What is Cultural Heritage digitized for? What are digital cultural heritage objects created for?
Xavier Agenjo Bullón
Director de Proyectos de la Fundación Ignacio Larramendi
ORCID: 0000-0001-8338-8087
Cultural heritage is for all, but for everyone to be able to enjoy it, it is necessary to provide visibility and accessibility. Increasingly, this is achieved via digital platforms.
To this end, the Heritage Hubs project was formed, so that young people could learn about, engage with, contribute to, and share the cultural heritage in their communities. The project was devised and managed by the Heritage Hubs consortium comprised of the Association of Cultural Heritage Education in Finland (project leader), San Millán de la Cogolla Foundation (Spain), Urban Development Center (Serbia) and VITECO, e-learning solutions (Italy).
The consortium received funding from Creative Europe, the European Union’s programme to support the cultural and audiovisual sectors. Creative Europe specifies that all funded projects have optimal visibility and accessibility, and that the results are integrated into the Europeana platform. In order to meet these requirements, San Millán de la Cogolla Foundation sought the help of Ignacio Larramendi Foundation (ILF), given its considerable experience in the field of virtual culture and digital platforms. ILF created the Virtual Library of Polygraphs, implemented in DIGIBÍS’ (a subsidiary of ILF) DIGIBIB software. DIGIBIB has been a case study of Europeana, as well as the W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group.
The results of the Heritage Hubs project (for example videos, manuals) have been forwarded to the ILF by the various organisations that make up the consortium. ILF has created corresponding digital objects, catalogued them according to the MARC format, and transmitted them to Europeana in accordance the ontology of the Europeana Data Model (EDM).
The videos were produced in the early stages of Heritage Hubs project and were a way for young people from schools in Finland, Serbia and Spain to explore and share the cultural heritage that was important to them. It also helped teachers, parents and other adults involved in the project to see what cultural heritage represented to the young participants, from their perspectives. Cultural heritage and the issues that touch it are written about and discussed in many formats and disciplines, but the young-person’s viewpoint enabled in the project offers rare and original insight.
One project objective was that the digital objects be reused as part of school curricula via digital platforms such as Europeana with the aim of connecting students and young people to their wider, shared European Cultural Heritage. For this objective to be met, technical solutions are necessary so that the digital objects can be collected by Europeana.
To achieve this, a microsite will host the Heritage Hubs digital objects. These will be collected, through Hispana, by Europeana, using DIGIBIB technology that allows the digital objects to pass dynamically and transparently to the OAI-PMH repository. Accordingly, the project videos will be part of Europeana, as stipulated by Creative Europe. It also means that it will be easy for any interested individual or organization to find and enjoy them.
