INDICATE Project

Bodrum: INDICATE National Workshop

2012-10-28T18:48:14+01:00

At local level the INDICATE national referees for long-term preservation organized this workshop named “Public Libraries in New World”. One of the related topic was: Digitization in Public Libraries. This event saw the attendance of 200 people including public library personnel, academics, experts from universities and private sectors.

ICHAJ 2013 - Call for papers

12TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY OF JORDAN (ICHAJ) “TRANSPARENT BORDERS”

Ankara: INDICATE Final conference

2012-08-03T15:21:58+01:00

Venue:
The Doubletree by Hilton Hotel
Ziya Gokalp Bulvari No 58 Cankaya,
Ankara, 06600

The INDICATE project started in September 2010 with the participation of 10 partners from Italy, Egypt, France, Greece, Jordan, Slovenia, Spain and Turkey.

The project has worked on the coordination of policy and best practice regarding the use of e-Infrastructures for digital cultural heritage in countries all around the Mediterranean. A network of common interest made up of experts and researchers in all the relevant fields has been established and nurtured, with the aim to plan its sustainability on a long term beyond the project duration.

The project has been rooted in the reality of research pilots and case studies which act as exemplars and demonstrators.

This conference concludes the activities of the project and aims to present the results achieved and, at the same time, to be the starting point for future cooperation. Some of the most important issues and processes which are relevant to establishing cultural initiatives on the e-Infrastructures platform and which have been studied and experimented in the INDICATE project will be presented at the Conference, together with key note speeches from the most relevant e-infrastructures initiatives in Europe and in the Mediterranean countries.

Strategic views for the future, taking into account the Paris Declaration (downloadable from the link below) will also be discussed.

The Organising Committee welcomes the receiption of posters to be presented during the conference

PROGRAMME

Practical information

Copenhagen: eIRG workshop

2012-06-12T08:59:26+01:00

This e-IRG workshop will be organised under the Danish Presidency of the European Union in Copenhagen (Denmark), on Monday afternoon 11 June and Tuesday morning 12 June 2012.

The workshop is co-hosted by the e-IRG Danish delegation, now the Danish e-Infrastructure Cooperation (DeIC), together with the Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration (NeIC), consisting of the five Nordic e-Infrastructure providers - i.e. from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland.

Paris: INDICATE Atelier national : Institutions culturelles et e-infrastructures de recherche

2012-06-09T16:09:23+01:00

Lieu : Centre de Recherche et de restauration des musées de France (C2RMF)

Afin de favoriser les échanges et d’encourager les collaborations entre les institutions cultuelles et les e-infrastructures de recherche, le Ministère de la Culture et de la communication (secrétariat général, SCPCI/DREST) organise un atelier le jeudi 7 juin, de 9h à 12h30.

Cet atelier est organisé dans le cadre du projet européen Indicate, soutenu par la Commission
européenne, programme Capacités du FP7. Ce projet à pour objectifs la coordination des possibilités
offertes par les e-infrastructures pour la recherche sur le patrimoine culturel, notamment
dans la région méditerranéenne, et d’autre part, le développement de politiques cohérentes
et de bonnes pratiques de recherche. Il vise également à établir et alimenter un réseau
d’intérêt commun, constitué d’experts et de chercheurs.

PROGRAMME (PDF, 124 kb)

9:00 – 9:30
Inscription

9:30 – 9:45 Accueil et présentation des objectifs du workshop
Ministère de la Culture et de la communication

9:45 – 10:15 Présentation du projet Indicate
Rosella Caffo, Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico delle biblioteche italiane e per le informazioni bibliografiche – Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, Italie

10:15 – 10:45 Le patrimoine culturel dans la feuille de route nationale des e-infrastructures de
recherche en France
Françoise Thibault, DGRI/DCPT
Jacques Dubucs, DGRI/SSRI
Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la recherche

10:45 – 11:15 Pause café

11:15 – 12:15 Table ronde: institutions culturelles et e-infrastructures de recherche:

Bibliothèque nationale de France
TGE Adonis
RENATER
France Grilles

12:15 – 12:30 Discussion

Paris: Strategy and future plans workshop

2012-05-16T20:39:30+01:00

Venue:
Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France (C2RMF)
Site Carrousel Palais du Louvre - 14
Quai François Mitterrand 75001 Paris
Passage des Lions de l’aile de Flore, Escalier de l’horloge

The aim of the workshop is to contribute to the harmonization of policies, both across the EU and in other partner countries, especially from the Mediterranean area, for the access of DCH community to e-infrastructures. Particular attention will be paid to the need to create a permanent exchange mechanism between the DCH community and the e-infrastructure community, to best practice examples, and to international cooperation.

