Digital Storytelling Links

Links:

http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/

http://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/story/20150430-rosetta-the-whole-story/index.html

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians

http://ingenious.org.uk/Read/

http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/outside-the-spacecraft/online/

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/online_science/explore_our_collections/stories

https://storymap.knightlab.com/

https://storymap.knightlab.com/examples/bosch-garden/

Here are a few related articles on this subject:

http://mw2015.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/the-whole-story-and-then-some-digital-storytelling-in-evolving-museum-practice/

https://storytellinginthedigitalage.wordpress.com

http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/11/the-future-of-the-feature-breaking-out-of-templates-to-build-customized-reading-experiences/

http://www.trevorowens.org/2014/02/a-draft-style-guide-for-digital-collection-hypertexts/

http://alistapart.com/article/building-nonlinear-narratives-for-the-web

https://hackpad.com/Interactive-Storytelling-pPjlGpwaNh6

http://www.rcm.ac.uk/museum/digitalresources/google/

Finally:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NnTg-KfmEpWeLtCm7zMK-THWyzHIDdaeWaoYtQMAyPQ/edit#gid=0 (good list of digital storytelling projects)

This is also something that Europeana has been contemplating. They have used both their own custom platform (e.g. http://exhibitions.europeana.eu/exhibits/show/recording-and-playing-machines) and GCI (e.g. https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/u/0/exhibit/photography-on-a-silver-plate/gQxWH0VE?hl). More examples of both (and other things from partners) via http://exhibitions.europeana.eu/. The Europeana platform is up for redevelopment this year.

Europeana 280 - Art from the 28 Countries of Europe

Source of article: http://pro.europeana.eu/pressrelease/europeana-280-art-from-the-28-countries-of-europe

Every EU country is asked to celebrate its contribution to European art history as part of a Europe-wide campaign to involve people with their shared art heritage, and to support the launch of the Europeana Art History channel.

Europe’s 28 Culture Ministries have been invited to work with their museums and galleries to choose at least 10 paintings that represent their country’s contribution to Europe’s art history. And the public across Europe will have their say on the 280 chosen pieces too, by voting for the works that they feel to be inspirational.

The campaign hopes to get people across Europe involved with art treasures from their own and other European countries, and is supported by the European Commission as part of the development of Europeana.

The nominated paintings will feature on the new Europeana Art History Channel, to be launched in early 2016. The 280 pieces of art will form a special collection in the channel, bringing together Europe’s most influential paintings. Selected paintings will also feature in a specially curated virtual exhibition in 2016.

Merete Sanderhoff, Curator of Digital Museum Practice at SMK, The National Gallery of Denmark, and member of the Europeana Members Council said: “Working with digital art collections, I have always been driven by a vision where people can experience artworks side by side, even if the physical objects are located in disparate institutions and different countries. The Europeana Art History Channel helps realise this vision, offering up a unique perspective and access to Europe's artistic heritage to everyone online, no matter where they live or how far they can travel; the Europeana 280 campaign is a great way to start getting people involved with it.”

Each nominated piece should have contributed to a European art movement down the centuries - from Gothic to Renaissance, from Baroque to Impressionism, and from Cubism to Pop Art. The Europeana Art History Channel will provide a unique perspective on European art, not only providing access to works from all of Europe, and throughout history but where the iconic sits side by side with lesser known but still important counterparts.

Jill Cousins, Europeana’s Executive Director said: “Europe’s art history is rich and varied; we are all aware of Europe’s emblematic paintings but so many important and beautiful works are often not known outside of the countries that we live in. We want to give people across Europe the chance to discover those works alongside their more famous cousins, to explore their individual beauty as well as their wider significance. [For example Pyke Koch’s magisch realisme alongside Salvador Dali, or frescoes by Toma of Suceava from Moldavia alongside Da Vinci’s The Last Supper.] And to be able to do all of this online.”

Europeana.eu is Europe’s platform for digital cultural heritage. It brings together more than 40 million books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records that have been digitised by cultural institutions throughout Europe.

