation
From common issues:
Interoperability of online resources
Insularity in terms of searching
Changes in location
High cost of establishment
Vulnerability to technical problems
Limitation on servers capacity and processing 16

17. Services for content provides and data resource creation
To common priorities:
Interoperation
Aggregation
Cross-search
Semantic search
Persistent identification
Set-up services
Stable platform
Scalability 17

18. Services for managing and adding value to content
Geo-referencing
3D representation
Virtual reality and immersive interfaces
Annotation
Linked data generation 18

19. Services for content consumers
The “cafeterial model”: a broad range of services to be made available, without the need to actually deliver them for all members of the community.
User authentication and access control
Collaborative environments
Advanced search
Visualisation 19

20. Authentication & Security
How each service priority is addressed by the e-infrastructures facilities
Priority
Fast networks
Processor Power
Data Storage
Authentication & Security
Interoperability x X
Aggregation
Storage & Preservation
Advanced Search supports
Persistent identifiers
Data resource setup services
Stable platforms
Scalability
Geo-referencing
3D visualisation & manipulation
User Authentication & Access Control
Cooperative Environments
Conferencing
Annotation & Discussion
IPR & Digital Rights Management 20

21. The Digital Cultural Heritage is a growing Community committed toward the implementation of a stable infrastructure
DC-NET – Information seminars and a Joint Activities Plan towards the implementation of DCH e-Infrastructure:
INDICATE - Piloting and Use cases on international dimension: 21

22. See you in Budapest on June 2011 for the second DC-NET Conference on e-Infrastructures for Digital Cultural Heritage 22

23. Thank you
Antonella FRESA DC-NET Technical Coordinator