New technologies and innovative methods for the digitisation of cultural heritage at Euromed

The latest developments in digitising cultural heritage were presented at the 3rd Pan-Hellenic Conference on Digital Cultural Heritage-Euromed 2019, held at the Conference Centre, University of West Attica 25-27 September. The three-day conference was organised by the Cyprus University of Technology-Digital Cultural Heritage Department, the Department of Engineering, Industrial Design and Production University of West Attica, the cultural organisation ‘Perrevia Network’ and the Cypriot Embassy in Athens. The National Documentation Centre (EKT) contributed to the conference with an interesting presentation of SearchCulture.gr the national aggregator for cultural heritage which contributes thousands of records to Europeana.

During the three-day event, there were more than 90 presentations covering the entire spectrum of current developments around the following themes: the use of new technologies in humanities research, innovative digitisation methods and holistic documentation of archaeological material, digital applications for the promotion of cultural heritage in tourism, civil participation in local monuments documentation through crowdsourcing methodologies, the use of digital cultural heritage in the educational process, the showcasing of religious monuments through digitisation, new approaches to the management of cultural heritage, the legal framework around the digitisation of cultural heritage and new challenges, perspectives and scientific approaches to the preservation, protection and promotion of cultural heritage in the digital multimedia environment.

The conference also highlighted the importance of holistic documentation of cultural monuments with the use of modern technologies such as photogrammetry, 3D scanning, interdisciplinary methods of recording data such as conservation data and digital reproductions that use 3D, interactives and multimedia.

Held every two years, the conference aims to be a forum for “knowledge exchange, ideas sharing, best practices, research, procedures & standards”.

Georgia Aggelaki, scientific associate at EKT, presented SearchCulture.gr, the national aggregator for cultural heritage, focusing on the development and architecture of the aggregator, services for content providers and the benefits of being a member of SearchCulture.gr.

EKT’s new edition of the ‘Specifications for Interoperability and Quality for Online Dissemination of Digital Cultural Content’ was presented at the event. The publication outlines the documentation standards licensing and IPR, digitisation techniques and digital cultural content dissemination tech specs for inclusion in aggregators such as SearchCulture.gr and Europeana.

SearchCulture.gr is the national aggregator that collects, preserves and disseminates Greek digital cultural heritage content produced with public funding. 

SearchCulture.gr currently aggegates more than 500,000 documents from 59 institutions such as museums, archives, ephorates of antiquities, municipalities, cultural institutions, research centres and libraries, including the National Gallery, the Fund for Archaeological Proceeds, the Thessaloniki Film Festival, the Onassis Foundation, Chania Archaeological Museum, the Folklore Museum of Metsovo and the Acropolis Restoration Service. Through SearchCulture.gr, EKT has undertaken the role of the accredited National Aggregator for cultural content for Europeana and has to date contributed more than 320,000 records.