The launch of Europeana channels will take this a step further, offering visitors a rich, curated journey through themed content, and with high quality digital images. And visitors will be able to explore different perspectives of a theme through the breadth of related content - for example an artist’s correspondence or others writing on an artist’s work could be items that can be explored alongside paintings. Europeana Art History channel will follow the launch of the Europeana Music Channel in late 2015.

Europeana Europeana is Europe's digital platform for cultural heritage, which collects and provides online access to tens of millions of digitised items from libraries, archives, audiovisual collections and museums across Europe. We are a network, representing more than 3000 cultural heritage organisations and a thousand individuals from these and other walks of life including the creative and technical sectors, passionate about bringing Europe's vast wealth of cultural heritage to the world. www.europeana.eu

New and Improved Europeana Labs Now Open for Business

The revamped and relaunched Europeana Labs is now live: http://us3.campaign-archive2.com/?u=ad318b7566f97eccc895e014e&id=c9defde5e0&e=341f1b697e

The main improvements include:

New API features and improved documentation 

The REST API has been extended with powerful features giving you the ability to search for and filter Europeana’s collections by what media files are directly available. For example, you can now retrieve just those records which have extra-large images, or maybe you're after high-quality audio files. Of course all these extra features can be combined with existing text, metadata and licensing filters. Read the 'how to' guide if you're a developer looking to access media files for your app, or explore the Europeana Collections to view and manually download individual items.

The Europeana Linked Open Data service has been updated to provide access to over 45 million items. 

Explore, access and download metadata through our SPARQL endpoint. The Europeana OAI-PMH Service is now available in Beta. It uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH v2.0). Access to the service is limited. All three APIs also now have improved documentation thanks to the feedback we gathered from the developer community. >

A treasure trove of datasets  

Digging for datasets that suit your needs can take time. Europeana's re-usable datasets are here to help. New filters mean you can fast-track to what you’re looking for in seconds, and refine content by theme. With over 80 sets to choose from - and new ones added each month - it’s an easy way to explore more than a million openly licensed, high resolution items ready for you to re-use.

Apps to inspire you 

Sometimes, ideas and inspiration can be hard to come by. Europeana has designed an Apps Showcase to help you get your inventive juices flowing. You can now browse through more than 160 applications, clearly divided into three categories: end-user applications and creations, tools for directly working with the Europeana API and content (for example client libraries), and wider open source tools (50+ tools) in the FLOSS (Free Libre Open Source Software) directory. As with datasets, you can refine your search based on various filters and find extra information, as well as suitable documentation and code on GitHub.

Incubation 

Europeana have designed a simple incubation process to help you with every stage on your path from an idea to a market-ready product. Play on-site - to get you started, you can find a list of physical labs Europeana's partnered with where together you can experiment with digital cultural content, build and test prototypes on-site.

Co-creation 

Those interested in developing a prototype product and testing its feasibility can now make use of the co-creation services offered by our partner Platoniq. If you’re ready to take your prototype to the market, Europeana can help you try out alternative financing strategies and create a crowdfunding campaign.

Other highlights inclue the new media metadata methods, available on the main website and via the API - now you can search not just by text/metadata and licenses, but also by technical details for available media files - resolution and colour of images; bit-rate and length of audio clips; definition and length of video clips; file format; availability of full text; etc etc.

There are now 48 million items from 3,600+ providers whose content, when they've made it directly available, is indexed and discoverable in this way. That includes a whopping half a million openly licensed images over 4 megapixels. See:

http://www.europeana.eu/portal/search?f%5BIMAGE_SIZE%5D%5B%5D=extra_large&f%5BREUSABILITY%5D%5B%5D=open&f%5BTYPE%5D%5B%5D=IMAGE&q= 

http://labs.europeana.eu/api/console?function=search&query=*:*&reusability=open&qf=TYPE:IMAGE&qf=IMAGE_SIZE:extra_large&profile=rich

CODE | WORDS: Technology and Theory in the Museum

CODE | WORDS brings together leading museum thinkers and practitioners to explore emerging issues about the nature of museums in the light of the dramatic and ongoing impact of digital technologies.

