Contents

---

G7 Multimedia Access to World Cultural Heritage
   World Access to Cultural Heritage: an Integrating Strategy
   G7 Meeting on "Multimedia Access to World Cultural Heritage" Pilot Project (Roma Sept 30th Oct 1st 1996)
   Comment on G7 Meeting 30 September - 1 October 1996

UNESCO & OCCAM

EC Multimedia Access to Europe's Cultural Heritage
   Memorandum of Understanding (Multi-Media Access to Europe's Cultural Heritage)

About Virtual Archaeology

Education Entertainment Applications

The Malaysian Esperiment

---

 

 

 

G7 Multimedia Access to World Cultural Heritage

---

World Access to Cultural Heritage: an Integrating Strategy

1. Introduction
2. Private Initiatives
3. Economic Opportunities
4. G-7 Project and Sub-projects
5. Conclusions.

1. Introduction

In 1995, the European Commission organized a first exhibition on the Information Society in Brussels (February) at which time eleven pilot projects were proposed. This suggestion was accepted at the World Summit in Halifax (June 1995) which led to a first demonstration of work in progress at the ISAD (Information Society and Developing Countries) Conference in Midrand (May 1996). For the ISAD Conference, four sections from Italy and Canada were chosen to represent pilot project five, Multimedia Access to World Cultural Heritage, which specifically addresses content found in museums and galleries :
Function

• Exhibit Organization City
• Capture 3-D Laser Camera National Research Council Ottawa Archive Florence, Leonardo Museum for History of Science Florence
• Display Tomb of Nefertari Infobyte, ENEL Rome
• Navigate SUMS SUMS Corp. Toronto

List of four sections of G7 pilot project five.
The objects from museums and galleries used in pilot project five require cross-references to books and articles in libraries and thus depend on pilot project four: Bibliotheca universalis. The combined contents of projects four and five are an important source for pilot project three: education. To achieve full access to projects three, four and five requires ATM and other high speed networks. Pilot project two which deals with global interoperability is thus vital for their success. So too is a knowledge of the global inventory of projects in pilot project one. Since the first five pilot projects are integrally connected, the country responsible for pilot project five needs a plan that embraces all of these. Indeed, a common framework for all eleven projects seems prudent.
Meanwhile, the European Commission (DGXIIIb), conscious of the need for an integrated approach to cultural heritage, has created a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). This has two main goals: first, to ensure that European content is seriously represented in the international networks and hence that 50% of the collections of member museums will be digitized by the year 2000; and second, to enlist the co-operation of the private sector in making this a reality. At the same time the memorandum serves as the museum community's equivalent of a union to assure that the combined strength of the individual players will not be intimidated in their dealings with large corporations. These recent developments of the European Commission and G7 promise to consolidate and give a common goal to a series of private initiatives which have occured sporadically in the past.

2. Private Initiatives

In the private sector, the major players in the realm of museums have shifted or rather realigned in the course of the past two decades. In the early 1980's most attention to cultural heritage was given by a few international publishers with interests in the whole range of media from pulp and paper, newspapers, journals and books to television and radio stations and satellites, notably Reed Publishers, Roy Thomson and Rupert Murdoch. These have since been joined by Berthelsmann and to a lesser extent Hachette.
Next came major computer companies who initially believed or at least hoped that they would be able to buy up the major collections, especially IBM, Digital and more recently Microsoft. Companies such as Siemens, Alcatel, Hewlett Packard and Apple have had some forays into this arena as have major electronics players such as Philips, Sony and NEC. The initiatives of large computer firms are not limited to owning materials. For instance, Digital is creating six "national" multimedia schools, one of them already working within the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Ottawa. These are being designed as service centres like those planned by Cività.
A next phase came when large entertainment companies began campaigns of buying up content and assumed that the same policies that they had applied to videos, television shows and cinema could be extended to the world of culture. One could see these developments as a natural extension of earlier publishing and media conglomerates. Those who assume that content is equivalent with Hollywood, overlook the enormity of cultural heritage that has been collected and restored in the course of several millenia.
More recently major telephone and cable companies have had the idea that since they are providing pipelines it would be convenient if they could also control the contents of the pipelines and provide a global interface which they could in turn sell around the world. The most obvious players in the United States are AT&T, Sprint and MCI; in Canada, Bell (Stentor) and Rogers Cable. Bell has created a company called Medialinx designed specifically to address content. France Telecom tried through Télésystèmes via RAMA and HOMER, to gain a serious hold on the cultural scene and continues its attempts on a more local scale via a recent proposal to link Sophia Antipolis and Florence. Deutsche Telekom, through DTBerkom, is attempting to enter this market via their SAM tourism initiative and their TerraVision produced in conjunction with Art + Com. Telecom Italia and Stet have their own approach through Cività. In the framework of their respective countries Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom and Telecom Italia may seem large. In a global context with players such as AT&T they need to work together if they are to survive. France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom have already made some preliminary links as have Deutsche Telekom and Bell Canada. Further grounds for co-operation in the context of maps GIS and GPS are outlined below.
Since hydro companies own rights of way and pipelines that could also be used for these purposes, their entry into the field of content, especially entertainment and culture is already being anticipated by the discerning. This is the more predictable because hydro companies traditionally have major GIS databases which they use for their power stations, and power lines. These databases are also very relevant for tourism and the environment.
In addition to the very large business concerns there have been some efforts of smaller consortia linked more closely with the museum world to offer their own solutions. The EVA cluster in London with links to Florence, Berlin etc. represents one of these efforts. The AMUSE project which links Canada, Britain and France is another. This grew partly out of initiatives of ICP who organized the first Information Society Exhibition in Brussels (February 1995).