Programme

13:30 -14:00
Registration and coffee

14:00 – 14:15
Presentation of Indicate
Antonella Fresa, Technical coordinator

14:15 – 14:35
Objectives of the workshop and general overview of the countries policies
Christophe Dessaux, French Ministry of Culture

14:35 – 14:55
Efficient strategies and mechanisms favouring the access of the CH sector to e-infrastructure
Rosella Caffo, Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico delle biblioteche italiane – Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, Italy

Cooperation between DCH and e-infrastructure

Chair: Borje Justrell

14:55 – 15:15
MuseID Italia
Sara di Giorgio

15:15 – 15:35
Best practice example on preservation: Manuscripts in Turkey

15:35-15:55
From the point of view of e-infrastructure: GARR

15:55 – 16:15 Questions and answers

16:15 – 16:30 Coffee break

International cooperation projects

16:30 – 16:50 CHAIN
Federico Ruggieri

16:50 – 17:10 ASREN
Salem Al-Agtash

17:10 – 17:50 Workshop session (discussion in small groups)

Involving e-infrastructures in policy and implementing key indicators for DCH and e-infrastructure
Chair : Bayadir Aydinonat, Turkiye Cumhuriyeti Kultur ve Turizm Bakanligi - Rapporteur : Roberto Barbera, Cometa
Establishing common priorities
Chair : Ayman Khoury, CultNat – Rapporteur : Borje Justrell, Riksarchivet

17:50 – 18:10
Restitution of the groups – Chairs and rapporteurs

18:10 – 18:20
Questions and answers

18:20 – 18:30
Conclusions for the Paris declaration
Christophe Dessaux

Stockholm: Michael Culture Workshop: Virtual exhibitions

2012-05-14T16:52:37+01:00

Cultural institutions are increasingly recurring to exhibitions that fall outside the traditional space and time parameters, and are instead staged on IT platforms. Virtual exhibitions are more and more used by museums, holders of cultural funds, as well as artists to diffuse their works. This approach is not new, but the means, technologies and methodology evolve very quickly and allow today the design of new virtual exhibitions.

Virtual exhibitions are available at any moment, with contents of a validated and attested quality, allowing new forms of cultural exploration. Thus, they give the opportunity to promote cultural content beyond physical and social boarders.

The workshop will contribute to the sharing of best practices examples and innovative projects on virtual exhibitions.

Venue
National Archives
Fyrverkarbacken, 13
102 29 Marieberg
Stockholm - Sweden

Timing
16:00 - 18:30

PROGRAMME

16:00 - 16:25
Welcome and presentation of Michael Culture
Christophe Dessaux, President

16:25 - 16:50
Case study on virtual exhibition - Indicate project
Maria Teresa Natale, Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico, Italy

16:50 - 17:15
Virtual tours | examples of Lascaux and le Phare de Cordouan
French Ministry of Culture

17:15 - 17:40
Riksutställningar | Swedish exhibition agency

17:40 - 18:05
Applications for augmented reality
Layar, Netherlands

18:05 - 18:30
Questions and answers

www.michael-culture.eu
www.linkedheritage.eu

Munich: EGI Community Forum 2012

2012-04-02T10:03:17+01:00

The EGI Community Forum was held, together with the second EMI Technical Conference, at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) in Garching near Munich. The event was an opportunity for the research community that depends upon distributed computing infrastructure to share knowledge, needs and vision for how the European Grid Infrastructure can better support their research over the coming years.

Catania: INDICATE Technical Conference

2012-03-13T19:43:50+01:00

The INDICATE Technical Conference is going to take place after 20 months of project activities, to present the intermediate project results to an international audience.

The aim of the conference is to trigger a discussion about the sustainability of these results, in the frame of a longer vision where INDICATE aims to contribute to the creation of an open science infrastructure dedicated to the digital cultural heritage sector.

