CORDIS Archive

Convergence in the Digital Age:

Challenges for Libraries, Museums and Archives
Proceedings of the Seminar held in Amsterdam, 13 - 14 August 1998

Table of Contents

Session II: The Citizens' Access to the Digital Heritage

Introduction to Session II
Some Fundamental Principals of the Knowledge and Information Organisation for the Purpose of Improving the Citizens' Access to the Digitized Heritage
Van Eyck: an Art Historical Information System for Museum Professionals in an Archival Context, Built Using Library Expertise
Danish Audio History / Cultural Network Denmark
Time Travels in Virtual Online Landscapes: Virtual Reality - A New Challange in Dramaturgy?

INTRODUCTION TO SESSION II
II Sarah Tyacke, Public Record Office, United Kingdom

In the case of the three organisations we represent, that is museums, archives and libraries, I would say that despite the evident collaboration between us the race is on when considering the supply of content to the end user. This becomes more obvious when we consider the case of schools for example, which would want to prepare their own lessons with the help of our materials if that were to become possible on any scale. This might be via networks. This compels us to think about our methods for cataloguing and the preparation of lists in all three organisations. We should not only think about our professional standards for meta-data, but we must also consider what the users actually want from these descriptions. So we have to find answers to questions such as, how can we digitise our materials, how can we get the digital content to users fast and cheaply.

When we have got these questions answered we will have to "repackage" the content in order to secure the users' understanding. This is more than cataloguing, it is presenting the `stuff' in an interesting context. Thus we will have to turn the raw materials from our stores into digital materials that students of fourteen or fifteen years old can understand through the mediation of a teacher on, say, a wet Friday afternoon. The images might be archival about events in the past -the sinking of the Titanic- but brought to INTERNET life by images of objects and contemporary newspapers and books from a number of sources. This new requirement implies a process of innovation in our three professions and an understanding of the flexible ways we can now make our collections come alive to new and very large audiences on demand. All of us will have to undergo big changes in the coming years if we are to remain relevant to our societies.

This possibility of change is at the heart of our professions and is very important for us to grasp. For if we do not deliver the services asked for, others will do so and we will lose our valued position and to be more prosaic, we will find ourselves in a more difficult position when applying for funds if others can do the job better.

We need therefore in my view to be able to package the materials we keep digitally as well as conventionally and provide appropriate and suitable meta-data to the groups of clientele, which we already serve and the others we will be serving. It is not that we cannot do it, just that we have to get our minds around the challenge of having millions of users out there rather than hundreds or thousands on site.

In terms of convergence of the three professions we really need to consider where we need to converge from the service point of view, and not just because of the technologies which can bring us together. We have heard from the presentation on Universe, about how to provide cross-domain services. However, we need to know who wants them and where, not only that we can technologically deliver those services; we have especially to learn how technology can help us to deliver them cheaply, if we are to serve all of our communities, not just the rich.

It is not merely a question of merging front-end services electronically across museums, libraries and archives, but also of reconsidering the training and skills of our people in the various institutions and moreover the organisational structures in each of our countries and within Europe. We must be able to work together and to have a structure within which to do so; this will not be easy as it will mean the re-alignment of the three professions.

What sorts of organisations will encourage these new services to emerge? We, the three sectors will be behind the scenes in some respects, on the production side, cataloguing, interpreting, preserving and selecting objects, archives and books as usual. Some of us will also manage the front of the shop, for example by being content providers as described above, and in some cases general service providers across a range of organisations and/or materials e.g. SCRAN. This is an exciting prospect because our main asset is, that we do have the real and often unique "stuff", and from this we will be able to provide `virtual real stuff' to people in a way they can appreciate and understand. We want to be able to do this not just in our own institutions, by post and by telephone, but also digitally to people in their own homes, in their schools and in their places of work.

The four contributors in this session are going to give us now some insight into how they have managed to meet these types of challenges to change the way they deliver their own particular services to their clienteles.

