CULTNAT: Introducing Cultural and Natural Heritage to the Digital World - ABSTRACT
In an interconnected digital world, the Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CULTNAT) was created in order to connect the worlds of Heritage to the world of Information Technology.
CULTNAT was originally created as a pilot project at the newly-born Egyptian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, but later on, CULTNAT joined the Bibliotheca Alexandrina as one of its specialized research centers. Today, CULTNAT is a unique world-class research center joining the two worlds of Heritage and IT, and working exclusively on the adaptation and invention of unique IT tools suitable for cultural and natural heritage documentation.
As CULTNAT’s main concern is the documentation of the Egyptian “rich” heritage, its domain of activities tackles all aspects of Egyptian heritage, including Tangible Heritage (Pharaonic, Greco-Roman, Coptic, Islamic and Contemporary), Intangible Heritage (Folklore and Creative arts), and Natural Heritage.
In addition to various IT products that CULTNAT is employing for the documentation of Egypt’s heritage, CULTNAT has invented and patented the “Cultural Panorama” or “CULTURAMA”, the world’s first nine-screen interactive projection system.
CULTNAT has been awarded a lot of international prizes and projects, all touching either Egyptian heritage or IT usage in documentation, digital libraries, virtual museums, digital content, etc. The next years of the lifetime of the center should witness a new direction towards more digital content and dissemination of knowledge.