INDICATE is part of a larger initiative where the Cultural Heritage domain is engaged with the e-Infrastructure providers in an exciting confrontation, experimentation and planning of joint activities.

The sister project of INDICATE is DC-NET ERA-NET project, just concluded in March 2012, where the Ministries of Culture and the National Agencies of more than 10 Member States from all over the European Union developed a Joint Activities Plan devoted to creation of a federated e-infrastructure for the digital cultural heritage, based on the re-use of the existing facilities offered by the National Research and Educational Network, the National and European Grid Initiatives as well the national regional and thematic portals established by the cultural institutions in the last years.

Within INDICATE, the priority services identified by DC-NET are investigated from a practical point of view, through use case studies and pilots, within a genuine international domain, with a partnership composed by EU institutions together with Jordan, Egypt and Turkey institutions, plus a wide cooperation with the Far East and the Latin America. A rich program of workshops and surveys was conducted by INDICATE to discuss about digital preservation, virtual exhibitions and GIS applied to the digital cultural resources. The results of this work plus concrete pilot demonstrations will be delivered at the conference. The program of the Technical Conference will start with a first session devoted to position the INDICATE project within the political and strategic framework. It will continue with two more sessions which will illustrate the use case studies and pilots developed by the project as well as the result of the cooperation with complementary initiatives, such as EUMEDGRID-Support and CHAIN, which established factual exchanges with the INDICATE partners.

Programme and info

Lisbon: eChallenges e-2012 Conference and Exhibition: CALL FOR PAPERS

2012-02-15T22:32:19+01:00

Call for Papers Deadline - 16 March

Supported by the European Commission, the 22nd annual eChallenges e-2012 Conference & Exhibition takes place in Lisbon, Portugal, 17 - 19 October. Focused on Applied ICT addressing major Societal Challenges, and showcasing strategic keynote presentations, technical and policy papers, case studies and workshops, eChallenges brings together senior representatives from leading commercial, government and research organisations around the world to share knowledge and experience, lessons learnt, good practice and innovation.

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Core Thematic Priorities for eChallenges e-2012
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Applied ICT addressing Societal Challenges

- eHealth and mHealth

- eGovernment, eParticipation & eDemocracy

- eInclusion

- Digital Libraries and Cultural Heritage

- Technology Enhanced Learning and ICT Skills

- Intelligent Content and Semantics

- Sustainable Environment

Emerging Technologies & Infrastructures

- Future Internet & Smart Cities

- eInfrastructures & Smart Grid

- Living Labs
- Cloud Computing

- Mobile Applications

- RFID & Networked Enterprise

- Security and Identity Management

More information is available at http://www.echallenges.org/e2012/default.asp?page=themes

eChallenges e-2012 is now inviting extended abstracts (1,200 - 1,500 words) for technical papers, visionary papers, business and government case studies. Proposals to arrange 90 minute thematically focused workshop sessions are also welcome. Related themes and suggestions for papers and sessions are outlined in the Call for Papers http://www.echallenges.org/e2012/default.asp?page=c4p

Istanbul: SEERA-EI Istanbul 2012

2012-01-23T10:59:25+01:00

SEERA-EI Istanbul 2012 Project Closing Conference

Roma: DC-NET International final conference

2012-01-20T10:12:41+01:00

How can e-Infrastructures support digital cultural heritage? What can Member States do so that cultural institutions may benefit from the research infrastructures? What are the priorities to be addressed? The final DC-NET international conference will answer to these questions. The talks will focus on the results of the project in terms of reflections and concrete actions. The conference is targeted to digital cultural heritage experts, e-infrastructures providers and policy makers.

Programme, info and registration form

Ljubljana: INDICATE Workshop on Geo-coded cultural heritage content

2012-01-19T11:26:55+01:00

The theme of the geographic information systems applied to the cultural heritage is one of the case studies of the INDICATE project and for this reason a specific workshop has been planned.

The workshop is the follow up of a geo-parsing experiment conducted by the Slovenian partner, which will be presented and discussed at the workshop.

The proceedings of this workshop will be produced as deliverable D3.4 Workshop Proceedings of the INDICATE project. Deliverable D3.4 is expected to be released to the European Commission at month 18 of the project. Deliverable D3.4 is planned to be a public document and it will be accessible through the INDICATE project website.