Originally an online dialogue, CODE | WORDS is a series of conversations which explores challenging questions about the identity of museums, their role in society, their responsibility to serve a global public, and the nature of collecting, preservation, education, scholarship, primary research, and ethics in a digital age. The authors aim to inspire change, and to demonstrate the important relationship between emerging digital practices and museum theory.

Here's Nick Poole's online contribution:

https://medium.com/code-words-technology-and-theory-in-the-museum/change-cc3b714ba2a4

Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks

The link below gives some good tips on writing articles for publication (from the book Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks):

http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/tomprof/posting.php?ID=1107

Mapping Participatory Governance of Cultural Heritage

On ICOM, Dana Andrew recently wrote:

Our cultural heritage belongs to all of us. It is a common good, shared by communities. As such, the role of all people and the rights of groups of interested citizens in its maintenance, management and development is ever more recognized. The European Expert Network on Culture therefore has been asked to map case studies of such participatory governance from all over Europe.

Please help us map all cultural heritage related projects, organisations and initiatives that genuinely involve the audience in its operations, management or logistics, either physically or digitally, in Europe!

If you’re involved in, or know of, a project, organisation or initiative that according to you is an example of participatory governance in cultural heritage, please add it to our Crowdmap.We would like to cover practices in as many EU countries as possible, and across as many types of cultural heritage organisations as possible.

Europeana Creative Culture Jam

Europeana Creative Culture Jam is the final showcase event of Europeana Creative, a groundbreaking project that explores ways for creative industries to connect with cultural heritage. This should be of interest to anyone working with open collections, creative re-use, innovation, business development, and just about any other area which is engaging developers, creatives and other audiences with cultural heritage collections.

What? Culture Jam will mix inspiring keynote talks with lively discussion on topics ranging from living labs to business models to co-creation. We'll celebrate our Innovation Challenge winners, play with the fantastic apps the project has developed and participate in some live crowd-funding madness! Do you have an inspiring idea or topic that you would like to share at Culture Jam? Be part of our Ignite Talks & Poster Sessions and hand in your proposal until 11 June.

Where? Europeana Creative Culture Jam event will be taking place in Vienna, Austria on 9 and 10 July 2015 in the premises of the Austrian National Library.

Who? Everyone with a creative, practical or strategic interest in open data, cultural heritage or digital culture is invited to join us for Culture Jam.

Critical Blogging in Archaeology

Critical Blogging in Archaeology is a new open access themed issue in Internet Archaeology 39: http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue39/index.html

This issue is a little more experimental than usual, employing open peer review - and so the referees' (citable) comments are published alongside the articles. In addition, readers have the opportunity to comment and contribute via the journal's comments feature as well as via social media using the dedicated ‪#‎CritBlogArch‬

Some of the thoughts and decisions that provoked and shaped the issue can be found here: http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue39/editorial.html

Update on the Development of the Culture Grid & Europeana Aggregation

The Culture Grid is the UK aggregator for museum, library and archive metadata, run through the Collections Trust (CT). It currently hosts 3 million records from collections all over the UK and acts as one of the main points of aggregation into Europeana for English-language content.

After consultation to identify demand for the Culture Grid as a service and to develop options for funding it on an ongoing basis, CT have now set out a 3-part plan in partnership with Knowledge Integration, the developers of the platform and associated tools.

As of the 30th April, the Culture Grid was closed to new accessions. The service website will be archived (http://www.culturegrid.org.uk). The API and index will remain accessible so that applications and services which use sector data from the Culture Grid will continue to function for the foreseeable future (and the dataset will continue to be available for hacks and other development events). Europeana contributions will be via a 'dark' aggregator which we will continue to host.

UK organisations wishing to contribute data to Europeana will be able to do so using the aggregator which was developed alongside the Europeana Connection Kit (ECK) last year. The aggregator accepts data in the format (a profile of LIDO) produced by the ECK, which has been or is in the process of being integrated into most SPECTRUM Partner software platforms. It allows you to select records, associate them with permissions and batch-submit them for ingest into Europeana via the 'dark' aggregator. For further information about the ECK, see CT's blog post (http://www.collectionstrust.org.uk/home/eck).

