Papers 4

Catch & CatchPlus: ICT research to support a national infrastructure for heritage

Since 2005 CATCH finances teams which focus on improving the cross-fertilisation between cultural heritage and research in computer science and humanities. In the light of transferability and interoperability, the research teams execute their research at the heritage institutions, according to the laboratorium extra muros formula. Currently CATCH is financing fourteen research projects in twelve cultural heritage institutions.

The first ten projects were based on issues described by cultural heritage institutions. In the last four projects humanities play a more important role, but still the CE-institutions are part of the research, given the fact that humanity research is often based on materials guarded by the CH-bodies.

In 2009 CATCH plus has started. CATCH plus is an application oriented extension of the CATCH research programme. In CATCH plus the scientific results and the software developed during the CATCH pilots (every research project started with a limited pilot to show what could be reached) are transformed into cq. rebuilt to be ready for implementation into the primary work processes. Planning and organizing a sustainable maintenance of the tools belongs to it. Part of CATCH plus is also the contribution to the generic infrastructure for CH by implementation an OAI-PMH service (to make metadata interoperable and harvestable by other parties) and establishing a Permanent Identifier-infrastructure (to contribute to the sustainability of digitized materials, thesauri-concepts etc).

Besides new methods, techniques and tools the CATCH programme contributes to the capacity of the CH to deal with new IT knowledge by disseminating knowledge and also by 'teaching' a new generation of computer sciences students and researchers what CE is and what their abilities could contribute to the goals of the CH.

On the first conference day most of the CATCH projects will present themselves during the lunch session. For an overview of the projects: www.nwo.nl/catch/.

On the second conference day one of the sessions is dedicated to the four newest CATCH projects, which started in the course of 2008. Also CATCH plus will give a presentation about what its results will be and how the CATCH results can contribute to the work processes and to the interaction between cultural heritage collections and the public. For CATCHplus see: www.catchplus.nl.

The four projects of the last CATCH round:

AGORA
Creating the historic fabric for and providing web-enabled access to objects in dynamic historical sequences
The collections of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision in Hilversum jointly form an inexhaustible source of data about and objects from Dutch history. Yet the associated information about historic events is linked to these collections in many different ways. This makes it difficult to access knowledge about specific historical developments via these audio-visual and visual sources.
Based on several pilots that are related to current canonical debates, Agora is facilitating and investigating the digitally-mediated access that the Rijksmuseum and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision offer to sources from the past. This must ultimately lead to a web-based interactive space on the interpretation of historical sources for both heritage professionals and interested members of the public.
AGORA is a project of the Free University Amsterdam, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

BRIDGE
Building Rich Links to Enable Television History Research
Television is no longer an independent entity. Broadcasting companies are now platforms and providers of multimedia information. The traditional TV archive is being extended to include other sources so that a meaningful web of information can be realised. The aim of the BRIDGE project is to generate automatic links and associations between sources related to a television archive.
BRIGE is a project of the University of Amsterdam, Utrecht University and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

HITIME
Historical Timeline Mining and Extraction
There is a wealth of information in different forms about the labour movement during the period 1850-1940, which includes biographies, letters and other personal material. HITIME aims to provide a software tool kit for historical research. This will enable a large-scale analysis of the links between people, professions, locations, events and schools of thought in order to create a clear picture of the labour movement’s social network. The tool kit shall also be made suitable for generic historical text mining.
HITIME is a project of the Tilburg University and the International Institute of Social History.

LINKS
Linking system for historical family reconstruction

Since 1811, the birth, marriage and death certificates of every person in the Netherlands have been kept. Countless volunteers are digitising the information about these people in GENLIAS. By linking these data together, a wealth of knowledge can be derived in areas such as historical demography (child mortality), historical sociology (social mobility) and epidemiology and genetics. In that linking process due consideration is given to matters such as incorrect spelling and regional deviations in the names.
The LINKS project aims to reconstruct all families in the Netherlands from the 19th and early 20th century, using techniques such as fuzzy matching and self learning.
LINKS is a project of the IISG-KNAW, Utrecht University, Virtual Knowledge Studio, LIACS, P.J. Meertens Institute, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, Historic Centre of Overijssel and Tresoar.

At the second conference day AGORA, BRIGE, HITIME and CATCHplus will be presented.

Chair: Mark Kas (The Netherlands organisation for Scientific Research)

Speakers:

Chiel van den Akker (NWO, The Netherlands)
Chiel van den Akker (1974). PhD in philosophy Radboud University Nijmegen 2009. In September 2009 I have started working on the Agora-project at the Free University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Arts, Department of History.

Maarten de Rijke (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

Marius Snyders (Institute for Sound and Vision, The Netherlands)

Marius Snyders is project manager at The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. He has a long standing career in government policy issues related to the use of new technologies in cultural heritage, and in particular the role they play in creating and maintaining digital libraries. He has experience both at national and pan‐European levels. Before entering Sound and Vision, he worked as senior policy advisor to the Dutch national government and as policy officer for the European Commission DG Informtion Society to coordinate the European Digital Library policy development. Prior to that, Marius worked for two large commercial publishers.

Titia van der Werf (Interantional institute for Social History, the Netherlands)

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Cultural heritage (CH) is everywhere, and constitutes our collective memory. CATCH develops generic methods and techniques cutting across the areas of the humanities and computer science, aiming to facilitate an interaction with cultural heritage institutions. Innovation, multidisciplinary collaboration and transferability are essential.