The results of the workshop will be analysed and re-elaborated by the INDICATE partners and will constitute the basis of the deliverable D5.3 Case Study Report – Geocoded digital cultural content. The deliverable will describe how cultural institutions can engage in the use of GIS technologies for the access to the digital cultural heritage content and how the e-infrastructures can be beneficial to improve the results of these services. The deliverable D5.3 is expected to be released to the European Commission at month 18 of the project. The deliverable D5.3 is planned to be a public document and it will be accessible through the INDICATE project website at www.indicate-project.eu.

The scope of the workshop is:

to present best practice examples of the use of GIS technology for access to digital cultural content
to discuss how e-Infrastructures can be used to enhance GIS cultural applications
to analyse the resources which e-Infrastructures offer, and how they can be deployed to deal with GIS cultural implementations.

Venue:

National Museum of Slovenia
Maistrova 1, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Florence: 2nd LIBER international workshop on digital preservation

2011-12-12T08:31:56+01:00

Venue:
Auditorium - Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze
Via Folco Portinari 5/red
Florence, Italy

The LIBER Steering Committee for Heritage Collections and Preservation, in collaboration with the Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale in Florence and the National Library of the Netherlands, invites you to attend the second international workshop on digital preservation.

‘Do not go at this game alone’, was the unmistakable advice given to LIBER libraries at the end of the first LIBER workshop on digital preservation in The Hague in 2010. Since then, the euro crisis and budget cuts have only exacerbated the need to seek partnerships in securing long-term access to your digital collections. But with whom can you partner? How does it work? What are the advantages and disadvantages of various forms of partnering? And how much of the responsibility will always be yours, no matter how much of the actual work you outsource to others?

This workshop will provide an overview of the best-known collaborative initiatives: the stakeholders involved, the basic set-ups, the legal foundations, the business models – and help you analyse which alternatives are best suited for your organisation, your type of collection and your national culture. We will deal with organisational issues, legal issues, financial issues and technical issues that will influence your choices. Critical questions will be asked by experts in the field, and there will be plenty of time to ask your own questions.

Lastly, the workshop will showcase a number of best practices.

You will go home with a keen understanding of the types of collaborative practices available which will enable you to start discussing long-term preservation policies with your management team.

Details of the program and registration information will follow shortly.
http://www.rinascimento-digitale.it

Amman: Virtual Exhibitions Workshop

Venue:

Department of Antiquities of Jordan
Sultan al-atrash St.
Building No. 10
Beside the Algerian Embassy
Jabal Amman between the 3rd and 4th circle
Amman
Jordan

Scope of the workshop:

To present best practice examples of virtual exhibitions
To discuss how e-Infrastructures can be used to enhance virtual exhibitions applications
To analyse the resources which e-Infrastructures offer, and how they can be deployed to deal with virtual exhibitions implementations

Agenda of the workshop:

10.00 : Registration

10.30 : Welcome Messages by Jordanian Authorities

10.45
Digital Cultural Heritage infrastructures background [pdf, 3297 kb]
Rossella CAFFO, Director of the Central Institute for the Union Catalogue of the Italian Libraries - Italian Ministry of Culture; Project Manager of the INDICATE project

11.00
The Indicate project [.pdf, 400kb]
Antonella FRESA, Technical Coordinator of the INDICATE project, ICCU, Italian Ministry of Culture

11:30 : Coffee Break

12:00 : Keynote speech

User-Centered Digital Museology: Towards Profile Adapted Virtual Expositions [.pdf, 4MB]
Prof. Ioannis Kanellos, École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications de. Bretagne

13.00 : Questions & Answers

13.30 : Lunch

14.30 : Presentations of best practice and examples of virtual exhibitions in the participating countries

Italy - Guidelines for virtual exhibitions [pdf, 744 kb]
Maria Teresa Natale, ICCU, Italian Ministry of Culture

Jordan - Ancient Theatres Enhancement for New Actualities (ATHENA) project [pdf, 1782 kb]
Al Adarbeh Nizar, Project Manager of the Ancient Theatres Enhancement for New Actualities (ATHENA) project

Spain - i2CAT - Virtual performances [pdf, 2744 kb]
Artur Serra, Deputy Director i2CAT

Egypt - CultNat experience in the virtual world [pdf, 6416 kb]
Ayman Khoury, CULTNAT Center for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage

Research and Education Networks in the Arab World [pdf, 2511 kb]
Anwar Al Yousef, Junet

16.30 - Discussion

17:00 - Conclusions of the workshop

Background information

This event is part of the INDICATE project, which is a coordination action supported by the European Commission in the frame of the FP7-Capacities programme, e-infrastructure thematic area.