As part of our future planning, CT would like to invite a community discussion about the value of and support for metadata aggregation. A great deal has been learnt in the first wave of aggregation-based projects, and it would be interesting to know whether there is an appetite in the UK/MCG network for developing these platforms as a community.

Some of the biggest challenges in sustaining an aggregation platform are resourcing quality-assurance and end-user support, and it ought to be possible to develop a self-supporting community around aggregation and online collections search to help overcome these challenges.

Utopias, Futures and Temporalities Symposium

The 'Utopias, Futures and Temporalities: Critical considerations for Social Change symposium took place on 19 & 20 May, 2015 at Bristol Zoo. The CFP was as follows:

2016 is the 500 year anniversary of the first publication of Thomas More’s Utopia. Such a moment encourages reflection on the uses and misuses of utopias and dystopias in social change as well as critical reflection on the contribution of ideas of the future and of temporality to the processes of social transformation.

The ideals of citizenship encourage us all to desire a stake in the future – whether trying to shape our own lives, those of our families, the places we live, or wider society – and to imagine a better or different world. But what is this entity that we name ‘future’? Senses of time vary across and within human societies, and disciplines from philosophy to natural science present equally differing conceptions of it. By invoking ‘utopias/dystopias’ we wish to explore the questions of positionality, power, hope and despair that are at play in the imagination of new times and the way that these effect change in the present. By pluralising ‘futures’, we want to explore the diversity of ways in which anticipatory practices can be performed by people and communities. And by invoking ‘temporalities’, we want to reflect on how the qualities of time – endurance, succession, speed, rhythm, for example – interact with imaginings and perceptions of what is to come. Perhaps, by better understanding the temporal qualities of society, culture and environments, we could create social change at a scale and pace that connects communities with their futures, rather than disenfranchises them. Perhaps again, by invoking utopias and dystopias, we may recognise that questions of future possibility are not simply technical, but involve politics, fear, despair, hope, imagination, dreams, desires and aspirations, all of which may act as stimulus or disincentives for social change.

More details can be found at: http://connected-communities.org/index.php/news/first-call-symposium-on-utopias-futures-social-change/

Europeana/Digital Public Library of America and Rights Statements for Cultural Heritage

Europeana and the Digital Public Library of America are calling for feedback on two white papers on rights statements for cultural heritage. The article setting out 'The principles for establishing international and interoperable rights statements' has more information:

http://pro.europeana.eu/blogpost/the-principles-for-establishing-international-interoperable-righ

The commentable white papers are: Recommendations for Standardized International Rights Statements http://bit.ly/1F9Zw1M (or https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x10JsIfi8Y74pgJJEAqMtyO5iYp0p6DO5DrOZK-5umY/edit?pli=1)

Recommendations for the Technical Infrastructure for standardized International Rights Statements http://bit.ly/1QtmmmT (or https://docs.google.com/document/d/1H6TWxGARqUMxJrc2sXjaBlOsg7UkUTb27rvtS8aC5y4/edit?pli=1)

Google Cultural Institute Services

Any registered, cultural non-profit is likely eligible for a free Google-operated indoor Street View collect at no cost. This can be done in conjunction with, or independent from, a partnership agreement with the Google Cultural Institute (https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/about/).

The Cultural Institute (includes the Google Art Project) offers free content hosting, high-resolution photography services, online exhibition tools, a mobile app, and other Google services to non-profit Libraries, Archives, and Museums. There is no cost for any of the tools or services, there are no ads, and there is no transfer of content rights to Google.

Europeana Food and Drink Challenge

Europeana Food and Drink have launched their second innovation challenge. The Challenge competitors are requested to submit a storytelling video, aimed at supporting sustainability of the production of traditional food and the cultural heritage (tangible, intangible, natural) connected to it.

The challenge has been developed in collaboration with Slow Food who are actively involved in preserving sustainable food/agriculture and the associated cultural heritage.