3. Economic Opportunities

The economic opportunities linked with museums and galleries are largely indirect. Places with major galleries and museums bring tourism which encourages the economy through hotels, restaurants, and entertainment. While it is generally agreed that access to basic level images of the great collections should be free of charge, new economic opportunities are posed by at least six major domains: exhibitions, publications, entertainment, souvenirs, advertising and education.
Exhibitions
With the advent of electronic networks new kinds of exhibitions are possible. There might be sample images of the exhibitions or even thumbnail versions of the entire exhibition which are free, while higher resolution versions would be charged accordingly. These exhibitions will entail different kinds of reconstructions:
a) those which bring together rare pieces, which one could not move: e.g. the complete works of major artists such as Raphael or various examples of mayor paintings such as Leonardo's Last Supper in Milan, Tongerloo, London etc.
b) places which are too sensitive to sustain large crowds of visitors such as the Tomb of Nefertari or the cave at Lascaux.
c) places and objects which have become ruins such as the Roman Forum, or a statue such as the Laoköon concerning the original state of which there are a series of competing theories.
d) different phases of historical towns such as Siena, major religious sites such as the Vatican which are continually being modified or cathedrals which took centuries to complete.
e) original sites and contexts of objects now in museums, e.g. the original location of the Elgin Marbles (London, British Museum) on the Parthenon (Athens, Acropolis).
These new electronic networks also permit new, virtual or rather imaginary museums which:
a) trace the growth and dispersal of private collections such that one can see the different settings of paintings and other works of art.
b) study the growth of public collections such as the Louvre in order that one can study the changing history of taste.
c) create imaginary collections which combine all the paintings by an artist such as Botticelli or Leonardo in a given electronic space.
Publications
Persons have traditionally paid and will continue to pay for "books", i.e. systematic arrangements of images on a given artist or a theme such as landscape. The European Commission has new copyright policies with respect to such sequences and it may well be that this becomes one of the most important solutions to the copyright fears, namely, anyone is allowed to print an individual page, but one pays to download a series of images on a topic or to create a container, tomorrow's equivalent of a CD-ROM or a CD-I. A coherent strategy in this area will mean new roles for publishing.
In the past decades, especially in Germany and Italy, exhibition catalogues have evolved from brief descriptions to enormous scholarly monographs which are frequently only available at the exhibition site. Such catalogues could be made available in electronic versions on the Internet. Indeed, having access to them might be included as part of the online visit to the exhibition. Persons wishing to print individual pages from such a catalogue would be free to do so, but would pay a fee to print a full version of the catalogue. This fee would vary with the different resolutions of text and images, such that one could have a copy resembling a xerox or a luxury book version. Subsets of the catalogue, showing only highlights might also be offered. After an exhibition has finished at a given museum, the contents could be placed on a reference server. In this way catalogues would not go out of print, but storage costs might be reflected in the costs of printing such works.
Entertainment
Each of these new types of exhibitions offers new entertainment possibilities. The Japanese Goto Optical Corporation has developed new kinds of projectors that entail transforming a planetarium-like space into what they call a Virtuarium. This offers a new type of immersion, which will go even further than the latest IMAX theatres. In the short term this could become a new version of the panorama fashion which swept throughout Europe in the late eighteenth century. In the near future these immersive technologies, combined with the emerging avatar technologies could lead to virtual Roman circuses, interactive virtual reconstructions of major battles and great events. Because they are in electronic form it may well prove the case that the greatest demand for these possibilities is quite distant from the original location. Persons in Rome may have little interest in seeing virtual coliseums. Persons on other continents may be fascinated. By contrast persons in Rome might be more attracted by distant sites: a virtual tour of the Forbidden City in Beijing, the temple at Lhasa or Anghor Vat. As these sequences become more elaborate they will serve as footage for films and there will probably be new interactive films that combine these reconstructions in new ways.
These materials will also offer new resources for games. Educational CD-ROM's such as Where in the World is Carmen Santiago? could be adapted to include materials from real museums and galleries. Films such as Topkapi could be transformed into interactive adventure games. Games of Dungeons and Dragons could have materials from mediaeval architecture, particularly crusader castles. While extreme versions of edu-tainment should be left to others, Europe should develop its own take on this approach.
Souvenirs
Whether the tour is real or virtual, tourists traditionally buy souvenirs. These include reproductions in print as postcards and posters which will be available at centres throughout the world. So tourists planning to go to the Uffizi can buy souvenirs before, during or after the visit. Given new developments in stereolithography images taken by the Canadian NRC's laser camera can be used to produce sculpture on demand. Since scale is technically not a problem these models can entail a whole range of sizes from tiny statuettes of three centimeters to full scale reproductions of statues such as Michelangelo's David. Special reproduction facilities for such large scale objects would be available in local multimedia service centres, which will obviate the costs of shipping across oceans these modern equivalents of plaster casts.
Advertising
Advertising entails many applications. Persons wishing to use a painting such as Leonardo's Mona Lisa in print or television would pay a tariff based on the number of magazines or books in which it appears, the number of times it appears on a programme, at what time, how wide is the distribution etc. internet poses more complex applications.
One current trend is to sell companies space on one's homepage. This has flaws. Homepages typically function as tables of contents. As search mechanisms improve these will increasingly go straight to the subject desired rather than to the sites in between. On the other hand, if advertisements clutter up the end target sites they will distract the user from the subject for which they are searching. So we need new formulae for advertising electronically.
Education
Education entails the most complex application of these new developments. While commercial interests are inevitably a factor here as well, the predominant criteria for use must remain academic validity and will require government sponsorship. Materials will need to be adapted for different levels of education. Historical and cultural aspects of knowledge will be important.

