Europe’s cultural heritage, with its common values & its rich diversity of traditions, crafts, arts, literature, languages, is undoubtedly the core of European identity. Cultural heritage not only reflects our past but also shapes our present & creates our future.
Polish Science Contact Agency ‘PolSCA’ of the Polish Academy of Sciences& Polish Institute Brussels cordially invite you to the webinar
Date: 21.04.2021
Time: 09:15 - 11:15 CET
Eventtitle: Cultural Heritage in Digital Age
Eventtyype: Seminar
Eventcategory: Other
Organisor: Polish Science Contact Agency ‘PolSCA’ of the Polish Academy of Sciences
and Polish Institute Brussels
Place: Online
Polish Science Contact Agency ‘PolSCA’ of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Polish Institute Brussels cordially invite you to the webinar:
Cultural Heritage in Digital Age
Europe’s cultural heritage, with its common values and its rich diversity of traditions, crafts, arts, literature, languages, is undoubtedly the core of European identity. Access to experience with cultural heritage contributes to social cohesion and inclusion by strengthening the sense of belonging and bringing people together. What is more, cultural heritage not only reflects our past but also shapes our present and creates our future. It is also a creative way of cultivating cross-cultural tolerance, dialogue, respect and understanding among miscellaneous actors across the world.
Hence, the digitisation of Europe’s cultural heritage, which includes print (books, journals, newspapers), photographs, museum objects, archival documents, audiovisual material, monuments and archaeological sites has been of primary concern for the European Union for several years. Digital technologies from 3D models to artificial intelligence are being used to ensure preservation and wide access to cultural heritage and the arts. Extensive research has been already funded to support digitisation of libraries, archives, and archaeological sites as well as digital curation and preservation of cultural goods.
However, Europe’s common R&I action to protect, conserve, restore and repair its important cultural heritage in digital way or promote its digital use as one of the substantial European resources is still limited in scope and impact. According to DARIAH Position Paper (2020), Europe faces significant challenges in terms of effective and efficient digitisation of our cultural heritage. First of all, bearing in mind that over 80% of Europe’s cultural heritage remains to be digitised, there is an urgent need to reconsider the European digitisation strategy in order to enable EU countries to work together more effectively towards the European Commission’s ambitious, but hardly achievable, target of all European cultural heritage being digitised by 2025. Secondly, the vast proportion of the 10-20% of Europe’s cultural heritage that has already been digitised can be considered today as out of date – DARIAH paper reveals that it is no longer of a high enough quality for analysis using advanced digital humanities methods. And last but not least, digital (digitised and born-digital) cultural heritage is fundamental data to the Arts and Humanities’ research. From humanities’ research perspective, there is an urgency of adopting better management policies, strengthening open access to heritage data and tighter cross-sectoral cooperation between Cultural Heritage Institutions and researchers in order to monitor digitisation across Europe.
The main purpose of the webinar is to get unique insights from decision makers and various practitioners representing European networks, Cultural Heritage Institutions, research institutes and research centres about the value of collaboration to provide efficient digital solutions to the real needs of accessing, protecting and preserving cultural heritage. The event represents also an opportunity to highlight European funded research projects or other relevant initiatives on the digitisation of Europe’s cultural heritage, and to debate on further actions that could be undertaken in the future.
The online event will be divided into two sessions. The first one will focus on the policy level, discussing miscellaneous opportunities to foster the involvement of researchers and other relevant stakeholders in the process of digitisation of European cultural heritage. A particular emphasis will be placed on current instruments, developed under Horizon Europe, Creative Europe or Digital Europe programme, and their potential to set up accessible digital cultural heritage datasets. The second session will provide a practical insight into the activities undertaken by various actors in the field of cultural heritage’s digitisation, highlighting the most important experiences and good practices to share.
The webinar, which will take place in English, is opened to everyone interested in the process of digitisation of European cultural heritage!