Full details can be found at http://foodanddrinkeurope.eu/challengetwo

Two Articles - Flanders and Abreu

'The Literary, the Humanistic, the Digital: Toward a Research Agenda for Digital Literary Studies' by Julia Flanders, available here: https://dlsanthology.commons.mla.org/the-literary-the-humanistic-the-digital/

'The Collection and the Cloud' by Amelia Abreu, available here: http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-collection-and-the-cloud

Pararchive Conference Notes - 27 & 28 March 2015

Fred Garnet and Andrew Whitworth (London Knowledge Lab) gave a presentation on 'Participatory Curation: A Model for Integrating Curation and the Story-telling of Communities'. One model they discussed was 'aggregate then curate', which reflects the approach of a project like Europeana. How far do open source platforms like Scalar, Yarn and the DPS vision do those two things simultaneously?

In the presentation for the launch of Yarn, designers Imran Ali, Tom Morgan and Dean Vipond (Carbon Imagineering) explained that they had wanted to create a technology that was reflective of the relationships between those individuals and community groups they'd worked with to develop it. In the 'All and Each' project, the interest lies in how those technologies can also shape relationships, inclining or disinclining the capacity to do certain things or work in certain ways.

Jake Berger (BBC Archives) talked more on the idea of a DPS that would be a secure, accessible platform, available for anyone to use, regardless of age, gender, ability or disability. He acknowledged the difficulty of achieving this (with licensing and copyright restrictions), and therefore the concept he described sounded more like a best case scenario than something that was close on the horizon. Listening to him speak, I was reminded of a Wendy Chun article I'd read, where she writes that 'new-media scholars’ blindness to the similarities between new media and TV is ideological; it stems from an overriding belief in digital media as memory - and thus possibly memorable - and TV as liveness' (p. 153). It struck me that something like the archives has, for the BBC, only become important relatively recently. Prior to that, the ideology of 'liveness' led to a lot of tapes being wiped, and episodes of programmes lost. Undoubtedly, the DPS forms a part of the BBC's ongoing mission to deliver public value but it is also the idea of digital media as memory that informs the context for the emergence of a DPS.

Andrew Prescott's (University of Glasgow) keynote address was on the topic of big data, and he touched on several interesting themes. He suggested that big data approaches have been around for a long time, using the example of the Domesday book (see Mirzoeff on visuality) but that, whereas this was a record of the past, contemporary big datasets are future oriented and based on predictive analytics. He also referenced an influential article in Wired by Chris Anderson from 2008, which addressed the implications of big data, cautioning, 'this is a world where massive amounts of data and applied mathematics replace every other tool that might be brought to bear'. Finally, he mentioned some recent literature by Huggett (2014) and Kitchen & Lauriault on the idea that big data must be situated. He ended by positing that the future work of the humanities might be critical studies of data.

Paul Wilson (University of Leeds) gave a presentation about his project to co-produce stories of the volunteer experience, influenced theoretically by Markusson (on designerly intervention) and Mark Fuad (on the strangeness of design). He also mentioned the idea of technology as solicitation and talked about how participatory design might solicit more effective engagement.

MicroPasts

MicroPasts is a web platform that brings together full-time academic researchers, volunteer archaeological and historical societies and other interested members of the public to collaborate on new kinds of research about archaeology, history and heritage. It is a place where enthusiasts (of any background) can not only create high-quality research data together, but also collaboratively design and fund entirely new research projects. In particular, we want to improve how people traditionally distinguished as ‘academics’, ‘professionals’ and ‘volunteers’ cooperate with one another (as well as with other people out there who as yet have no more than a passing interest).

MicroPasts are developing and supporting a range of online crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding projects about our human history. By joining in, you can help research, fund and/or design as many projects as you like, with as much or as little personal commitment as you wish. Some existing projects are about creating 3D models of archaeological artefacts, enriching old photographic archives, or transcribing old archaeological or historical records, to name just a few that we have come up with so far. Other new projects will need your help with financing before they can begin, whilst yet others might be collaborative research topics that you might want to propose yourself (as an individual, as part of an organised society or in tandem with other interested people that you meet online). We cannot yet say which projects will prove popular and which ones will not, and we hope that many as yet unanticipated agendas will be dreamt up collectively. In any case, we are keen for your ideas and your contributions wherever we can get them. In a more technical sense, MicroPasts supports (a) modular applications for massive online data collection about archaeology, history and heritage, as well as (b) a micro-funding model for supporting new (not-for-profit) research projects where collaboration between academic institutions and volunteers is a key feature. The software used to build the platform is entirely free and open source, and the data we create is also required to be open-licensed and publicly available.