SOME FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION ORGANISATION FOR THE PURPOSE OF IMPROVING THE CITIZEN'S ACCESS TO THE DIGITISED HERITAGE
Tatjana Aparac, Croatian Institute for Librarianship, Croatia
Mirna Willer, National and University Library, Croatia

1. Summary

In today's information professional community the convergence of the so called information disciplines is a topic of growing importance. This paper's approach is based on two presuppositions: (1) recognition of the widely accepted opinion that the convergence among "memory institutions" and their related disciplines has been provoked by the consequence of the emergence and the use of networking information technologies and a demand for end-user access to their stored cultural heritage, and (2) that the disciplines inside the field of information sciences, e.g. Library and Information Science, Archive Studies, Museum Studies and Information Science, have been more or less connected by some fundamental principles. The authors intend to interpret these fundamental principles from the pragmatic point of view of the end-users whose ever growing demand is to access the digitised heritage easily, quickly and for the most varied purposes, as well as from the point of view of the information professionals acting in different institutional and non-institutional environments who, by sharing common and specialised knowledge, skills, methods and techniques, aim at a common goal: the creation of methods for cross-domain access to cultural heritage for active and potential users.

This convergence within the discipline of information sciences is basically characterised by events that run parallel on two levels: on one level leading theoreticians and experts in particular disciplines attempt to work out the best solution for similar, general problems, despite the fact that in their work they start with different goals and develop different terminological 'apparatuses'; on another level there is the impact of networks and telecommunications on informational activities. The latter marked not only the possibility of modernising work in libraries, archives, museums, documentation and information centres, but also influenced the effectiveness of the co-ordination of various processes and strengthened the bibliographic control and accessibility of diverse collections world-wide.

2. Introductory remarks

"(...) Most professions and their related disciplines take pleasure in the comfort of decontextualised dilemmas and refute the need for a temporary consensus, co-operation and collective thinking. (...)"[1] . This seems more than appropriate to say for the field of information sciences. Thus, our effort to gather here and to discuss the possibilities of co-operating within the Global Information Environment makes a good base for refuting the expressed assertion.

This paper aims at offering a theoretical framework for the knowledge and information organisation in the network environment which has as its main goal to improve the citizen's access to the digitised heritage. We see this theoretical framework within the broad field of information sciences. We are also interested in the interpretation of the fundamental principles of information-oriented disciplines as well as in the question of their convergence.

It has to be pointed out that the field of information sciences has been confronted with a number of problems of conceptual and methodological nature. It is a young academic and scientific discipline whose social and cognitive institutionalisation is still in progress and whose future is seen through several possible scenarios. One of these scenarios is based on the idea of the Global Information and Communication Society in which various types of standardisation procedures and communication methods and techniques will be the conditio sine qua non for managing and mediating knowledge and information. In such a context each information discipline tries to find answers to general questions and tries to interpret them from its own point of view, while expecting that effective convergence should strengthen their own scientific foundation, and to confirm their place in the scientific family.

3. Looking Back or About the Question of Definition

R. S. Taylor was among the first authors who offered a definition of the broader field of information sciences.[2] He described the "new field" on two levels: the theoretical one, on which information sciences intend to study information, information systems and humans as elements of communication processes; and the pragmatic one, on which information sciences are interested in the developments of human-computer interaction. The accent was put on finding out the best mode for the use of specialised knowledge.[3]

Later on, a smaller number of definitions of information sciences in this broader sense could be found in professional literature and as a topic at professional meetings.[4] However, despite certain daring declarations that we were dealing with a completely new field with more or less clearly defined associated disciplines, it became obvious that discussions about theoretical and methodological origins and converging issues of information disciplines were continuing. Lately, they have even been deepened by the dreams, madness & reality [5] of the digital era.

The object of scientific inquiry in information sciences has also changed: from the study of information, information systems and human-computer interaction to information functions which are designed and performed independently of the institutional context (cf. for example Saracevic [6] ), and to theoretical models for interpretation of the new informational, heritological or hermeneutic paradigms (for example, notions of user needs, notions of material unit, theories of heritology, selection and text interpretation).

