Digitisation of European Cultural Heritage : Products-Principles-Techniques

Abstract

Most conferences on digitisation focus on the Anglo-Saxon projects (American, Canadian, Australian and British initiatives). Indeed, many major digitisation projects are being carried out there. Yet this specific focus may be biased to some extent. Therefore we believe it was both necessary and worthwhile to provide a survey of what Europe has in store. We have observed that a great number of projects exist in varying stages of execution, spanning a wide range of subjects. These projects show a number of different approaches, some of which are well known standard solutions, while others are innovative or obscure. Behind this diversity common factors are hidden, which became more clearly exposed through this conference.

The most important criterion in the programme was to pay attention to projects that could already show considerable results and long-term experience and the methods that led to these results. Clearly there was only the opportunity for a selection of these initiatives to be brought to attention: completeness was not our aim.

The morning sessions of the conference were devoted to plenary papers. In the afternoon, the participants were divided into four groups. Each group circulated the four demonstration sessions. Three of these were presentations of single projects, with demonstrations and opportunities for discussion and 'hands-on' experience. The fourth demonstration consisted of some five or six small demonstrations in the same room (mainly Dutch projects and those projects that were discussed in the morning sessions). People were free to circulate among these demonstrations, were able to experiment with the applications and had informal talks with those who developed them.