4. G-7 Project and Subprojects

The initial G-7 pilot project, as shown in Midrand (May 1996), addressed four basic issues: how to capture, archive, display and navigate through museum materials (cf. fig. 1). There follow some thoughts as to how these might be expanded, as well as comments about a fifth issue, namely, networks.
Capture
Capture entails at least three dimensions: imaging devices, cataloging standards, and comparative classifications. Imaging devices pose the same problem as computers. Needs range from high end to everyday and at present no single technology solves all the problems. The centres would thus be wise to show a series of alternative solutions. At the high end one would want to show Canada's NRC camera and the Vasari scanner. At the medium range one would wish to show the Italian CNR's portable suitcase camera.
The Ministry of Cultural Heritage (Beni Culturali) has very rightly stressed the importance of automated cataloging systems (Mercurio) giving due attention to problems of certification of the facts entered and the standardization of names. While all this is as fundamental as it is excellent, it will be necessary to co-ordinate these Italian efforts more closely with parallel efforts elsewhere in the world such as the Marburg Archive, the Allgemeine Künstler Lexikon (Leipzig), IFLA, RLIN, OCLC, and with G-7's pilot project four on libraries which is co-ordinating the national catalogues of five countries (Belgium, England, France, Portugal and Spain), without Italy so far. In these efforts at standardization due attention to variant names is necessary. It is also important to create links between these contents and be ensured that they are using the technologies listed in the global inventory (pilot project one) and the latest standards in interoperability (pilot project two). Individual committees can deal with standardization of author names, subjects, and place names.
Related to these questions of cataloging are problems of comparative classification: an object listed somewhere in the Library of Congress may appear somewhere very different in other systems. Pilot project five, in conjunction with three and the other pilot projects should have a section working on correlation of these various systems. One would begin with the two major visual classification systems (Iconclass and the Art and Architectural Thesaurus), expand to include Library of Congress, Dewey, Göttingen and Ranganathan. Some 950 relevant classification systems have been identified. At the Johanneum Research Centre in Graz, important work is being done on personal and local thesaurus systems such that these can be co-ordinated within the framework of networks.
Archive
The Museum for the History of Science in Florence was rightly chosen as an example of this area for the ISAD conference because it illustrates complex links among 1) museum objects; 2) library manuscripts and books which contain drawings and descriptions of these objects; 3) physical models of the objects and 4) new technologies which offer electronic reconstructions of these same objects. The centres would make this material accessible on-line over ATM. Related material in other collections (e.g. Pavia) would be added subsequently.
Closely related to problems of archiving are problems of storage which can also be seen as a version of the publication problem: having gathered the material how does the user keep it? Here devices such as CD-ROM, and re-writeable CD-I's would be featured. Since Philips has been a pioneer in this field through their publication of the contents of the Musées Nationaux de la France, it will be valuable to make them a member of a French or Dutch version of the Cività consortium.
Display
As in the case of computers and imaging techniques, the centres should show the whole range of display techniques including virtual reality, HDTV, monitors, and light boards. In terms of virtual reality one would begin with the Infobyte examples, IBM examples (Cluny, Frauenkiche) and those of the GMD (Schloss Birlinghoven). Connections with virtual sets of the DVP project and the Virtuarium of Goto Optical could be included. In terms of HDTV (High Definition Television) one would include Japanese examples with the Edo Museum and others as they become available. With respect to light boards, the relative value of these methods could be the subject of experiments with groups of students who come to the centres. As the technology develops the results can be shown over ATM in school auditoria directly. These problems could serve as a starting point for concrete links with education as the scope of G7 pilot project three expands.
Navigate
A prototype of SUMS (System for Universal Media Searching) was shown at the ISAD Conference (Midrand) and needs to be developed. Maps are one aspect of this interface that requires an integration of various technologies. Italian Telecom has already produced a map of Italy in its bid for global emergency (G-7 pilot project seven). This map, combined with the information available in ENEL's Ipermappa and the methods developed by DTBerkom and Art+Com in Terravision can become a starting point for a geographic approach to pilot project five and serve as one of the integrating features for all the pilot projects. Using the SUMS interface one would begin by determining the purpose or scope of one's search. If the scope is museums: the map will show museums, which will also be relevant for tourism. If one's scope is business, the map will show the location of all SME's etc. If one's scope is health one will get a list of all hospitals, doctors etc. Besides its applications to all of the G7 pilot projects, this approach can transform present day notions of yellow pages and our approach to knowledge in general.
This framework would be extended to include: GIS (Geographical Information Systems), AM/FM (Area Management/Facilities Management), GPS (Global Positioning Systems). As a result satellite images, maps (present and historical), and CAD versions of the world could be seamlessly linked, thus providing a conceptual framework for reconstructions such as the Cathedral of Florence by the History of Science Museum (Florence). In addition to obvious implications for tourism, this approach has important implications for traffic, for understanding of the environment and education (geography, history, social studies, etc.). Extended to include the sea this project will dovetail in turn with maritime information systems (pilot project eleven). The creation of such a multilayered map will include historical versions. Since the Vatican also contains the famous corridor with detailed maps of the whole of Italy, a future project of ENEL-Infobyte can allow the user to choose any place, go through to earlier maps and then fly over it in virtual reality. Simpler versions as printed maps will be available on lower-end systems. This map approach linked with the SUMS interface can become a front-end for all of the eleven pilot projects of G7, which would require a co-ordinating committee that concerns itself with liaison to the efforts of the European Commission.
Networks
To function properly complex networks linking museums and other institutions are needed. This aspect of pilot project five requires co-ordination with global interoperability (pilot project two) for which Canada is the lead country. Canada already has an operating nationwide ATM network and has demonstrated its capacity to Germany and Belgium in real time ATM experiments. It is therefore advisable for Italy (as project five) to co-operate with Canada (as project two), all the more so because there would never be a question of Canada competing with Italy in terms of historical cultural content.
The challenge is to produce a framework that allows Italy to develop electronic forms of its cultural heritage and make that available. A framework for this and the development of an ATM network in Italy linked with the rest of the world has already been outlined by the Cività group. The Cività concept of a systematic approach by a consortium of companies is useful and probably necessary. However if this is done purely on a national scale there will be international criticism for trying to do cultural imperialism in electronic form. Therefore, from the outset, there should be accords with companies in other countries such that they can develop complementary consortia for their own country. Since France is the other partner country in world heritage (pilot project five) and because it is also responsible for libraries (pilot project four), France is an obvious candidate to create its own version of Cività, which will assure that the strong independent tradition of that country with respect to cultural heritage be maintained.
Assuming the links between pilot projects five and two outlined above, Canada is another obvious candidate. Italy's links between STET and Italian Telecom have some parallels with Canada's Stentor and Bell. There are links in varying degrees between these telcos and IBM in both countries. Thus a Canadian equivalent of Cività would be very feasible. Given a tradition of links between Canada and France through the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN) which have been strengthened through the Canada-France accord, a framework for an Italy-France-Canada project effectively exists. Canada's presence would help assure that this triumvirate will become a concrete starting point for global and universal participation.
As a proof of concept there will need to be ongoing ATM experiments using actual content. It is suggested that there might initially be three places linked by high speed networks: Rome, Paris, and Toronto soon followed by Berlin, London, Tokyo and Washington. Experiments would start at 35Mb/second and move upwards through OC3-12 and beyond as the technology evolves. Each of these cities would have a new kind of permanent exhibition space which would be open to the public at certain times and available for groups. Connected with these exhibition centres would be new technologies for publication (in print, CD-ROM, CD-I, videotape etc.) such that they are working models for the service centres envisaged by Cività. These centres will raise awareness among the press, politicians, business community and the general public about what exists and is available today. This awareness will inspire the enthusiasm that will lead to new markets.
In order to demonstrate interoperability, the centres must show alternative technologies in terms of computers. On the high end they might begin with the ENEL-Infobyte materials, particularly the Vatican, Colloseum and Nefertari on an SGI platform and Pompeii, Cluny and the Frauenkirche on an IBM platform. The ENEL-Infobyte Vatican project presently includes Saint Peters Basilica and will soon include Raphael's Stanze. If this is extended to include the library and museum, then one could go seamlessly from ENEL-Infobyte walkthroughs in virtual reality to the library and then read the full contents of books scanned in through the IBM Vatican library project.
At the medium level these centres might show the Vectar restoration material connected with the Church of San Francesco in Arezzo on a Sun platform. On a lower level they might show the Vectar reconstruction of Florence on an HP and other platforms. This selection would soon be extended to include examples from France (INRIA and Musées Nationaux de la France), Canada (Museum of Civilization), Africa (CAMA), Germany (Marburg Archive), Netherlands (Iconclass).
In addition to displaying contents, the ATM exhibitions at the centres (Rome, Paris, Toronto etc.) will serve as on-line high speed web-sites demonstrating the comparative virtues of alternative hardware and software solutions, thus dovetailing with the aims of global interoperability and at the same time allowing the major players to experiment with a new kind of advertising which entails real content rather than empty statistics about processor speed and capacity. The centres will thus be a new kind of showroom where each company shows its latest products as part of its marketing strategy. Since each of the players is contributing in their own interests no single person or body will be faced with the otherwise prohibitive costs of paying for constantly changing new technologies. As the value of this approach is confirmed in the original centres, the principles can then be extended step by step (e.g. Florence, Venice, Milan, Naples in Italy; Lyon, Sophia Antipolis, Bordeaux in France; Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary in Canada etc.). Having proved the principle for the initial countries, one will extend the principle to all others with a sufficient infrastructure to create their own consortia.
To prove interoperability in the full sense, the G7 pilot project needs to focus on a a few protoypes for a global approach to cultural heritage. Some examples are listed below:
a) Artists
Leonardo da Vinci offers an excellent choice. He is at once uniquely Italian and yet global in his appeal. His work covers the whole spectrum of culture from paintings and drawings to manuscripts, science, medicine, and instruments. His works are scattered throughout the world. Any on-line demonstration of how these can be connected will be immensely impressive. It will also help set up a working set of standards for the problems of how to capture, archive, display and navigate through material which can readily be extended to other artists, scientists, institutions, objects etc. Picasso has been suggested by the French as another obvious choice. Born in Spain, active in Paris, and famous worldwide he is another individual whose work has had a truly international impact.
b) Museums
Given that all the works of the Uffizi exist in digital form at various levels of resolution, it would make sense to start with this and then add the national galleries of the other G7 countries, London, Ottawa, Washington, etc.
c) Styles
The excellent project of INRIA on Art Deco can serve as a point of departure. this is particularly instructive because it not only illustrates the use of a style in one city but also traces the spread of this style throughout different regions and countries.
d) Non-Western Art
To be truly international, G7 must establish that it is concerned with more than European art or even Western art in general. Obvious examples are the CAMA network of (South) African art (on an SGI platform) and materials from the Edo Museum in Tokyo (on an IBM platform).
e) Different Categories of Art
In preparing its MOU the European Commission has identified seven different kinds of museums Fig. 2).

a) Fine Art
b) Natural history
c) Archeology
d) Modern Art
e) Science
f) Maritime
g) Ethnographic and Other Seven categories of museums identified by the European Commission in terms of content.
The Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage (Beni Culturali) has already identified over thirty projects (shown at Mediartech in Florence, June 1996). Ideally these could be used as a point of departure for dealing with these themes. Co-ordination with the European Commission's projects would then ensure that the full range of cultural heritage is reflected within pliot project five.
As part of the exercise standardised entry templates will be developed and made available within the SUMS software. There will also be an inventory of all hardware, software and connectivity standards being used. Thereafter, any museum, gallery or other institution can enter their contents as they wish, provided they align them with the pilot projects standards, protocols and criteria. To prepare the way for these, subprojects will deal with the individual problems to capture, catalogue, archive and navigate in greater detail.

5. Conclusions

At present Italy is officially involved in only one of the eleven pilot projects of G7. As noted above this theme of cultural heritage is centrally important because it is intimately connected with pilot projects four and three (libraries and education), brings into play pilot projects one and two (global inventory and global interoperability), and has implications for practically all of the projects. Given an integrating strategy such as the one here outlined Italy has a chance to become a key player in these developments. This will have enormous economic implications for tourism, publishing, education and the whole of what is being called the knowledge economy. No single country can cover all aspects of the challenge. If countries such as Italy, France and Canada do not take a lead, they will be led. In the spirit of Dumas' Three Musketeers, they need to work: "All for one and one for all". Only thus will the dreams of the G7 projects lead to a true information society.

 

 

G7 Meeting on "Multimedia Access to World Cultural Heritage" Pilot Project (Roma Sept 30^th Oct 1^st 1996)

At the Rome meeting of 30 September and 1 October 1996 the G7 Representatives took stock of recent multimedia developments in the field of cultural heritage and noted the following.

• A growing number of cultural bodies (including museums, galleries and associated agencies) are exploiting telecommunication networks;
• National and international projects in the field are in progress or in the process of being initiated;
• The Member States of the European Union have adopted a set of principles and procedural instruments, enshrined in a Charter and a Memorandum of Understanding, to foster co-operation among the IR cultural institutions as well as between these institutions and interested industries for the enhancement of cultural heritage;
• The production and promotion of relevant standards by the International Documentation Committee of International Council of Museums (ICOM).