The INDICATE project started on the 1st of September 2010 and will last 24 months until September 2012.

More detailed information are available online at the project's website: www.indicate-project.eu

The theme of the virtual exhibitions is one of the case studies of the INDICATE project and for this reason a specific workshop has been planned.

The workshop is the follow up of a survey conducted in the countries participating to the project and on the results of the national working groups, with particular regard to the work done by the Italian group.

The proceedings of this workshop will be produced as deliverable D3.2 Workshop Proceedings - Virtual Exhibitions of the INDICATE project. Deliverable D3.2 is expected to be released to the European Commission at month 18 of the project. Deliverable D3.2 is planned to be a public document and it will be accessible through the INDICATE project website at www.indicate-project.eu

The results of the workshop will be analysed and re-elaborated by the INDICATE partners and will constitute the basis of the deliverable D5.2 Case Study Report - Virtual Exhibitions. The deliverable will describe how cultural institutions can engage in the delivery of on-line virtual exhibitions, which are the targets they can better address with this kind of virtual events and how the e-infrastructures can be beneficial to improve the results of cultural virtual exhibitions. The deliverable D5.2 is expected to be released to the European Commission at month 15 of the project. The deliverable D5.2 is planned to be a public document and it will be accessible through the INDICATE project website at www.indicate-project.eu

