Invest to Save: Report and Recommendations of the NSF-DELOS Working Group on Digital Archiving and Preservation

Digital archiving and preservation are important areas for research and development, but there is no agreed upon set of priorities or coherent plan for research in this area. Research projects in this area tend to be small and driven by particular institutional problems or concerns. As a consequence, proposed solutions from experimental projects and prototypes tend not to scale to millions of digital objects, nor do the results from disparate projects readily build on each other. It is also unclear whether it is worthwhile to seek general solutions or whether different strategies are needed for different types of digital objects and collections. The lack of coordination in both research and development means that there are some areas where researchers are reinventing the wheel while other areas are neglected. Digital archiving and preservation is an area that will benefit from an exercise in analysis, priority setting, and planning for future research. The WG aims to survey current research activities, identify gaps, and develop a white paper proposing future research directions in the area of digital preservation. Some of the potential areas for research include repository architectures and inter-operability among digital archives; automated tools for capture, ingest, and normalization of digital objects; and harmonization of preservation formats and metadata. There can also be opportunities for development of commercial products in the areas of mass storage systems, repositories and repository management systems, and data management software and tools.

NFDI4Culture - Consortium for research data on material and immaterial cultural heritage

Digital data on tangible and intangible cultural assets is an essential part of daily life, communication and experience. It has a lasting influence on the perception of cultural identity as well as on the interactions between research, the cultural economy and society. Throughout the last three decades, many cultural heritage institutions have contributed a wealth of digital representations of cultural assets (2D digital reproductions of paintings, sheet music, 3D digital models of sculptures, monuments, rooms, buildings), audio-visual data (music, film, stage performances), and procedural research data such as encoding and annotation formats. The long-term preservation and FAIR availability of research data from the cultural heritage domain is fundamentally important, not only for future academic success in the humanities but also for the cultural identity of individuals and society as a whole. Up to now, no coordinated effort for professional research data management on a national level exists in Germany. NFDI4Culture aims to fill this gap and create a usercentered, research-driven infrastructure that will cover a broad range of research domains from musicology, art history and architecture to performance, theatre, film, and media studies. The research landscape addressed by the consortium is characterized by strong institutional differentiation. Research units in the consortium's community of interest comprise university institutes, art colleges, academies, galleries, libraries, archives and museums. This diverse landscape is also characterized by an abundance of research objects, methodologies and a great potential for data-driven research. In a unique effort carried out by the applicant and co-applicants of this proposal and ten academic societies, this community is interconnected for the first time through a federated approach that is ideally suited to the needs of the participating researchers. To promote collaboration within the NFDI, to share knowledge and technology and to provide extensive support for its users have been the guiding principles of the consortium from the beginning and will be at the heart of all workflows and decision-making processes. Thanks to these principles, NFDI4Culture has gathered strong support ranging from individual researchers to highlevel cultural heritage organizations such as the UNESCO, the International Council of Museums, the Open Knowledge Foundation and Wikimedia. On this basis, NFDI4Culture will take innovative measures that promote a cultural change towards a more reflective and sustainable handling of research data and at the same time boost qualification and professionalization in data-driven research in the domain of cultural heritage. This will create a long-lasting impact on science, cultural economy and society as a whole

Towards a Safeguarding Concept of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in Slavonia, Baranya and Syrmia – Aspects of Digitization, Processing, Conservation and Dissemination of Sound, Image and Shape

This paper is aimed at defining the concept of intangible cultural heritage in the context of safeguarding of speeches, customs, historical and traditional cultural assets of Slavonia, Baranya and Syrmia. Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Republic of Croatia is endangered and it is becoming extinct due to the influence of a number of factors. Since the formulation of the 1999 Act on the Protection and Preservation of Cultural Goods, intangible cultural heritage has been under special protection as goods of interest to the Republic of Croatia and 85 items have been listed as intangible cultural heritage in the Register of Cultural Goods of the Republic of Croatia so far. Intangible cultural heritage is the subject of scientific research, as well as a part of the tourist offer (knitting fishing nets, reconstruction of customs), and some craft activities (pottery, lace making, apiculture). However, the issues related to the sustainable development of intangible cultural heritage are numerous, the most important being the disorganized and insufficient documentation of intangible assets and dispersion of the collected documentation. This paper sets out to highlight the ways modern technology and scientific research can cooperate in the processing of intangible cultural assets, which seems to be the best and safest option for permanent preservation of intangible cultural heritage in its broadest sense. The preservation of intangible cultural heritage is regarded in this paper at four basic levels: the collection (digitization of data), the processing of data to the level of information, proper storage of data and information processed and the dissemination to final users. The vital step towards the realization of the goals is to gather all accessible data using modern technical tools and techniques. In the era of cloud computing and distributed data storage, it is necessary to provide sufficient data redundancy for permanent preservation, especially if such valuable information is in question. As an ultimate goal, it is necessary to disseminate the collected and preserved assets in a user-oriented manner, depending on the available and desired level of animation and technical knowledge of users

(Re)presenting heritage: laser scanning and 3D visualisations for cultural resilience and community engagement.

