Conference
Report: The Jerusalem Conference on Digitization of Science and Cultural
Heritage
(EVA/MINERVA), 11–12 October 2004, Jerusalem, Israel
(www.minervaisrael.org.il).
Co-Chair: Susan Hazan,
Coordinator of Eva, Israel; Curator of New Media
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Co-Chair: Dov Winer,
Coordinator of MINERVA Israel; Director
eJewish.info, Developing Jewish Networking
Infrastructures
The Jerusalem Conference on Digitization of Science and Cultural Heritage,
held in October 2004 at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, built on two previous
Electronic Imaging and the Visual Arts (EVA) Symposia at Harvard University
(2002) and the Jewish Museum, London (2003). It was organized by the Jewish
Agency for Israel (www.jafi.org.il) and the Israeli Ministry of Science
and Technology (www.most.gov.il), and brought together practitioners and
researchers in the areas related to the digitization of science and cultural
heritage. Participants included professionals from a range of fields:
archivists, librarians, museums personnel, science website managers, practitioners
in music, video and cinema digitization projects in music, video and cinema,
technologists in the areas of knowledge management, IPR professionals
from ; cultural institutions, databases and library systems, and other
related fields. In addition, conference attendees also included decision
makers from local and national digitization programs, foundations, ministries,
local authorities and e-government. In the worldwide tradition of EVA
conferences (www.eva-conferences.com), this was an opportunity for both
local and international professionals to come together and discuss the
ways that cultural and technology intersect, and the two-day meeting offered
many formal and informal opportunities to listen, share and learn. This
was a propitious time for the conference to be held in Israel, a country
that was witnessing an economic recovery after a three-year crisis. Business
Week announced in September 2004 that Israeli high-technology industry
exports had risen by 20 per cent and the increase in demand for hi-tech
workers had reached 120 per cent. The telecom market has been on the rise
with digital, multi-channel, cable television reaching 75 per cent of
Israeli households and 95 per cent of the population using mobile telephone
technology. The number of Internet users has also doubled over the previous
two years to reach 2.7 million (out of a total 6.8 million population)
in May 2004, representing 58 per cent of the households now connected
to the Internet. Even the number of domain names in Israel had risen with
the Israel Internet Society reporting a growth of 14 per cent in comparison
to 2003, with some 56,899 new domains registered in Israel (see Dov
Winer, Israel Country Report, 2005)
With all this digital
connectivity, Israel was poised to reassess its content management, and
the EVA/MINERVA conference offered an excellent opportunity to focus specifically
on the digitization of science and cultural heritage. The conference represented
a partnership of both MINERVA and EVA. Israel MINERVA Plus (Ministerial
Network for Valorizing Activities in Digitization) is an instrument of
the European Union Member States, which the European Commission has been
developing with concerted action for digitization programs over the last
three years. The goal is to develop digital content industries in a sustainable
knowledge society based on the cultural and scientific knowledge resources
that form the collective and evolving memory of Europe’s diverse
societies. As a member of MINERVA Plus, Israel joins the 25 countries
of the thematic network of European Ministries to discuss, correlate and
coordinate activities towards the digitization of cultural and scientific
content across a common European platform. The MINERVA agenda promotes
recommendations and guidelines on digitization, metadata, longterm accessibility
and preservation. Our conference prioritized these and devoted
several sessions to them (see eEurope digitization—The Lund Principles:
www. cordis.lu/ist/directorate_e/digicult/lund_principles.htm).
EVA/MINERVA is part
of the international series of EVA conferences numbering some 2,000 participants
annually. Electronic Imaging, the Visual Arts and Beyond (EVA) conferences
acts as a cross-sectoral, multidisciplinary local and global set of events
for people interested in new technologies in the cultural sector. The
main four annual EVA conferences are held in Florence (March 2005 marked
the 70th EVA since 1990), London (July), Berlin (November) and Moscow
(December). Venues since the first EVA in 1990 have included: Athens,
Beijing, Berlin, Brussels, California, Cambridge (both in the United Kingdom
and the United States), Dallas, Delhi, Edinburgh, Florence, Gifu (Japan),
Glasgow, Jerusalem, Kiev, Laval (France), London, Madrid, Montreal, Moscow,
New York, Paris, Prague, Thessaloniki and Warsaw. In 2006, EVA conferences
will be held in Austria with others to be announced (www.eva-conferences.com).