Taking account of these developments, together with the G7 guidelines on the Global Information Society, and in particular those relating to the Pilot Project "Multimedia Access to the World Cultural Heritage", the Rome meeting agreed to the following.

• The setting up of four working groups focusing on:
  1. Presentation of Cultural Heritage and Dissemination of Information
     Qaulity standards for exploitation of the cultural heritagte, standards for cataloguing and digitization systems, standards for multilingual communications, dictionaries and thesauri;
  2. Legal and fair use issue
     Intellectual property and copyright, legal and fair use issues, preservation and security of information;
  3. Technological Research and Development
     Standards for interoperability systems and multimedia technology applications, telecommunication networks, user interfaces, research tools and network nevigation;
  4. Testing and Application
     Application in the field of protection and management of the cultural heritage, including identification of data-entry priorities, applications in education and training, application in the field of cultural tourism and entertainment, requirements of different types of users.
• Each working group will be led by a co-ordinator whose task it will be to facilitate communication between the G7 partners and complete first intermediate reports by the end of March 1997, in preparation for the next G7 Pilot Project plenary meeting.

These areas are respectively assigned to UK (1) USA and CANADA (2) France (3) and Italy (4) as the co-ordinators. They will take into account concurrent work already being carried out in different fora, disseminating the emerging information among the seven participants in the Pilot Project.
It is intended that it remains a progressive initiative aimed at meeting a rapidly changing technological environment, diversified market and industrial objectives, as well as cultural requirements still being fully assessed. It is further intended that the Project be flexible, also in order to facilitate the interaction between Eastern and Western cultures, especially in technical issues, and prepare the ground for a possible involvement of partners from other parts of the world, thus stimulating the creation of innovative tools.
The Pilot Project allows opportunities to examine traditional approaches to systems interoperability issues, now mainly based upon setting catalogue and technical standards and matching the different languages (such as thesauri, dictionaries and alia).
In this context, the scope of the Pilot Project is to be considered as a forum for the exchange of new ideas and action in the longer term. It should encompass high cultural quality initiatives and products, aimed at fostering a better education of the general public, particularly youth, and more effective training of professionals.

To better assist these goals it was agreed that an Internet Web Server dedicated to the Project is developed with the following specific objectives:

• a dynamic description of the Project as well as its organizational structure;
• a yearly update of the participants and of all the informative resources (such as thesauri, dictionaries and alia);
• a charter of principles, laying down the rules of the game for participants;
• a permanent forum dealing with the Project’s development, areas of concern and procedures for communication among the participants;
• a virtual demonstration of the selected prototype projects and of all the interesting products and proposals.

It is expected that in future the Web server may be also employed for more specific tasks: the organisation of the cultural heritage information repository for example.
A drafting committee composed of Italy and France is established with the task of devising the procedures required for the management of the server. It will report to the participants by the end of this year, with the view of initiating the operations of the Web server early in 1997.

The above schedule and measures will assist the advancement of the activities originally considered in phase 1 of the Project, making it possible to evaluate further specific objectives to be pursued in the follow up.
How to involve private partners more intimately in future developments of the Pilot Project;
how to adjust it progressively to highly changeable environment;
how to mobilise public and private financial resources that may appear to be necessary for the further progress of the Pilot Project.
All the above are to be analysed in depth within this framework.

Comment on G7 Meeting 30 September – 1 October 1996

The four groups of work coordinated by the UK, USA, Canada, France and Italy mark an important step forward because they include other countries in the activities. Some comment re: each of the follow.

Presentation of Cultural Heritage and dissemination of Information (UK)

The Museum Documentation Association (MDA) in the UK is an excellent body and will assure that the museum standards will not be limited to those of Italian catalogues. The MDA has significant links with Getty, CHIN, and through VASARI has important links to the Louvre and some Europeans projects. It is important that the standards of other bodies be integrated (please see attached list). Also important is coordination with the committees linked with the EC’s (DGXIIIb) work on the Memorandum of Understanding and with the efforts of G7 pilot project 4. Thus far no Germans are represented. the Marburg Archive has been working at standards for German museums for the past decades and should also be included, as should a representative from Japan. The committee for group one might include one member from each of the above bodies to ensure that the standards reflect an international view rather than a strictly British viewpoint.

Legal and Fair Use Issues (USA and Canada)

Canada has been doing considerable work in this area so their inclusion provides a good balance to the US view. It is important in this section to ensure input from representatives from DGXIII’s committees on copyright to ensure that the European connection is properly given (cfr. htp://elaine.crcg.edu/~jzhao/copyright.html). Again the specific presence of Germany which has always been a champion of copyright in book publishing (e.g. VG Wort, Munich) and Japan is important.

Technological Reearch and Development (France)

France is an important figure in interoperability. Since Canada is in charge of pilot project 2, on global interoperability, the JAMES project, it is important to have Canada actively included in this section to provide some buffers between the Telecoms of France Germany and Italy.

Testing and Application (Italy)

Italy has already demonstrated the excellence of two of its leading projects at ISAD (Midrand) and a series of others at MediArTech (Florence). It is very important that the practical testing and application include projects of other countries as well. The idea of a permanent ATM showcase linking major cities such as Rome, Berlin, Paris, London and Toronto, being explored by John Picard, is an excellent one all the more so because it would provide a context for the integration of pilot projects 2,3,4, and 5.

American Society for Information Science	(ASIS)
Canadian Heritage Information Network	(CHIN)
Consortium for the Interchange of Museums Information	(CIMI)
Guide to Open Systems Specifications     Information Structure and Representation     Library Applications	(GOSS)
Iconclass (Utrecht)
International Federation for Information and Documentation	(FID)
International Committee on Museums	(ICOM)
Centre International puor la Documentation	(CIDOC)
International Standards Organization     Information and Documentation     Presentation, Identification and Description of Documents Library of Congress	(ISO/TC46/SC9)
Z39.50 (including the GIS protocol being developed at Almaden) Museum Computer Network

UNESCO & OCCAM

---

The development of actions in the field of culture is the main objective of UNESCO the "cultural" part of UNO, this section will outline the specific commitment of this organisation and related one like OCCAM.
Whose heritage?
By banishing the notions of time and space, the fabulous strides made by the means of transport and communication have greatly contributed to the recognition by the vast majority of the planet’s inhabitants that, for all its diversity, humanity is one and its common heritage is in jeopardy. In the course of our travels and through the medium of television, we are coming increasingly to realize what damage is being done to the artistic masterpieces of the past and to natural sites, and how necessary it is to safeguard this heritage not only for ourselves but also for future generations.  It is by ensuring continuity between past and present that we shall have the best chance of shaping the future. Memory is an essential factor in human creativity. (Federico Mayor - Memory of the Future, Paris 1994 - extract)

Our Common Heritage

The Grand Canyon retraces two billion years of the earth's history. The Galapagos Islands inspired Charles Darwin in his theory of evolution. Moenjodaro tells the story of an ancient civilization, Völklingen Ironworks the one of industrialization. The Island of Gorée is a reminder of slavery, the Citadel of Haiti a symbol of liberty, built by slaves who had gained their freedom. All these sites are so diverse, yet, what do they have in common?
These cultural and natural sites constitute, together with many others, a common heritage, to be treasured as unique testimonies to an enduring past. Their disappearance would be an irreparable loss for each and every one of us. And yet, most are threatened, particularly in present times. The preservation of this common heritage concerns us all.
That is the objective of the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. This international agreement, signed to date by more than 145 States Parties, was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO in 1972. Its primary mission is to define and conserve the world's heritage, by drawing up a list of sites whose outstanding values should be preserved for all humanity and to ensure their protection through a closer co-operation among nations.
By signing the Convention, each country pledges to conserve the sites situated on its territory, some of which may be recognized as World Heritage. Their preservation for future generations then becomes a responsibility shared by the international community as a whole.
The Convention's focus on both cultural and natural heritage makes it a unique legal instrument. This is expressed in the World Heritage emblem, which is round, like the world, but at the same time it is a symbol of protection. The central square is a form created by man and the circle represents nature, the two being intimately linked

The World Heritage Committee

Under the Convention, the World Heritage Committee is the statutory body responsible for decision-making in the following areas:

• selecting new sites for the World Heritage List from among the cultural and natural properties nominated by the different countries. The Committee is assisted by two international non-governmental organizations, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and the World Conservation Union (IUCN) which are responsible for the expert evaluation of each proposal; furthermore the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM), an intergovernmental organization, advises the Committee on questions of monument restoration and training.
• protecting the sites on the List by allocating resources of the World Heritage Fund and determining the technical and financial aid to be given to the sites in need.

