Virtuality 18 November 2001

Academia Europaea Workshop on ‘Virtuality’, Venice 2001

Virtuality18 November 2001

Dr Seamus RossDirector, Humanities Computing & Information ManagementHumanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute--

HATII

ERPANET , the

Lund Principles,

& the Brussels

Quality

Framew

ork

Scottish Architects' Papers ProjectThe Grand Hotel at St Andrewshttp://www.rcahms.gov.uk/exhibition/monro.htmlref no. SC 542324

ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross 2


Humanities Advanced Technologyand Information Institute (HATII)

Seamus Ross -- Seamus Ross -- [email protected]

• Undergraduate & Postgraduate Teaching

• Systems & Laboratory Development and Management

• Research (e.g. digital preservation studies, ICT in the heritage sector, evaluation studies)

• Consultancy• Summer Schools, Conferences &

Workshops

http://ww

w.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/

http://ww

w.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/



EU Experts Identified Digitisation Needs

• improve and reinforce the co-ordination of digitisation activities across Europe;

• enable the efficient and effective use of digitisation to open up Europe’s unique and significant wealth in its cultural and scientific heritage;

• reduce, if not eliminate, redundancy and fragmentation of effort, divergence of technical approaches, and waste of financial resources;

• facilitate the creation of Europe’s eContent industries;• capitalize on the investment made digital resources creation;• ensure visibility and interoperability of the resources; • deliver digital assets that promote and reflect cultural diversity; and,• bring cohesiveness and shared vision to what is currently a

fragmented area of activity.



The Lund Meeting of EU Experts4 April 2001

• Aimed to enable a visible, accessible and sustainable heritage

• Support for cultural diversity, education and content industries

• Digitised resources of great variety and richness

• Need for evidence of best practices and business case models

Details of the Lund Meeting can be found at:http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ka3/digicult/home.html



Concluding Messages from LUND

• Avoid duplicate initiatives – co-ordinate activity• Digitisation is a chain of activities of which selection is one

small part--but it is an essential part• Digitisation creates new assets, but it consumes scarce

resources. A balance must be struck.• Don’t be a lemming--the rush to digitise makes us followers

not leaders• Focus on high quality resources (QA & evaluation)

– Accurate, authentic, reliable, and complete

• Planning (e.g. Workflow) and Project management key steps• Focus on economic sustainability of resources• Skills base -- invest first

See for example: (http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ka3/digicult/en/newsletter.html).



Benchmarking Exchange good practice, define indicators, identify

policy and implement effectively methods of evaluating and establishing priorities funding routes and budget responsibilities Effective management of policy implementation use and competencies of personnel and their structures productivity targets and volumes of digitised output impact in terms of value added to the base service technical achievements and quality of the output

Benchmarking is a continuous exercise essentially aimed at evaluating and understanding where improvements are needed and how “best practices” can be transferred and implemented. --Benchmarking can help policymakers to improve national performance



Measuring Quality

• The Lund Action Plan has the objective 'to optimise the value and to develop shared visions of European content.' – At Brussels work began to develop

‘quality criteria for sites delivering cultural content is a core issue’

See: http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ka3/digicult/en/eeurope.html



Measures of Quality

• agreed vocabulary for describing quality features of web sites

• automated tool for expressing these characteristics in a machine readable way

• encouragement for system of self-registration of web sites

• endorsement of descriptions of web sites by system of approval



Brussels Quality Framework• The Commission working with nominated experts should develop

a framework for quality criteria, capable of being adopted by Member States, covering:– scope (coverage, purpose, audience), – authority and accuracy, – usability, – multilingualism and– technical and descriptive standards

• Actions necessary for translating the framework into requirements and guidelines for a self-labelling approach for cultural content sites should be identified

• Member States should identify possible strategies and approaches for validating information quality (eg self-evaluation by toolkits/checklists on how the quality data was derived, by third party organisations, by peer review)



Training

• Lack of information about training needs• Lack of information as to training

approaches of different countries• Need for training strategies and

measurements for quality of training• Mechanisms to assess the impact of training• Ensure the availability of quality training

– Perhaps establish a Cultural Informatics Certificate along the lines of the ECDL



Outcome of Brussels• More work on standards: quality measures,

benchmarking, training, metadata. • Fora for active exchange of information between

those who have experience in digitisation and those who are seeking to embark on the process should be established – encouraging further work on standards and guidelines.

• Member States should make existing and accepted guidelines visible and link this with policy profiles.

• Guidelines emerging with a high level of acceptance across different Member States or different professional bodies should be clearly identified.

Collaboration between Member States essential



Seamus Ross, The British Academy

Recurring Value of Electronic Records

• Industry dependent• Product liability• Competitive advantage• Recurring value through reuse• Commercially valuable information a

candidate for preservation• Corporate memory• Costs of re-creation vs storage



Key Preservation Issues• Medium

– storage media naturally decay• Technological (e.g. hardware/software)

– hardware and software obsolescence makes data/information inaccessible

• Intellectual– validation of integrity and authenticity

• Contextual– avoid loss of meaning with metadata

• Legal Impediments



Obsolescence & degradation• Hardware (including access devices)• Software

– Operating Systems– Device drivers– Applications

• Media developments & degradation• Contextual divergence • Legal impediments• Documentation & system divergence• Distributed Networks



Obstacles to accessing surviving digital resources

• Loss of functionality of access devices (e.g. lack of drivers or interface functionality)

• Media degradation (e.g. temp & hum, disaster, manufacturer defects)

• Loss of manipulation capabilities (e.g hardware, software, applications)

• Loss of presentation capabilities• Weak links in creation chain (capture,

manipulation, storage, dissemination)



ERPANET

• 1.2 million EURO Project over 36 months– EU Funding of 900,000 Euros– Swiss Government Funding of 300,00 Euros

• Four key partners– HATII, University of Glasgow– The National Archives of the Netherlands– The National Archives of Switzerland– The University of Urbino



ER

PA

NET

• ERPANET will enhance the preservation of cultural heritage and scientific digital objects through nine core objectives. – raise awareness of sources of information about DO preservation– appraise and evaluate information sources and developments in

digital preservation and make available results of research;– provide an enquiry and advisory service on preservation issues,

practice and technology;– implement six development workshops ;– hold a suite of eight training seminars;– Conduct sixty case studies; – stimulate research and encourage the development of standards in

the areas of digitisation and digital preservation from within existing EU supported projects and with Europe;

– build an online community; and, – stimulate awareness among software producers of the

preservation needs of the user community.



ERPANET

• Started on 5 November 2001 with Launch Meeting in Glasgow

• Official Launch to happen on 21 November• First Event in Madrid 17-18 January 2002

co-sponsored under the Spanish Presidency

ERPANET: www.erpanet.org

Documents

Virtuality 18 November 2001