Speaker's profiles and papers' abstracts

SPEAKERS	PROFILES	ABSTRACTS
Rossella Caffo	Director of ICCU; entrusted by the DG for the Technological Innovation and Promotion of the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities to follow ministerial initiatives dealing with new technologies applied to cultural heritage. In this capacity she coordinates national and international projects, such as SBN, Internet Culturale, and CulturaItalia, and the European projects MINERVA, MinervaPLUS and MinervaEC, MICHAEL and MichaelPLUS, and ATHENA. Rossella Caffo is appointed by the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities as Italian representative in the framework of the Member States’ Expert Group on Digitisation and Digital preservation set up by the European Commission. She coordinates DC-NET and INDICATE projects within the e-infrastructure domain, and other European initiatives as Linked Heritage.
Antonella Fresa	Engineer at Olivetti at the research centres of Pisa, Ivrea and Cupertino (Califormia) from 1980 to 1989 and at the Tower Tech engineering company in Pisa from 1990 to 1994. She has been involved in EU projects since 1993, writing proposals, managing projects and taking part in reviews and evaluation. From 1998 to 2002 she worked as Project Officer at the European Commission in Brussels. In the last ten years she has personally managed several projects in FP5, FP6, FP7, eTEN and eContent+. She has acted as evaluator and rapporteur for the RTD Framework programmes of the EU. She has extensive personal experience of digital humanities, acting as a consultant to the Italian Ministry of Culture since 2002 and contributing substantially to the work of the Minerva, Michael, Europeana, ATHENA, LINKED HERITAGE, DC-NET and INDICATE projects.	INDICATE is a project whose main objectives are from one side the coordination of cultural heritage research opportunities opened by e-Infrastructures in countries all around the Mediterranean and from the other side the development of consistent policies and best practices governing such research. The use of e-Infrastructures by researchers in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS) is still a relatively new phenomenon. However, e-Infrastructures enable exciting and valuable new research in AHSS, and in cultural heritage in particular. New regional, national and EU initiatives continue to emerge, but there is still a lack of coordination structures for sharing best practice and experience and a lack of usable guidelines and best practice documentation. INDICATE project aims to establish and nurture a network of common interest made up of experts and researchers dedicated to policy and best practice in the complementary domains of e-Infrastructures and e-Culture, whose sustainability will be planned on a long term beyond the project duration. The network shares experience, promotes standards and guidelines, seeks harmonisation of best practice and policy and acts as a conduit for knowledge transfer from countries with more experience of e-Infrastructures-enabled e-culture to those who are just beginning to investigate this area. The project is rooted in the reality of research pilots and case studies which act as exemplars and demonstrators of the issues and the processes which are relevant to establishing cultural initiatives on the e-Infrastructures platform. In the first year, on the one hand the design and set-up of two pilot applications have been started: e-Infrastructure-enabled semantic search for cultural repositories and e-Infrastructure-enabled e-Collaborative Digital Archive protected by access control and rights management. The De Roberto Digital Repository, the Digital Repository of the Architectural and Archaeological Heritage in the Mediterranean Area and the Digital Repository of China Relics were the first e-culture applications which have been ported and integrated into the INDICATE e-Cultural Science Gateway. On the other hand a number of Working Groups have been established in each country to examine how the facilities and resources offered by e-Infrastructures can be used to address long-standing R&D issues in the cultural heritage domain through the analysis of three detailed case studies: virtual exhibitions of cultural content, preservation of digital cultural content and processing and management of geo-coded digital content. The policy results are meant to be widely disseminated by a wide-reaching dissemination work-package, which includes two major public best practice deliverables, one international conference, three technical workshops and one policy workshop: the first technical Workshop on long term Digital Preservation has been organised in Ankara (Turkey) on 7th of July 2011, this is the second one on Virtual Exibitions and a third one on GIS is planned in Ljubljana in February 2012. The participation of Ministerial partners (ICCU, MCC, CULTNAT, DA, MCT) from Mediterranean countries (both EU and non-EU) represents an important mean to reach the highest political level in the cultural heritage field, as well as to involve the widest number of cultural institutions in the dissemination and awareness actions organised by the project.
Ioannis Kanellos	Professor at the Computer Science Department of TELECOM Bretagne, France. He studied mathematics, philosophy and linguistics. His scientific interests concern applied semiotics, rich media technologies, e-learning, anthropocentric human/machine interactions and digital museology. His work tries to furnish theoretical evidences and technological issues for interpretive approaches of the accessibility requirement to cultural, scientific and/or educational resources, noticeably in learning situations. Such accessibility is thoroughly conceived as a broad understanding challenge (of students, of visitors, of the general public, etc.); the reading process prevails in modeling and development of systems. In the domain of digital museology, he tries to explore alternative implementations of the notion of user-centered thematic museums; there, flexibility addresses various profiles and levels of reception (and thus, of reading). He developed, in particular, the Annuncation virtual museum (www.annunciation.gr).	When educational prerogatives meet museums wills and plans for extensively shared heritage (cultural, technical, scientific...), show and scene is not the adequate answer. The problem of accessibility is not only practical or material (how to accede to or how to deal with digital resources), but rather semantic: the public needs exhibition contexts, methods and tools that help in enhancing its understanding. Thus, in digital museology, exhibitions have to internalize specific issues able to reconfigure a presentation by adapting it to different visiting profiles and aims. Clearly, adapted exhibitions need to be supported by specific, upstream knowledge organization, sensible to different refinement levels and various points of view of exhibited objects. In this communication, we precisely intend to present some issues for these ideas, based on an implementation attempt of a thematic virtual museum (i.e., an on-line museum that offers exhibitions of a determined theme). After a quick summary of knowledge representation exigencies, we demonstrate by some selected hints the adaptability questions and solutions underlying the Annunciation virtual museum
