Jerusalem Conference on the Digitisation of Cultural Heritage
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/07419050510588205 |
| Pages | 10-11 |
| Date | 01 January 2005 |
| Published date | 01 January 2005 |
| Author | Rivkah Frank |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science |
Jerusalem Conference on the Digitisation of
Cultural Heritage
Rivkah Frank
10 LIBRARY HITECH NEWS Number 1 2005, pp. 10-11, #Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 0741-9058, DOI 10.1108/07419050510588205
The Jerusalem Conference on the
Digitisation of Cultural Heritage was
co-sponsored by EVA Conferences
(Electronic Imaging and the Visual
Arts), MINERVA ± the European
Union-based consortium, Harvard
University Judaica Division, the Israel
Ministry of Science and Technology
and the Jewish Agency for Israel
Networking Infrastructures Division.
The two day conference took place at
the Israel Museum in Jerusalem on
October 11/12, 2004 and was attended
by participants from the USA, Italy,
France and other European Union
countries. The conference addressed the
digital concerns of archivists, librarians
and museum personnel and provided a
forum for the interchange of ideas and
problem areas among these three
professional groups.
Professor Elhanan Adler, Deputy
Director for Information Technology of
the Jewish National and University
Library and a key figure in the
digitisation of cultural information in
Israel was overall chair and opened the
conference. Also delivering greetings
was Violet Gilboa of the Judaica
Division of the Harvard University
Library, in Boston who is a leading
figure in Judaic culture digitisation.
Susan Hazan, just returned from the
International Council of Museums
(ICOM) conference in South Korea
extended a welcome on behalf of the
Israel Museum and stated that digital
creative activity will be the future of
museums. And Dominique Gonthier
represented the scientific delegation of
the European Commission.
The keynote address was delivered
by Pier Giacomo Sola from
MINERVA. His office coordinates
activities for digitisation in the
European Union so that the
participating countries can implement
uniform goals and conform to uniform
standards. Each member state is then
responsible for planning specific
projects to achieve the common goals.
The next speaker was Dov Winer,
Director of the Jewish Agency Initiative
for Developing Jewish Networking
Infrastructures, and coordinator of the
MINERVA network in Israel (he
spearheaded the effort to bring the joint
conference with EVA to Jerusalem). He
spoke of new horizons in technology
and predicted the end of the internet as
we know it with the future melding of
telephony, radio, television, cable and
internet. He remarked ``Man creates
technology; technology changes man
and re-creates him at the same time.''
The final speaker at the opening
session was Dr Adolfo Roitman,
Curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls and
responsible for the Shrine of the Book.
He spoke on ``Medium or Message ±
the Case of the Dead Sea Scrolls,'' and
gave a fascinating review on access to
information from the time of the scroll
to the electronic library.
The two afternoon sessions were
organized in accordance with the
``Working Groups'' of MINERVA. The
WG5 group, ``User Needs and Quality
Framework for Common Access
Points'' was chaired by Susan Hazan.
One session focused on open access
from a unique perspective ± that of the
blind and/or visually impaired person.
Gidi Aharonavich, a blind person, gave
a hands-on demonstration of accessing
the web via Braille. A simultaneous
session by WG6, ``Identification of
Good Practices and Competence
Centers'' was led by Orly Simon
The WG3 and WG4 Working Group
sessions focused on identification of
digitised projects, interoperability, and
cataloguing. Susan Lazinger addressed
the complex issue of ``Making
Metadata Interoperable''. She identified
three separate areas that need to be
resolved: structural, synthetic and
semantic. She used the Dublin Core as
an example of achieving structural
unity ± the 15 basic fields plus the
possibility of using additional fields
needed by educational institutions and
museums. She used the term
``synthetic'' to describe the grammar
required for unifying meta-data: i.e.
what should be the hierarchical
arrangement; what fields can be
repeated, uniform tags and beginning
and end of fields, etc. ``Semantic'' was
defined as the ``intended meaning''; for
example, the meta-data search engine
must recognize that ``creator'' in
Dublin Core is identical with ``personal
author'' in MARC. She also alluded to
the problem raised by differing
taxonomies and how harmonization
between models must be achieved to
allow for interoperability.
Between the two afternoon sessions,
a poster session was held in an outdoor
courtyard area of the museum. There
were over 30 posters, including
presentations of digital projects from
libraries and museums in Israel as well
as some new commercial products
which offer multilingual access for
digital media. The thoughtful provision
of wine and cheese by the conference
organizers added impetus to the
attendees to spend time among the
displays.
Tuesday's program (two morning
and two afternoon sessions) featured
parallel offerings throughout the day.
Professor Oreste Signore, Technology
Director of ISTI in Italy (www.
isti.cnr.it) delivered a double session
talk on ``Representing Knowledge ± the
Cultural Semantic Web''. In his
capacity as head of the MINERVA
W3C working group (that includes 400
members in 14 countries) he is charged
with leading the web to its full
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