The Committee consists of representatives from 21 States Parties, elected by the General Assembly of the States Parties to the Convention.

Defining The World Heritage

The World Heritage List grows longer every year as new nominations are accepted by the Committee and more countries sign the Convention.
Drawing up the List presents a difficult challenge: what is it that constitutes the outstanding universal value of a cultural or natural treasure?
To be included on the World Heritage List, a site must satisfy the selection criteria adopted by the Committee. A cultural monument could, for example, be a masterpiece of creative genius, or have exerted great architectural influence, or be associated with ideas or beliefs of universal significance, or it may be an outstanding example of a traditional way of life that represents a certain culture.
A natural site may exemplify major stages of the earth's history, or represent ongoing ecological and biological processes, or contain the natural habitats of endangered animals, or it may be a scene of exceptional beauty.
When a site on the List is seriously endangered, it may be inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger which entitles it to special attention and international assistance.

The World Heritage Fund

The World Heritage Convention establishes a World Heritage Fund: for the conservation of the cultural and natural sites on the List. These monies are spent on various kinds of aid and technical co-operation: expert studies to determine and fight the causes of deterioration or to plan conservation measures, training of local specialists in conservation or renovation techniques, supplying equipment for the protection of a natural park or to restore a monument, etc.
The World Heritage Fund is replenished from different sources:
obligatory contributions from States Parties to the Convention which are fixed at no more than 1% of their contribution to the budget of UNESCO; voluntary contributions from States, donations from institutions or private individuals, or earnings from national or international promotional activities.
The Unesco World Heritage Centre
UNESCO's World Heritage Centre, assures the day-to-day management of the Convention. It organizes the statutory meetings forseen under the World Heritage Convention, the biennial General Assembly of States Parties, the annual meetings of the World Heritage Committee, and the meetings of the Bureau. Upon request by a State Party, the Centre organizes assistance in preparing indicative lists and nominations for the World Heritage List; it mobilizes international assistance, organizes training courses, and emergency assistance when a site is threatened. The Centre has another important task: upon request by States Parties, it assists in monitoring activities and the preparation of reports on the state of conservation of World Heritage properties. These reports may also be received by the Advisory bodies, synthesized by the Centre, and brought to the attention of the World Heritage statutory organs.
Other tasks of the Centre include arranging technical seminars and workshops, updating the World Heritage List and database, developing teaching materials to raise awareness of the World Heritage concept, and keeping the public informed of World Heritage issues. The Centre also keeps the records of the statutory organs and documents World Heritage. With the multi-media industry, it works to produce World Heritage documentary and educational films, CD-ROMs, books, and other material. (http://www.unesco.org/whc/intro-en.htm)

OCCAM (Osservatorio per la Comunicazione Culturale ed Audiovisiva nel Mediterraneo)

The OCCAM has long term objectives: to create in Milan an Institution with a world wide perspective that will act to collect, distribute and support new technologies in the field of communications to fully exploit the economic and cultural opportunities generated by the unified market of television, cinema, computer and telecommunications.
To orient the above mentioned technologies towards objectives of cultural and humanistic enrichment, for some countries of the Mediterranean area, towards a process of democratization and of culture and peace.
To co-operate
Short term objectives: to create a telecommunications network in the Mediterranean Area built on a central hub installed in the OCCAM office of Milan and on Regional Centres located in various Mediterranean Countries, that have already expressed their interest, oriented towards the suppliers of multimedia products and contents.
To create a centre of research, evaluation and test of the new developments in the various areas of multimedia applications, both under the technological and the contents standpoints To generate a Data Base that will be used a basic tour of work that will be.

EC Multimedia Access to Europe’s Cultural Heritage

---

Memorandum of Understanding (Multi-Media Access to Europe’s Cultural Heritage)
This project, originally started in Florence in 1996, is a fundamental step in the development of multimedia access to Europe’s Cultural Heritage. The document is a milestone in the development of applications devoted to artworks. Guidelines for museums and galleries, companies and research centers are clearly defined.
Four groups of interested parties are:
Museums and Galleries, Government and Regional Government Organizations, Industry (Communications Service/Software Companies, Telecom/ CATV Operators, Telecom Equipment Companies, New Media Industry), Non Governmental Organisations.

Fallout of MoU are four Working Groups: WG 1 Standards and protocols for interoperability WG2 Public Awareness, Audiences & Markets WD3 Ownership and Protection of Intellectual Property Rights WG4 Priority in Digitalisation.
Following the general structure offered by MoU Working Groups the following section contains an overview of the state of art in each of the four fields.

Standards and protocols for interoperability
On the occasion of the meeting held in Rome on 24 October 96 the working group one agreed to: sub groups were set up to examine the different areas of standardisation in more detail and to identify during the tasks which could be achieved by the Working Group with minimal cost, in addition to those tasks which would require funding.
The subgroups were as follows:

• Content standards
• Access & Development standards
• Communication standards

The subgroups reported back as follows:

Content standards subgroup

• It was noted that the scope of this area was extremely large
• Work not requiring additional support: data standards and Vocabularies – a survey of existing known standards would be carried out by Working Group and information & URL’s would be posted on the Web site by November 4^th.
• Digitisation standards – information would be gathered on this by December for submission to the Web site.
• Work requiring additional support : The research and documentation of guidelines for the applications of the standards. Specific projects such as the identification and applications of multi-lingual thesaury (listed in the terms of reference of the Libraries and Archives Working Group but relevant here) should take account of existing project already under way in the EC and beyond.

Access and Development Subgroup

• User interface standards were heavily audience dependent; a single set of content could have several interfaces depending on the user. The identification of standards in this area should take account of the work done by Working Group 2 (Audiences and Markets)
• Charging – investigation of this area should be allow for the fact that a superficial layer of access might be free whereas providing higher quality & in-depth content might require integration with charging mechanism.
• Standards supporting the linking of etherogeneus databases should be addressed.
• Standards for software supporting communications between clients and servers shoild be addressed

Communication subgroup

• Work not requiring additional support: it was agreed that as other specialist groups had addressed low level technical communications protocols with this work should be taken account of. This group would identify the various higher/level protocols available and identify those most appropriate to multimedia
• Works requiring additional support: The full description and guidelines for the application of these protocols would require resources to support.

Public Awareness, Audiences & Markets

An abstract of the last report of the WG 2 is summarised in the following part of the chapter. In December 1996, the Working Group decided to carry out a survey of all the Museums and Galleries who had signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). The survey would focus on the Museums’ experience with WWW sites, CD Roms, and other multi-media product and services. Although it does not expressly address educational multimedia needs and opportunities, it nonetheless offers some insight as how the Museums and Galleries community are addressing these. A bilingual questionnaire (in English and in French) was developed and sent out to the MoU signatories with a covering letter and a return envelope, at the beginning of January 1997. The response to the questionnaire by the end of February was disappointing, especially from Italy, France, Greece, and Spain. Only seventy-nine of the three hundred and twenty one Museums and Galleries which signed the MoU (25%) replied to the Questionnaire. The low response rate to the questionnaire makes it difficult to offer either sound generalisations about the use of multi-media products and services amongst those Museums which have signed the MoU, or the emphasis they place on educational material. However, a number of limited conclusions can be drawn from responses received to date.