Our approach in this paper is mainly based on experience from classification and organisation of the academic/scientific disciplines at the University of Zagreb. Information sciences were recognised in the mid 80's as a special field. They comprise of a number of disciplines whose purpose is the "study of the processes of creating, acquiring, selecting, evaluating, processing, organising, storing, structuring, retrieving, mediating, disseminating, interpreting, using and preserving information as well as of social communication in all its aspects." [7] Thus, information sciences encompasses "information sciences in a broader sense, documentation, communication studies, library science, archive studies, museum studies, lexicography, cognitive science etc.".[8]

4. The Core and Borders of Information Sciences

Some of the main questions in connection with the establishment of an intellectual and professional core and borders of information sciences, such as for example, the effectiveness of information services, human communication problems, ways and modes of knowledge transmission, interpretations of the notions of "information need" or "information use",[9] are inseparable from the social context of information and communication processes as well as from the context in which the material units are created, stored and disseminated. Furthermore, these questions are also common to the "digital environment" e.g. to communication technology which enables the accessibility of different material units regardless of time and place of their origin.

This could be proved by looking at the current scientific research in the field of information sciences which are directed towards:

• traditional themes and topics connected to "memory institutions"; this kind of research seeks for the best solutions for problems raised by day-to-day operations inside libraries, museums, archives, information and documentation centres;
• themes and topics not related to particular institutions, but to the problems which come out of the intentions to assure better access to knowledge and information; the research is focused on the notion of "information needs", "information demands", as well as on the possibilities of co-operating in the network environment;
• theoretical phenomena with the goal to separate and interpret basic phenomena and to find out common principles and origins of information. This kind of research is mostly provoked by the requirements of the academic community where Ph.D. programs are allowed and scientific grades in information sciences are established - the status of a young academic field has to be measured by commonly accepted academic norms.

For a short time now a disciplinary convergence can be seen on two levels: firstly, leading experts in a particular information discipline have been trying to seek out the best solutions for the same, common problems, although they started from different positions and developed different terminological apparatuses (especially "strong" were LIS theoreticians); secondly, the impact of computer technology and telecommunications on information related processes has been highly recognised. The use of IT has shown not only how to rationalise daily work and modernise the library, museum and archival services, but it also encouraged logical linkages of different procedures in those institutions which aimed at strengthening bibliographic control and the availability of traditional and digital collections world-wide.
It is obvious that the theories of "narrow" information disciplines have passed through phases of discovering, suggesting and refuting a number of different schemes and models for purposeful selection, bibliographic control and securing availability of the ever growing number of materials as well as for satisfying user needs and demands. However, the conditions of the global information society make the situation more complex than it used to be. Thus, a question is raised: is it possible to find out some unifying principles which would improve co-operation between information disciplines to assure access to the cultural heritage inside the memory institutions? The basic solutions could be found in certain principles which guide the efforts related to the improvement of mediating knowledge and information.

5. Fundamental Principles for Information Sciences in Relation to Digitisation Projects

We suggest the following principles:

the principle of the availability of material regardless of its origin and storage life; the principle of the social purpose of information services which aims at maximising the social role of the available objects of symbolic culture (to use Alvin Schrader's expression) for the benefit of human beings;

the principle of the need for constant easement of effective transfer of the desired information from one human being who produces it to another one who uses it;

the principle of preserving cultural heritage which aims at helping the civilisation's growth;

the principle of creating value-added information as a ground for better organisation and guidance of users through "selva selvaggia" of the information overload in the network environment.

If we accept that these principles form a theoretical framework, it could be said that assuring availability of and access to various materials in archives, museums, libraries and in the Internet environment, and seeking out modes for their efficient and rational use , are among the possible unifying concepts of our domains. The principle of the social need could be the philosophical foundation for the framework. How, indeed, do these principles work in practice?

6. Standards: Possibilities for Co-operation in their Development and Use

In the GII environment the procedures for securing the approach to information and material stored in "memorial institutions" has been recognised as particularly complex. Obviously, only highly standardised procedures guarantee the flow of information and knowledge from the author to the user. The realisation of each particular link in this communication chain compels the information provider to comply with specific requirements. Due to the complexity of these requirements it is no longer possible for individual institutions or types of institutions to act alone. The necessity not only to share results of research and products from other domains but also to take part in their development is the necessity of our professions.