The initial stages of this effort have kindly been supported by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, and involve a collaboration between the UCL Institute of Archaeology and the British Museum.

For further info visit: http://micropasts.org/

ENUMERATE Core Survey 2015

In a follow-up to the successful ENUMERATE Core Surveys of 2012 and 2013, the Collections Trust is asking for participation in the third survey as part of a Europe-wide effort. The survey will gather data about:

• digitisation activity;
• the cost of digital collection;
• access to digital collections; and
• the preservation of digital heritage materials.

To participate go to: www.enumerate.onderzoek.nl

UNESCO PERSIST Guidelines for Born Digital Content Selection

The UNESCO PERSIST project (Platform to Enhance the Sustainability of the Information Society Transglobally) aims to enhance the sustainability of the information society by assisting institutions to preserve and to provide access to digital heritage. To achieve this, PERSIST seeks to  secure important mechanisms of good governance and the right of access to knowledge and information.

PERSIST has identified governments, heritage institutions, and the IT-industry as the three main stakeholders in the project. PERSIST will establish a platform to support dialogue and cooperation among the three main stakeholders, and to create practical solutions in the area of sustainable digital preservation. Additionally, academia will be an important partner in PERSIST as researchers have a supporting role in assessing the quality of the dialogue and cooperation.

The PERSIST partners asked Wilbert Helmus to carry out a literature survey on the world-wide trends and developments on selection digital heritage collections (including libraries, archives and museums). The literature survey will focus on international (world-wide) literature, publications, policies, strategies, and guidelines on collecting and selecting born digital heritage collections. The documents will be analysed in order to compose an outline of the most important publications. The outcomes of this literature survey and analysis will provide the background for the UNESCO Guidelines on selecting digital heritage.

For further info visit: http://www.persist-project.eu/

2014: Top 20 Searches on Europeana

There were over 2,1 million unique searches performed on Europeana.eu in 2014. Below the full list of the 20 most popular search queries:

1. Vincent van Gogh (new entry)
2. Mucha (new entry)
3. Hieronymus Bosch (new entry)
4. Edvard Munch (new entry)
5. Photography (new entry)
6. Београд (Belgrade) (new entry)
7. Rembrandt (new entry)
8. Mode Longchamp (new entry)
9. Picasso (#11 in 2013)
10. Map (new entry)
11. Park (new entry)
12. Paris (#9 in 2013)
13. Mona Lisa (#16 in 2013)
14. 1868 boltz (new entry)
15. Spain (#12 in 2013)
16. Druck (new entry)
17. Édouard Charton (new entry)
18. Tretyakov Gallery (new entry)
19. Volendam (new entry)
20. Japan (#4 in 2013)

See the Europeana blog for the full post here: http://blog.europeana.eu/2014/12/2014-top-20-searches-on-europeana/

Personalized Access to Cultural Heritage (PATCH 2015)

8th International Workshop on Personalized Access to Cultural Heritage (PATCH 2015) is co-located with the ACM Intelligent User Interfaces 2015 Conference in Atlanta, GA, USA (29 March – 1 April 2015).

http://patch2015.wordpress.com/

The primary goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers & practitioners who are working on various aspects of cultural heritage and are interested in exploring the potential of state of the art technology (onsite as well as online) to enhance the CH visit experience. The expected result of the workshop is a multidisciplinary research agenda that will inform future research directions and hopefully, forge some research collaborations. PATCH workshop series are the meeting point between state of the artcultural heritage research and personalization using technology to enhance the personal experience in cultural heritage sites.

We aim at building a research agenda for personalization in CH in order to make the individual CH experience a link in a chain of a lifelong CH experience which builds on past experience, is linked to daily life and provides the foundation for future experiences. The workshop aims to be multi-disciplinary. It is intended for researchers, practitioners, and students of information and communication technologies (ICT), cultural heritage domains (museums,archives, libraries, and more), and personalization.