Concerning WWW Sites

• most Museums will have WWW sites by the end of 1997-06-23 the most featured categories of information on these sites are visitors information, location and opening times; exhibition information, and collection details;
• information on Museums Shops is being included in WWW sites;
• few Museums see providing educational material as being one of the most important categories of information on their sites;
• few Museums have any data on the use of their WWW sites. Some sites are used very little (less than 350 hits/month), others a great deal (between 40.000 and 145.000 hits/month). Little is known about categories of users;
• on balance, Museums evaluate their WWW sites positively, but not necessarily enthusiastically. Half of thm are unable to evaluate their sites at all.

Concerning CD Roms

• few Museums publish these at the moment. More intend to do so in the next two years;
• there are "blockbusters" (the National Gallery reporting sales of 55.000 for one title), and "best-sellers" but many CD Roms achieve far lower sales;
• they are mainly aimed at the educational and cultural markets, and sold through Museums Shops, on-line, and through publishers’ catalogues;
• there is a tendency for Museums to publish CD Roms in English as well as their own language;
• the number of CD Rom titles aimed at the educational sector will increase in the coming years. Multi media publishers see education as a major growth market.

Concerning Other Multi-media Products and Services

• videos are popular amongst Museums
• so too are in-museum information kiosks, interactive screens, and in-gallery screen information;
• few Museums are involved in audio or audio-visual guides.

These conclusions must be treated with caution. They shed some light on developments in Europe’s Museums, but not capture the reality of a complex and changing situation.
More research is required into this subject. In particular we need more information about:

• how and why Museums develop and market multi-media products and services;
• how they address and evaluate their existing and future audiences, especially in the educational sector;
• how preferential access to public cultural heritage collections can be made available over electronic networks to schools, higher education establishments, research institutions and public libraries;
• how multi-media cultural heritage material can be adapted to school and higher education curriculum requirements and to continous education and lifelong learning needs.

Ownership and Protection of Intellectual Property Rights

This chapter will give a rough idea of IPR management both from the European and American point of view; it consists of the following sections:

1. Introduction
2. The Nature of Copyright
3. The Museum as Owner
4. Museum as User of Copyright Material
5. Intellectual Property Laws
6. New Regulation Initiatives
7. Digital Uncertainties
8. Image Scanning and Image Security

1. Introduction

Using cultural materials in interactive multimedia requires acknowledgement and/or negotiation of new intellectual property rights. As cultural information has no geographical borders, legislation and agreements must be developed in the international social and legal context. The differences in national copyright law are currently a barrier to the development and distribution of multimedia products.
What is worth copying, is probably worth protecting.
In most cases, museums want to distribute images and text related to their collections as part of their educational mission of making their collections physically and intellectually accessible. Nevertheless, they are concerned that, in order to maintain the aesthetic integrity of the original work of art they should exercise control over the dissemination and quality of this material. Licensing rights and reproduction fees are also an important economic asset to most museums. Every museum will have to develop policies and expertise in the implications of digital publishing (joint ventures, going it alone etc.), just as they have done with print, slides, film and video.

2.The Nature of Copyright

Copyright protects certain rights inherent in a creative work.
The copyright owner has the right to maintain the integrity of the work and protect it from piracy: to control reproduction, adaptation, distribution, public performance and public display of a work and to control the creation of derivative works. Widespread lack of understanding of the subject leads to emphasis on copyright protection rather than sensible and necessary exploitation of copyright. There is no required registration of copyright, no registration system and no central clearinghouse for information as to who owns or who can clear rights in relation to a particular work or performance.
Who are the authors/creators (copyright holders) of the digital form? This has become an even more complex question with the development of interactive multimedia now comprised of authors of text and image: writers, museums databases, artists and the estates of deceased artists, photographers and the estates of deceased photographers; museums as owners or controllers of photographic records of works; "subsidiary rights holders" including music, film, video; software authors; compilers of a new resource. Copyright may also attach to the actual digital scanning of an image.

3.The Museum as Owner

To what extent does a museum own the works it shows? A museum has to consider the copyright and moral rights attached not only to the works held in the museum collections, but also to material of others that may be used in collection management systems and in other information systems or sources. In general terms, the copyright and moral rights attaching to a work of art (including photographs) belong to the "author" or "creator" for the duration of his/her life or their lives and to his/her heirs for a period after their death. Many works in museum collections will be out of authors'/artists' copyright and in the public domain. The museum (or other owner) may control physical access to the work but does not usually own intellectual property rights. The copyright attaching to any photograph of the work of art likewise belongs to the photographer unless the photographer is an employee of the organization for which the photograph has been taken (e.g. the museum) or unless there is an agreement transferring copyright to the organization in question.
The control of access to the work of art may obviously represent a financial asset to the museum or other owner. It can also be seen as part of the museum's responsibility to preserve, authenticate and accurately represent material in their collections. This involves not only copyright but also moral rights: to protect the integrity of the images and the identification of the author/artist. It would be conducive to good working relationships for museums to take the initiative on the subject of rights agreements at the time of new acquisitions entering the collection or new photographic records being commissioned, possibly utilizing standard forms of rights agreement. This becomes even more critical when the museum may subsequently wish to disseminate images via a network, whether for collection management, research or public access.

4.Museum as User of Copyright Material

Most museums are both providers and users of copyright material. Copyright protection arises when a work is "fixed" in any tangible medium of expression. Therefore use of a work without identifying the copyright owner (or his/her agent) and obtaining a license from them may result in copyright infringement. As a general rule, it is safe to assume that any right not expressly granted is reserved by the copyright owner and that one does not have the right. All relevant rights should be expressly stated in a rights license. Multimedia and other applications of "new media technology" is not clearly covered in many traditional rights agreements.

5.Intellectual Property Laws

Historically there have been two different European approaches to intellectual property rights. On the one hand are those countries for whom the concept of author's rights put emphasis on protecting the moral rights of the creator: the right to claim authorship, to insist on the integrity of the work and to prevent false attribution of the work (e.g. in France, where these rights are not assignable and continue in perpetuity). On the other hand are those countries who emphasized copyright law focussing on exploitation (e.g. Great Britain and the USA).
Copyright legislation in Great Britain and the USA now encompasses moral rights but implementation is still not universal and the extent of moral rights protection varies from country to country. Other legal issues may be taken into consideration such as privacy rights and publicity rights in the USA. One or both of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and the Universal Copyright Convention have been signed by most countries, world-wide (but not fully implemented in all aspects by all signatories) as has the Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting. These conventions lay down only minimum terms of protection of the rights to which they refer, leaving the contracting States free to grant longer terms.

6.New Regulation Initiatives

The Commission of the European Communities addressed the problems of harmonization of copyright legislation within the European Union (EU) in a Green Paper in 1988 leading to legislation harmonizing the terms of protection of Copyright and certain related rights which has now been approved by theEuropean Parliament for implementation in July 1995. While this represents a considerable step forward, these are minimal, only applying to the legislation of EU member countries (although many EFTA EEA countries will probably harmonize with the EU) and there are still many exceptions to the norm.

name	authors	photographers	performers/recordings
Berne Convention	50 years after death	25 years from making
Rome convention			20 yrs from performance/fixation
EU harmonization	70 yrs after death	70 years after death	50 yrs from performance
USA	50 yrs after death/75 yrs from publ.	-	75 yrs from publication
Japan	50 yrs after death	-	30 yrs from performance/fixation

(Scans, like photos of photos are not new works protected by IRC or neighbouring rights, if not precluded in contracts).

The 70 year EU harmonisation will mean that some artists whose work is already out of copyright will come back into copyright. The EU Directive does not apply to works of non-EU origin, from countries that offer a shorter period of protection (e.g. the USA, life plus 50 years after death of the artist), where the protection will be for the shorter period. Copyright Protection of computer programs was the first example of harmonisation in the field of copyright within the EC (1991), followed by Rental and Lending Right in 1992, and copyright related to satellite broadcasting and cable re-transmission in 1993. The EU has also published a draft Directive for harmonisation of the legal protection of Databases, but has, so far, done very little on moral rights.
The administration of rights in the music industry (as compared with the visual arts) is much more developed - but highly complex. Attempts are currently being made to find workable solutions for music rights, in the new situations arising from the development of interactive multimedia, including encouraging moves towards one- stop copyright clearance. Linear media in the film and TV sectors are also highly complex and questions arise as to how interactive a use has to be before it becomes non-linear.