Maria Teresa Natale	Since 1985 she works in services for cultural institutions and the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage; from 2002 to 2008 she participated in the national and European activities of the 3 MINERVA projects (MINERVA, MINERVAplus, and MINERVA eC), being content manager of the relevant website, and responsible for the project Museo & Web, born in the framework of Minerva; she cooperated with the MEDCULT project funded by UNESCO, and coordinated the ‘Digital Heritage' work package of STACHEM. Since the beginning (December 2009) she was technical coordinator of the ATHENA project. She takes part in Europeana Working Group on users and one of the authors of the Italian Guidelines for online virtual exhibition.	One of the main goals of public and private cultural institutions is the promotion and dissemination of knowledge. They accomplish their mission thanks to knowledge dissemination tools that include temporary and permanent exhibitions and exhibits that follow codified models, whose goal is to expose citizens to the national and international cultural heritage. The meeting between the languages and methods of traditional cultural promotion (non-virtual exhibits and exhibitions) and the promotion and dissemination of knowledge through web-based methods (online virtual exhibitions) have made it necessary to edit guidelines that encourage the use of the web and maximize its potential. Exhibits designed with IT languages and destined for the webare increasingly acquiring institutional relevance and a strong public profile: museums, archives, libraries, and cultural institutions all should recourse to them and be considered an important strategic activity and as such must be well-planned and supported to foster their long-term growth. Virtual online exhibitions are not merely aimed at specialists, but rather at an audience that is larger and more heterogeneous than ever before, and which is difficult to frame in traditional profiles. This is the reason why project choices must arise from a careful analysis of modes of expression, architecture, and language. The exhibition's architecture must be designed according to effective management models that can generate diversified virtual routes while keeping production costs acceptable, in order to meet the needs of the various user groups. This document aims to illustrate the state of the art in online virtual exhibitions, both on the basis of the actual experience accrued by various Italian institutes and the observation and analysis of international products. It documents the outcome of collective deliberation on the part of experts and operators from all cultural sectors, who discussed their experiences in an ad hoc Italian working group within the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage.
Al Adarbeh Nizar	Project Manager of the Ancient Theatres Enhancement for New Actualities (ATHENA) project (www.athenaproject.eu), which is funded by the European Commission under the Euromed Heritage IV Program (www.euromedheritage.net). Al Adarbeh holds a Master degree in Cultural Resources Management and other international certificates in Destination Management and Professional Events Management. He was involved in different projects (2004-2011) related to the conservation and management of cultural heritage in Jordan and worked in several international funded projects.	Ancient theatres represent one of the most significant cultural heritage remains of Mediterranean civilizations. A number of these ancient theatres are still being used for various activities. Such current uses of theatres create a continuous impact on theatre structures originally designed for needs very different from contemporary ones. Thus, the need for a common strategy seems to arise, involving the design, testing and implementation of a management plan. ATHENA project aims to minimize the progressive decay of ancient theatres in terms of physical, cultural and socio-economic aspects, to support the revival of theatres as a part of a wider archaeological site or urban context and to establish an overall strategy for dealing with tangible and intangible heritage aspects. ATHENA project will have a major contribution in INDICATE through providing 3D modeling and interactive Theater models. Several digital surveys for the theaters were implemented using 3D laser scanner in Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, Spain, and Italy.
Artur Serra i Hurtado	Deputy Director of the i2cat Foundation and Research Director at Citilab (Catalonia, Spain). The i2cat project started in 1999 and was one of the first European programs on Future Internet. He got the Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology in the Universitat de Barcelona in 1992, after completing a three years fieldwork at Carnegie Mellon University, doing an ethnographic fieldwork about the "Design Culture" of this American university, specially its School of Computer Science. During last decades he has focused in the convergence of media, Internet and people with projects like Opera Oberta, Megaconference, Dancing Q, Cultural Ring, and other developed in collaboration with Liceu de Barcelona, GEANT, Internet2, Cinegrid, KAIST, CANARIE, RNP from Brazil and other institutions globally. Dr. Serra is founding member of European Network of Living Labs, and organizing public-private-citizens partnerships fostering open innovation projects in Spain, like Citilab, inaugurated in 2007. This center is becoming an international reference in engaging digital innovation processes with citizens.	Over the last 15 years museums, libraries and archives had been using the Internet to develop virtual exhibitions projects and disseminate their collections. The available e-infrastructures let us to think on new exhibitions formats and uses, as the ones that had already been developed on the field of performing arts. The virtual performances projects carried out by the i2cat Foundation since 2001 like the Open Opera, DancingQ event, Pansori/Flamenco demo and the Cultural Ring constitute an example of the new uses and formats that can also be applied to the cultural heritage sector. The Cultural Ring (Anella Cultural) is a digital cultural network which, with the intensive use of the new possibilities of second generation Internet, activates the exchange of contents and the co-production of events on-line and promotes research activities about new uses of the net in the cultural production field, while improving their diffusion and offering to creators a new platform to experiment with applications in digital art.
Ayman Khoury	Deputy Director of CULTNAT Head of the Egyptian Folklore and Audio-Visual Documentation Department An expert in the field of digital documentation since 1994, He joined CULTNAT in 2000, where he has founded two documentation programs: the Egyptian Folklore and the Photographic Memory of Egypt, in addition to establishing the Audio-Visual Documentation Department. Milestones of his career include: developing the first Thesaurus of Egyptian folklore, thus paving the way for the development of the first thesaurus and database for the Arab folklore, in contribution with the ALECSO. He is also a photographer and movie director and managing the digital photo archive of CULTNAT.	Egypt's Heritage is of a worldwide interest and importance due to its continuity over a period of more than five thousand years. It encompasses various aspects of the human civilization, monitors the development of human heritage and represents a cultural as well as natural heritage of national and international value. Cultnat mandate is to document the various aspects of Egypt's tangible and intangible cultural heritage as well as its natural heritage, using the last IT technology, and also to increasing public awareness of Egypt heritage.