Cultural heritage is increasingly being viewed as an economic asset for geographic areas who aim to capitalise in the surge in interest in local history and heritage tourism from members of the public. Digital technologies have developed that facilitate new forms of engagement with heritage and allow local areas to showcase their history, potentially broadening interest to a wider audience, thus acting as a driver for cultural and economic resilience. The research presented in this paper explores this through interdisciplinary research utilising laser scanning and visualisation in combination with social research in Elgin. 3D data capture technologies were used to develop and test 3D data visualisations and protocols through which the urban built heritage can be digitally recorded. The main focus of this paper surrounds the application and perceptions of these technologies. Findings suggest that the primary driver for cultural heritage developments was economic (with an emphasis on tourism) but further benefits and key factors of community engagement, social learning and cultural resilience were also reported. Stakeholder engagement and partnership working, in particular, were identified as critical factors of success. The findings from the community engagement events demonstrate that laser scanning and visualisation provide a novel and engaging mechanism for co-producing heritage assets. There is a high level of public interest in such technologies and users who engaged with these models reported that they gained new perspectives (including spatial and temporal perspectives) on the built heritage of the area

Castle to cathedral to cashmere: an evaluation.

The Castle to Cathedral to Cashmere Partnership has delivered a significant heritage experience to the centre of Elgin. The partnership has been led by The Moray Council and has involved the City of Elgin Business Improvement District, Elgin Fund, Historic Environment Scotland, Moray College/University Highland & Islands, Johnstons of Elgin, the Elgin Benevolent Trust, Highlands & Islands Enterprise, Moray Speyside Tourism, Robert Gordon University and Elgin Museum. Special advisors have also been involved. The partnership has successfully brought to life over one thousand years of history using various media including website with mobile technologies and social media, 3D interactive modelling and high-definition scanning, interpretation at over 25 sites, signage (utilising QR codes to link to online resources), enhancements to the public realm including access works as well as a significant programme of activities and events which have involved around twenty partner organisations and volunteers. The ultimate object of the project has been to enhance the town centre experience for visitors and locals by delivering high quality and easily accessible interpretation of its heritage and by improving public spaces and the physical environment of the town centre through improved access and public art. In doing so, Castle to Cathedral to Cashmere has sought to improve the visitor experience but also to engage the community in learning about its own history and heritage of the town. These can lead to longer 'dwell-time' in the town centre and ultimately lead to economic, social and cultural impacts

Mapping the Current Landscape of Research Library Engagement with Emerging Technologies in Research and Learning: Final Report

The generation, dissemination, and analysis of digital information is a significant driver, and consequence, of technological change. As data and information stewards in physical and virtual space, research libraries are thoroughly entangled in the challenges presented by the Fourth Industrial Revolution:1 a societal shift powered not by steam or electricity, but by data, and characterized by a fusion of the physical and digital worlds.2 Organizing, structuring, preserving, and providing access to growing volumes of the digital data generated and required by research and industry will become a critically important function. As partners with the community of researchers and scholars, research libraries are also recognizing and adapting to the consequences of technological change in the practices of scholarship and scholarly communication. Technologies that have emerged or become ubiquitous within the last decade have accelerated information production and have catalyzed profound changes in the ways scholars, students, and the general public create and engage with information. The production of an unprecedented volume and diversity of digital artifacts, the proliferation of machine learning (ML) technologies,3 and the emergence of data as the “world’s most valuable resource,”4 among other trends, present compelling opportunities for research libraries to contribute in new and significant ways to the research and learning enterprise. Librarians are all too familiar with predictions of the research library’s demise in an era when researchers have so much information at their fingertips. A growing body of evidence provides a resounding counterpoint: that the skills, experience, and values of librarians, and the persistence of libraries as an institution, will become more important than ever as researchers contend with the data deluge and the ephemerality and fragility of much digital content. This report identifies strategic opportunities for research libraries to adopt and engage with emerging technologies,5 with a roughly fiveyear time horizon. It considers the ways in which research library values and professional expertise inform and shape this engagement, the ways library and library worker roles will be reconceptualized, and the implication of a range of technologies on how the library fulfills its mission. The report builds on a literature review covering the last five years of published scholarship, primarily North American information science literature, and interviews with a dozen library field experts, completed in fall 2019. It begins with a discussion of four cross-cutting opportunities that permeate many or all aspects of research library services. Next, specific opportunities are identified in each of five core research library service areas: facilitating information discovery, stewarding the scholarly and cultural record, advancing digital scholarship, furthering student learning and success, and creating learning and collaboration spaces. Each section identifies key technologies shaping user behaviors and library services, and highlights exemplary initiatives. Underlying much of the discussion in this report is the idea that “digital transformation is increasingly about change management”6 —that adoption of or engagement with emerging technologies must be part of a broader strategy for organizational change, for “moving emerging work from the periphery to the core,”7 and a broader shift in conceptualizing the research library and its services. Above all, libraries are benefitting from the ways in which emerging technologies offer opportunities to center users and move from a centralized and often siloed service model to embedded, collaborative engagement with the research and learning enterprise