7.Digital Uncertainties

Traditional (analog) media were segmented and had their own terminology and economics. While the content elements of digital multimedia do not bring up new legal problems, the combination and uses of them do. The term "multimedia" can not only apply to text, images and music on hardisk, CD-ROM, CD-I etc., but also to networked resources, video on demand and other interactive services. Questions to be answered are:
Is multimedia a collaborative work (where the authors' rights belong to the different creators and have to be transferred by contract to the producer) or a collective work (where, from the outset, the rights belong to the publisher)?
If multimedia were to be legally considered as a databank, this would raise other sets of rights problems, under existing national legislation and proposed EU harmonisation that is currently being discussed.
Does the inclusion of a work in a multimedia resource constitute a new form of exploitation or is it the adaptation of a pre-existing work ? Many existing contracts have provision for the assignment of unknown methods of exploitation but most do not include rights of adaptation. Ancillary rights in existing contracts do not cover new media subsequently introduced.
Digital forms also introduce many new complications - in relation to aspects such as image manipulation, downloading to disc or hard copy printout, networking etc. Reproducing a copyright protected work in electronic form is considered a restricted act, but in many EU and other countries the status under copyright law of temporary (transient) electronic storage of protected works (i.e. in RAM memory) during acts of loading, transmission or screen display is currently being debated. With the rapid rate of technology development it is going to be necessary to regularly update agreements.
Multimedia is ravenous for content and, realistically, we have to start valuing the price of the various elements of content on a new basis.

8.Image Scanning and Image Security

Who should digitise - the museum or the developer/publisher ? Ideally all scans, whoever makes them, should have integral header identification and information including author/creator of the object or work of art, title, date, owner, copyright owner. Security of digitised images from unauthorised use and piracy (which is a major economic problem in videotape and digital audio publishing), is made more problematic by the rapid development of networking, and is being explored by the development of a variety of technical devices. These include encryption systems and visible or invisible watermarking of images. CITED for instance (Copyright in Transmitted Electronic Documents) has been developed under the EU ESPRIT II program and represents a comprehensive system of controls as to access and degrees of use of material within on-line and also CD- based multimedia resources, including audit trails - according to the password status of the particular user.
Recent Administrative Developments
The law follows, often much later, technical development. Most of present copyright law does not adequately reflect current (and likely future) developments in digital publishing. Some people now feel that copyright will not be able to cope with digital developments in IT and will eventually be replaced by contract law or by copyright-on-demand arrangements. In 1993-94 the CIAGP (Conseil International des Auteurs des Arts Graphiques et Plastiques et des Photographes), made up of artists rights societies in many countries, drew up draft proposals for agreements on digital imaging and interactive multimedia.
These proposals are currently being considered by its parent body CISAC (Conféderation Internationale des Sociétés d'Auteurs et Compositeurs) and will hopefully be available in 1995. Although they are unlikely to include recommended tariffs, they could and should provide a basis for an important step forward, providing the individual Societies can, between themselves, agree on the terms and basis of implementation. The German Publishers Association has produced a Guide to the Negotiation of License Agreements for the Utilization of Published Works in On-line Databases (September 1993).
International conferences on Interactive Multimedia and on museums and Information technology increasingly feature sessions on the topic of Intellectual Property Rights and their implications but there is still no sign of a basis for international proposals for model agreements. There have been a number of initiatives by consortia of museums in the USA, setting out to establish and protect the position of museums. Similarly there are initiatives by consortia of Photographers in the USA.
The Coalition for Networked Information, Washington DC, produced an interesting research report on Rights for Electronic Access and Delivery of Information (READI) Project, September 1992. This has been followed by the deliberations and a preliminary report in July 1994 of the USA Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights of the National Information Infrastructure (NII) Task Force, which highlight the problem that sources of valuable intellectual property are not being made available over the networks because of the absence of reasonable assurance that intellectual property rights will be respected. The Multimedia Subcommittee of the Copyright Council of Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs considered the establishment of a centralised organisation for copyright information in a preliminary report in 1993. In 1994, the Multimedia Committee of the Japan's Institute of Intellectual Property (MITI) proposed a Digital Information Centre, a collective administrative centre at which information on copyrighted works could be readily accessible and clearance approval efficiently obtained.
Also in Japan, Copymart is a contract-based model for the collective licensing of copyright, which would comprise two databases - the "copyright market" (CRM), where rights holders can file their copyright information including a brief description of works and sale or license agreements and the "copy market", (COM) where copies of works are distributed to customers upon request and payment. In the USA, there is a proposal for a Multimedia Clearinghouse, with copyright owners participating on a voluntary basis. Photo Library Agencies in the UK and the US are working with CD-ROM and on-line networking, providing clients with images that are copyright cleared for the purposes declared on-line by the client followed by the payment of the appropriate fee by the client.
The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) is studying the establishment of an international system of assigning, on request, identifying numbers to certain categories of literary and artistic works and to phonograms. These identifying numbers may also be used for the electronic (particularly digital) means applied to control the extent of use and, possibly, to identify the protected material used.
The French agency for protection of Programs (APP) has developed such an international identification system for software at the request of WIPO. Significant among recent specialist conferences was Legal Aspects of Multimedia and GIS organised in Lisbon, October 1994 by the Legal Advisory Board (LAB), DGXIII of the European Commission. This included the presentation of drafts of several wide-ranging and, in some respects, controversial papers commissioned but not yet (January 1995) and now published by the Commission. Given that the clearing of intellectual property rights is currently complicated, time consuming and therefore costly, there is an urgent need for simple, understandable licensing and model contracts on the part of the providers to encourage and facilitate integrity on the part of the users.

 