The EVA/MINERVA 2004 conference endeavored to alert the EVA professional
community and related policy makers in Israel to the opportunities and
challenges currently faced by the digitization of cultural and scientific
heritage. These opportunities include: support for cultural diversity;
the potential to develop education and content industries in Israel; the
creation of an accessible and sustainable heritage; and the awareness
of the great variety, richness and potential of digitized resources. Learning
from the experiences of other communities across Europe, the organizers
were aware of the challenges they face in Israel including: N The fragmentation
of different approaches, standards and methodologies
A lack of simple and common access to resources for citizens
Intellectual property rights
A lack of synergies between cultural and new technologies programs
Limited institutional investment and commitment to develop digital platforms
The conference aimed at identifying these issues and thinking about ways
to work
together to meet these challenges.
The Future of European Digitization
The conference took place at a time when our European- and American-based
colleagues were working toward their own agendas. In order to learn from
the experiences of our European and American colleagues, the first day
of the conference opened with reports from leaders in the field. European
MINERVA Coordinator, Pier Giacomo Sola, presented the Future of European
Digitization Policy and Projects planned by MINERVA and the European Commission.
This was followed by a report by Violet Gilboa, Harvard College Library,
Judaica Division, Harvard University (www hcl.harvard.edu/widener/collections/judaica.html).
Dov Winer, Director of the eJewish.info initiative, went on to discuss
‘‘The End of the Internet? Consequences for the Old/New Jewish
People,’’ where he focused on the cultural consequences of
the convergence of the media, telecommunications and the Internet. Reminding
us of our commitment to cultural content, Adolfo Roitman, Head of the
Shrine of the Book and Curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Israel Museum,
Jerusalem, addressed the relevance of the 2,000 year-old manuscripts for
contemporary life in an era of digital heritage from the Jewish and Christian
traditions and evolving technologies.
The Israel Museum
in Jerusalem presented the ideal setting for Roitman’s presentation,
which concluded with an invitation to join him on the following day in
the Shrine of the Book, not to view the digital version of the Dead Sea
Scrolls, but to visit the internationally renowned scrolls themselves.
The Israel MINERVA Working Groups (WGs) organized the afternoon sessions
with the Law, Culture Technology, and Copyright group focusing on issues
facing the community, and where Dr Michael Birnhack, Faculty of Law, Haifa
University, presented a session on Creative Commons. Israeli institutions
are currently exploring the potential of Creative Commons for their own
intellectual content management, and the paper stimulated a lively discussion.
The User Needs and Quality Framework for Common Access Points working
group (www.minervaeurope.org/userneeds/ qualityprinciples.htm) discussed
local projects and explored online accessibility, as recommended by the
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), as well as usability and user needs.
Leading Web designers, lecturers and theorists in Israel presented their
work and discussed ways of implementing the ten Minerva principles on
the quality of cultural websites. With an emphasis on universal access,
the fascinating papers included Israel’s leading researcher, Gila
Gertel Hasson, from the Israel Internet Association (ISOC-IL), and the
umbrella organization that supports developments for user accessibility
(www.nagish.org.il), with her presentation entitled ‘‘An Introduction
to Accessibility and Web Accessibility Guidelines.’’ Gidi
Aharonavich discussed ‘‘A Blind User’s Perspective’’
and described what is like to use standard interfaces that often do not
take a blind perspective into consideration. He also mentioned his own
website where he shares his thoughts, experiences and music with others
(www.giditull.com). The workshop on Good Practices and Competence Centers
showcased some of the best projects in digitization currently undertaken
in Israel, while the parallel workshops served to focus on the work that
had been taking place over the year. Each group welcomed the opportunity
brought by the face-toface get-together. The meeting offered an ideal
opportunity for all the WGs to reaccess the ongoing activities and ferment
plans for the future.