Amman: Integrating Arab e-Infrastructure in a Global Environment

2011-10-26T08:53:07+01:00

Integrating Arab e-Infrastructure in a Global Environment, organized by the Arab States Research and Education Network, EUMEDGrid Support, EUMEDCONNECT, and INTERNET2, will be held in Amman - Jordan during 12-14 December, 2011.

e-AGE 2011 is meant to be the launching pad for R&E connectivity and cooperation. It will bring together the ASREN, EUMED, GEANT, and INTERNET 2 stakeholders and region's foremost innovators, leaders, scientists, and businesses to discuss and debate new models of innovation, integration of R&E networks, policies for sustainable development in education, means of knowledge sharing and dissemination, capacity building programs, and region-wide e- infrastructure deployment to tackle today's crises in climate change, global economy, food and water scarcity, alternative energy, and threatening environmental issues.

e-AGE 2011 is meant to lay the foundation for a dream of many of today's leaders towards a global e-infrastructure for R&E based on real life broad inclusiveness beyond any political protocols.

Info:
http://eage2011.asrenorg.net/en/program.html

Live streaming:
http://eage2011.asrenorg.net/en/watch-now.html

The 13th December Antonella Fresa will make the presentation Towards a Digital Cultural Heritage e- Infrastructure” [.pdf, 519kb]

Noordwijk aan Zee: e-InfraNet Open Workshop

2011-10-26T08:50:46+01:00

As part of the e-InfraNet project's information exchange function workshops are organised to identify and capture good practice and to provide recommendations for further analysis and acitivities.

e-InfraNet is holding a workshop adressing the topic of Open on the 27th and 28th of October. The broad objective of this workshop is to stimulate a lively and engaging debate around the benefits and challenges that the concept of Open Research and higher educaiton in it's broadest sense (encompassing Open Access, data, source, borders) poses for the communities involved. The workshop will address questions such as

Why is it of benefit to the research and higher education communities to adopt a more 'Open approach' in research and education ?
What are the implications (e.g political, organizational, legal) of a more open approach for a (sustainable) e-Infrastructure ?
How can academics from different disciplinary backgrounds learn from each other in developing a coherent vision for (the progress of) the Open agenda ?

The programme which is currently being finalised, will have contributions from researchers and practitioners working on varous aspects of the subject.

For further information:

e-InfraNet website

Taipei: ISGC 2011

2011-10-14T14:40:26+01:00

On 25 March, ISGC 2011 (International Symposium on Grids and Clouds) in conjunction with OGF31 (Open Grid Forum) has closed with satisfaction. The following links are material that have produced on-site over the past week by friends from e-Science Talk and iSGTW. Check these out to see what have happened and highlights during the event.

During the event will be present the INDICATE project

Taipei: TELDAP 2011

2011-10-14T14:34:54+01:00

The 2011 Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program (TELDAP) International Conference and pre-conference workshops of the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (ECAI) and Museum Computer Network (MCN) Taiwan Conference will be held at the Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan from Wednesday March 16 to Saturday March 19, 2011. The conference is hosted by International Collaboration and Promotion Division of Taiwan e-Learning & Digital Archives Program.

During the event will be present the INDICATE and DC-NET project.

Geneva: 8th e-Infrastructure Concertation Meeting

2011-10-10T10:39:40+01:00

Venue: CERN

This event will bring together key players in the e-Infrastructures' community in the new Distributed Computing Infrastructures era, working towards a long term sustainable e-Infrastructure for scientific research in Europe. The ultimate aim is to develop a world-class resource as part of a strategy to achieve European leadership in e-Science.

More info at http://www.e-sciencetalk.org/e-concertation/