About Virtual Archaeology

---

"Towards a virtual archaeology" is the evocative title of an article published by Paul Reilly in 1991. In it he describes some of the possible courses that might be taken by the archaeology of the future - an archaeology we can imagine as being essentially technological, multidisciplinary and virtual (in the scientific sense of the word), because it will be linked into the fields of computer processing, simulation, experimentation and computer reconstruction. But will the archaeology of the future be like that ? What language will it be using in the third millennium ? What will its fields of investigation be ?
Above all, how much of the ancient world will be able to reconstruct from the remnants of its material culture, sites and buildings ?
The possibilities that are increasingly being created by scientific and technological research have opened new horizons for archaeology and redrawn its boundaries. As progress marches on , we will be able to reconstruct ever larger segments of our most distant past, leading to a more accurate understanding of the macrocosm of the ancient world. The problem for archaeology is to retrieve the maximum possible amount of information from the material culture, so as to recapture its non-material aspects as well.
However, this process of amassing and interpreting information is a continuous one; what we cannot find out or understand now, we will be able to comprehend in the future - provided we do not destroy or lose the underlying data. It is important, therefore, not to waste information or lose access to it. In this process of acquisition , restoration and re-presentation the assistance of computers and other technology has become vital, and it is here that the term virtual archaeology becomes valid. The archaeology of the third millennium will very likely be a science with a strong technological element that will enhance out of all proportion our ability to explore, to interpret and to classify, bringing with it a greater and more penetrating ability to reconstruct the past. Loosely speaking, it will be a computerized archaeology, because it will involve the large-scale use of computer and archaeometric science in a major scientific endeavour to develop a truly virtual research laboratory. The "quality" of archaeological information and classification will in future create the bases of a new cognitive science.
Excavation and fieldwork are sometimes rather embarrassing for the archaeologist, because (paradoxically) they involve partially destroying the site that is the object of research without ever being able to recapture the whole of the information it contains. In the course of exploration the archaeologist destroys stratigraphy and structures and removes large quantities of soil in order to be able to interpret the excavated remains; "seeing what’s underneath is essential for interpretation, but it never provides a whole answer. In many cases - including the cities richest in history - ancient structures hide yet earlier structures. Troy, for instance, had at least nine main phases dating between 3000 bc and the Roman period (Troy IX), and other phases again dating to the Late Antique and subsequent periods. Each one of these phases describes and represents a different city, and each would become intelligible to archaeologists only after thorough investigation - and yet this would have to involve the removal of overlying structures from later phases. Stratigraphy represents an extremely varied and complex sequence of innumerable pieces of information that are often difficult to identify - but not one of them is insignificant, and (ideally) not one should be destroyed.
Archaeological excavation is therefore a complex process that, if carried out correctly, allows a reconstruction of past events - or of a small part of them. That is the constant problem of archaeological research. Only a small amount of intelligible information can be recovered from the ground - a minute percentage of classifiable "events" at a site - and the very activity of excavation inevitably involves some degree of destruction of the information that is buried.
A banal example: how much information do changes in the architecture or furnishings of one’s own house (or even the living-room or bedroom) contain about what has taken place in it ? Only one’s own memory can reliably record all that has happened there, for few of the actions and events will have left visible traces: the changed position of a piece of furniture, a mark on the wall or a chipped tile. If our house is destroyed, an archaeologist investigating its remains in the distant future will be able to reconstruct very little of what took place in it. If no related documents have been found, he or she will find it very hard even to work out which rooms was which (without the furnishings, how do you distinguish a living- room from a bedroom ?).
Therefore, the ability to reproduce virtually the whole exploratory phase of archaeological research is the decision-maker’s tool that enables us to answer the question "How much do we reconstruct ?" It is perhaps our only means of refining ever more accurate classifications and interpretations. It therefore also represents the last stage of research: the recreation of an ancient space, including even its most esoteric aspects - not arbitrarily and unchangeably, but virtually.
The methods at the disposal of archaeology - first put on a scientific basis when it enlisted the aid of information science and computers in the 1960s - can now justifiably be called multidisciplinary, because they span so many areas of the applied sciences. The interaction between research in archaeology, geology and the physical, natural and information sciences is now providing an ever firmer methodological foundation. However, one of the great goals of archaeology is to be presenter (or re-presenter) of information - of what we can be deduced and extrapolated from its data and finds.
Alongside research, therefore, it has an equally important role of communication and dissemination to develop. Amongst the many fields of research, archaeology -synthesizing the most disparate hypotheses in an all-embracing scientific attempt to reconstruct the past - is one of those best able to capture the imagination of the public.
Why is the virtual reconstruction of an archaeological site so important ? Because, over and above its strong popular impact, computer reconstruction allows the presentation of complex information in a visual way that enables it to be used to test and refine the image or model that has been created. It is very much more than a graphic reconstruction: it is a simulation. And, because it is a simulation, it provides a non-intrusive and non-destructive means of exploring a model in three dimensions and from an infinite number of viewpoints. Furthermore, it allows objective verification to be made of possible interpretations of architecture, material culture, topography, palaeo-environmental data, restoration, museum display, and any number of other factors.
The ancient world that could be explored by virtual archaeology is a world in color - very different from the monochrome world to which earlier reconstructions have accustomed us. The polychrome renderings of building materials - from Parian marble to wood, from stone to travertine, from limestone to terracotta, and so on - convey the colour and texture and vitality of the architectural finishes and the ancient buildings they adorn.
All these factors make virtual archaeology a highly useful tool for enlarging our knowledge of a field that has hitherto been under-explored, perhaps because it is concerned with the past.
In April 1995, at "Technology, Instruments and Applications", the third International Conference on the World Wide Web (now the major element of the Internet, the world’s largest digital network), a new graphics language was presented: VRML, Virtual Reality Modelling Language. VRML is a language that describes three-dimensional objects and allows the user to move from texts into three-dimensional spaces and vice-versa. It is a completely new way of visualizing information in three-dimensional space via hypermedia links, allowing the information/objects to be rotated, moved and observed from any angle. This powerful graphic language opens up new and extraordinary possibilities for handling multimedia data in three-dimensional form.
We think that in the near future archaeological information will be available in VRML format, offering the opportunity of exploring for instance virtual archaeological parks furnished with physical and conceptual models, with finite territories and multidimensional ideas.

Some reference application in the Archaeological field are mentioned in the above list.
Pompei
The "Rocca di Entella"
The "Bucchero of Marzabotto"
Stonehenge reconstruction
Ur digital 3D model
The Monumental Architectures of Ebla
The Tumbs of Horemheb and Bakenrenef
Prince Uage room at Khelua
Lascaux Cave
Chhokia digital reconstruction
Pueblo Bonito
Tenochtitlàn

 

Education Entertainment Applications

---

Edutainment is potentially a new field of development for software applications. Such kind of "value added" games will substitute common "shot & kill" games adding some useful content like historical background to the entertainment. This approach will be also useful in the field of cultural heritage promoting edutainment applications linked with artworks or archaeological sites. One of the first example in this direction has been showed on the occasion of Imagina INA 97 in Monaco. The application is called "Versailles 1685: A game of Intrigue at the Court of Louis XIV". The application is mainly based on a digital 3D reconstruction of the palace of Versailles as was in the XVII century fitted with original paintings and furniture. This game presented one major challenge: how to reconcile imperative game requirements and the constraints of historical fact, or, how to keep an attractive game form while still communicating historical data which is, by nature, rigid and unwieldy. These two imperatives had to be combined without allowing either one to cancel out the other. In this game is an incredibly effective means of reconstructing a Versailles that no longer exists. It enables us to explore the chateau exactly as it was in 1685, to infuse our often ponderous documentation with new life and to put the hum and throb of life back in the chateau. New technology enables us to makeVersailles better known to the public by leading them away from the beaten track. For the chateauis not very well known, apart from the State Apartments and the Hall of Mirrors. Given that the game takes place in 1685, locations had to be reconstituted exactly as they were at that time, whereas the chateau and the gardens were permanently being modified. In such historical reconstruction the documentation, in the form of engravings, paintings, architectural elevations, memoirs atc., is sometimes contradictory or incomplete and require rigorous collation.
The player has to solve a plot to kill the king taking part to the main ceremonies and events linked to the king’s everyday life. QuickTime VR^TM – like environment let the user walk through the palace looking at frescos and asking for further information about artworks and architecture. The king’s day regulated life at the Court so it naturally came to underlie the way the game unfolds. As a result, the historical reality of life in the chateau at the time is intimately interwoven into the game. Similarly, anecdotes recounted by chroniclers of the time have also been integrated into the story.
This application enables us to rediscover Versailles and provides an astounding confrontation between the reality of still existing places and the reconstitution of those that have disappeared. The reconstitution provides detail, allowing us to contemplate the variety of the décor, its beauty and its quality. The user can also discover astonishing things which we would otherwise not imagine at Versailles, such as the spiral staircase.
Such experiments will bring the monument back to life meant redecorating rooms and re-installing paintings at present scattered around different museums. Paintings are placed in their original locations and textiles are fully restored in order to reconstitute the monument as it was at the time.

Another interesting example of SOHO market application devoted to cultural heritage is, no doubt, "Roma" , a full tridimensional interactive application rebuilding the ancient Imperial Rome with palaces, houses, monuments in the original "coloured" aspect.

The Malaysian Esperiment

---

Multimedia Super Corridor in Malaysia is an attempt to solve all these problems creating special laws protecting IPR in the digital era
Priority in Digitalisation
An abstract of the last report of the WG 4 is summarised in the following part of the chapter. Until today there has been no common – open, modular, interoperable – digital platform for museums, galleris, libraries and other institutions essential to culture.
Thus far the WG have only found proprietary solutions, with no clear perspectives on European / global communications (interactivity, virtual reconstruction, etc.), no access for a very wide public, no prospects of realising services and products without "ensuring that there is a substantial European cultural content to the services and products in the Information Society"(Peter Johnston’s forward to the MoU publication, 28 June 1996).
The WG have already initiated a survey to find out which media museums have used for documentation and presentation of their collections, and which digital media in particular. We have come to the conclusion that only museums can decide about their priorities in digitisationshould be – thus , the development of consensus and common strategy is essential to maximising synergy within European networks of particular types of museums and between different types of museums. This means that without developing consensus and common strategy it is difficult to come up with guidelines of any precision relating to which pat of collections should be given priority in the period leading up 2000.
Conclusion: A number of European pilot projects should be started with the goal of developing consensus and common strategy relating to a network of co-operation on priority for digitisation.