Papers 2

Heritage on the map

Chair: Leila Liberge (STAP, the Netherlands)

Three speakers will participate in Papers 2.

Geo-information is becoming more and more important in the contemporary society. Heritage institutions need to reflect this in the presentation of their collections.

How can location-based internet services help present cultural heritage information to a wider online audience?

Drents Plateau

Speaker: Michiel Gerding

Drents Plateau is a not for profit organisation which formed a partnership with an ict company and 6 sister NFP's in creating a webbased informationsystem in which , geography, photography and textual information are combined. What are the possibillities and blockages of such a form of cooperation?

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Michiel Gerding (The Hague, 1951) has worked as the provincial historian in Drenthe since 1983. He advises and supports historical associations and individual amatuers with their historical research and advises authorities and institutions. Michiel is currently involved with Drents Plateau, the institute for heritage and architecture. He also writes and edits historical publications. His recent works include the Drenthe Book (2007) and Stille Kracht (Silent Force, Drenthe 1980-2005), the commemorative issue for the queen's anniverary in 2005. He is the chief editor of the (digital encyclopeadia of Drenthe but likes to alternate academic work with
publications for the general public such as Drenthe Toen en Nu (Drenthe then and now), which he edited, and to which he contributed.

Mediamatic

Speaker: Ino Paap

Mediamatic Lab is developing a new community for the Jewish Monument. http://www.joodsmonument.nl is a cultural heritage website and a digital monument, showing all Dutch Jewish citizens who died during WorldWar 2. At present the content of the site is added by editors of the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam after thouroughly checking the information.

Social network

In the autumn of 2009 a social network will be added to the site. It allows relatives and other users to add information, details, images and discussion. This new content will be presented as a separate layer, thus juxtaposing User Generated Content with officially controlled scientific information. The website enables survivors and other interested people to contact each other and opens up a whole new realm of social interaction.

Locative application

The site also contains a new locative application. Anywhere in the Netherlands it will show where Jewish citizens were living before deportation. Online information is linked to real places.

Sharing between sites

A third important feature of the website is it’s open connection with other websites. From the onset the Jewish Monument will be linked to the (new) cultural heritage site on corner stores (‘buurtwinkels’) in Amsterdam. With the help of the open-ci (a system developed by Mediamatic for sharing information between online websites) data from Jewish shopowners on the buurtwinkel-site can be accessed life in the Jewish monument.

This new project of Mediamatic and it’s possibilities for use in other heritage projects addresses several of the DISH 2009 conference topics:

· enhanced user involvement through a social plaform (strategy for collaboration)

· locative application linking historical data to places (strategy for unwired future)

· peer-to-peer connections between cultural heritage websites (strategy for innovation)

ArcheoNet Vlaanderen, Belgium

Speaker: Tijl Vereenooghe

This paper will investigate the potential of new web-based technologies for the dissemination of heritage. In 2006 the authors initiated www.erf-goed.be, a website that combines user generated content with a Flickr mash-up. The aim of the website is to build a complete inventory of protected heritage in Flanders and Brussels (Belgium). The project is based on the contribution of volunteers, and is a good example of the successful application of the new generation of on-line services, generally referred to as Web 2.0. In this paper we will argue that these services offer many interesting opportunities for the heritage sector, especially for bottom-up approaches.

Erf-goed.be was launched as a spin-off of the ArcheoNet project, the first news portal about archaeology and heritage in Flanders and Brussels. It is based on the Flickr API, the application of which proved to be very time-effective and didn't require too much programming knowledge, two important factors in the cultural heritage sector. By using existing technologies in a new and innovative way for the project, the authors chose for a rich user experience, based on open and easy-to-reuse data.

Everyone can contribute to the website by taking and sending in photographs of (immovable) heritage. The aim is to push forward the 'web presence' of the Flemish monuments and sites, and to help raising the public awareness for heritage.

More than 5000 images have been published already on the website, which keeps growing every day. The digital image base is considered as a dynamic entity: not only the result is important, but also the process of building up the inventory itself. As it was felt that the restricted use of copyright would prevent the (re)usability of the content, the authors chose to apply a Creative Commons license to the imagery on the website. The paper will also assess the use of CC licenses in heritage applications. Some other legal issues will be addressed as well.

Finally, the paper will include a brief comparison of the project Erf-goed.be with the initiatives of the Flemish government to publish their data about built heritage on the Internet. It will be concluded that governmental initiatives and 'grassroots' projects, such as Erf-goed.be, are surprisingly complimentary. The paper will briefly touch upon some other valuable Flemish projects, which contribute to the knowledge and dissemination of tangible and intangible heritage in Flanders.

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Tijl Vereenooghe (Bruges, 1979) graduated as an archaeologist at the Catholic University of Leuven in 2001. He worked as a researcher for the Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project (K.U.Leuven), where he was involved in several European projects in the field of computer application in archaeology. Since 2008 he works for Heemkunde Vlaanderen, the 'Federation of Associations of Local History in Flanders'. Since 2004 he also coordinates the Flemish ArcheoNet project, a voluntary initiative focusing on the dissemination of archaeology and heritage in Flanders.