Over 35 posters were exhibited in the Agara in the Youth Wing, which had
been decorated as an ancient Greek courtyard with Greek classical music
and generous samplings of wine to set the scene. Poster sessions offered
a welcome opportunity for all participants to meet and discuss their work,
and included projects on presenting archaeological data online, access
in sign language for the deaf and hard of hearing, databases as tools
for Israel’s cultural diversity, themetadata set applied in the
registry of Jewish resources on the Internet, conservation of built heritage
in Israel, audiovisual GPS (global positioning satellite) tour guides
for PDA and smart phones, the eJewish.info < multilingual thesaurus,
historic maps of Jerusalem, online treasury of Talmudic manuscripts, and
the Einstein archives online (www.minervaisrael.org.il//s136.html).
The second day of the conference was devoted to European projects supported
by the European Commission and other international projects where our
guests presented their ongoing work. The session on PrestoSpace (www.prestospace.org)
was moderated by Didier Giraud from the National Institute for the AudioVisual,
and coordinator of the PrestoSpace project. It focused on the leading
European broadcasting authorities, the PrestoSpace research, and their
industrial partners who provide the facilities and services for digitization
facilities for audiovisual preservation. This was a landmark meeting for
broadcasters in Israel, and an opportunity for all to present the challenges
and potential of local digitization activities in the broadcasting sector.
Breda Karun from the National Slovenia Library introduced the activities
of Calimera (www.calimera.org), which is devoted to assisting local institutions
(libraries, museums and archives) in applying and developing innovative
technologies and strategies for serving ordinary citizens in their everyday
lives. A substantial representation of Israel’s cultural institutions
and umbrella organizations participated in the workshops led by Karun,
and new synergies were identified and consolidated. Professor Franco Niccolucci
and Sorin Hermon presented the Epoch network (www.epoch-net.org), which
incorporates over 100 European cultural institutions that come together
to combine their efforts to improve the quality and effectiveness of Information
and Communication Technology (ICT) for cultural heritage. Training and
dissemination are part of their mission and the conference workshop was
devoted to showcasing the cutting edge technologies currently being developed
by its partners.
Professor Oreste Signore of the National Research Council (CNR) presented
‘‘The Cultural Semantic Web,’’ a session on the
Representation of Knowledge. (www.weblab.isti.cnr.it), and Dr Nadezhda
Brakker of the Center PIC (Center for Information in the Sphere of Culture),
Ministry of Culture, Russia, discussed ‘‘Digitization Programs
in Russia,’’ the collaboration between the UNESCO Russian
Office, MINERVA and EVA, and the digitization of cultural and scientific
heritage in Russia. Like Israel, Russia is a partner in the MINERVA Plus
Network as associate member.
Towards the close of the conference, Monica Kaayk spoke on behalf of EVA
and James Hemsley, who sent his salutations and support for the first
EVA conference to be held in Jerusalem. James Snyder, Anne Fisher and
Jerome Fisher, Director of the Israel Museum, echoed Hemsley’s support
for the conference, noting that the Jerusalem Declaration represented
a significant and impressive culmination.
The Jerusalem Declaration
The conference recognized a critical moment that acknowledged the common
agenda towards the digitization of cultural and scientific content held
by participating institutions and organisations in Israel. The six-point
declaration stressed the contribution of Israeli participation in the
European Union NRG frameworks and MINERVA, and emphasized establishing
an agenda in Israel for the digitization of Cultural Heritage. The declaration
called for the development of a concerted policy for the digitization
of Jewish cultural assets, long-term preservation and continuous access,
while providing digital expression for cultural diversity, giving voice
to the historical and contemporary creativity of Arab, Druze, Islamic,
Christian and other cultures and recognizing their tangible and intangible
heritage (see full text)
The conference ended on a high note when, after a tour of the Shrine of
the Book with Dr Roitman, participants moved to the galleries for a festive
celebration: the Dead Sea Scrolls Live! Before each went their separate
way, all of our guests were invited to beer and salsa in the Youth Wing
auditorium, which set the scene for our traditional blessing of ‘‘next
year in Jerusalem.’’
The second Jerusalem Conference on Digitization of Science and Cultural
Heritage is set for 29–30 November 2005. Please
mark this date in your diary.
SUSAN HAZAN
Israel Museum, Jerusalem
DOV WINER
eJewish.info
Visual Resources, The Charlesworth Group, Wakefield