If we paraphrase Šola's words from the beginning of our paper, we can say that even each type of our institutions is considered as a world in itself, a kind of natural unit: a school library as opposed to the national, or even, public library; a museum of contemporary art as opposed to the natural history museum or postal museum; different types of archives too. In a way, they can really be considered as such taking into account the functions and services they provide for the kind of users they aim at, no doubt. However, the technological trend towards the overall globalisation has caused tremendous shock on three basic levels of institutional functioning, and the well established concepts and procedures are deemed not to hold any more. The rethinking, even new conceptualisation of their foundations [10] seems to be necessary. These three levels are: the definition of the unit of material, the procedures to obtain, store, disseminate and present the items, and the end user profile.

7. The Unit of Material

The new type of material that caused much disturbance in the library world, is something librarians classified as an "electronic resource", hand-held and remote. It has a complementary object in the "virtual art piece", or item that was born and that lives digitally in the museum community. Archives are (or should be if they are not already) overflown with electronic documents sometimes accompanied by their paper (original?) form, sometimes not. It is "almost" simple to describe the electronic item when it "stands alone". But they usually appear in some kind of relation either to other electronic items or multimedia items, a kit which comprises of the text, data, image (still and moving), sound; especially so in relation to artefacts that are stored in memorial institutions about which we are talking during this seminar.

8. Procedures for Description, Storing, Access and Availability

Do we have standard methods for the description of electronic materials? Librarians already started the standardising process which led them towards reconsidering the standards for description (ISBD, cataloguing rules, subject and classification systems) but not only of the new material (ISBD(ER)) but also of the traditional ones (IFLA Study on Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records [11] ); storage (MARC formats and (relational or object oriented) database design), and resource discovery, access and presentation (the use of Web browsers, realisation of OPACs by way of using hypertext for record linking and pointers to remote resources - network items). Martin Dillon and Eric Jul summarised this problem in their article on cataloguing Internet resources: "the concept of "collection" is expanding to include materials owned and accessed by the library and its users, whether such resources are stored locally or at a remote site." [12] It is interesting enough that the subtitle to their article is: "The Convergence of Libraries and Internet Resources".

Which of these standards can we share? Or, to look at this from another angle: in which field can we act together having in mind the user whose demand is to get information on the searched topic, information on access to the document, and obtain the document regardless of the type of material and information carrier, and regardless of the type of institution it is stored in?

Authority control over access points is the obvious first answer. International co-operation between libraries and archives has already begun in the field of name authority files (IFLA UBCIM Working Group on Minimal Level Authority Records and the ISADN [13] and ICA/CDS: International Council on Archives/Committee on Descriptive Standards). Can we share subject and classification systems/schemes or only the methodology in the creation of subject access? The definition and application of Z39.50 profiles in searching different systems pushes us into a common, standardised definition not only of the formal aspects of access points (what do we search: author, title, key word, subject) but, indeed not surprisingly, into their very content. (See, for example, results from the EC CoBRA AUTHOR [14] and ONE [15] projects.) If we spell the name of Picasso differently and do not enable searches through various forms of his name in order to retrieve relevant records, our user will never know when he has to stop searching and will not get full information. And to go still one step further, perhaps to the core of the problem: what elements of description do we have to define to identify the entity of the authority record?

The particular domain of formal description is definitely the level at which autochthonous characteristics of the material and the processes of creation of their presentation via metadata in library catalogues, finding aids, museum registers become visible. These data, or the contents of finding aids, are results of cultural and language differences, national traditions in materials' production and collection, historical precedents in designing finding aids, technological state of the art, constraints and changes, traditions and approaches in their presentation, as well as user needs, habits and expectations.

Metadata formats could be broadly categorised as MARC (machine readable cataloguing) or ISO 2709 formats and non-ISO 2709 formats like SGML, Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Warwick Framework etc. The conversion between MARC formats has become an everyday routine. The conversion procedures are being done in various directions between MARC formats (e.g. USMARC, UNIMARC) and various "dialects" of SGML: Text Encoding Initiative (TEI.DTD), Encoded Archival Description (EAD.DTD) and Computer Interchange of Museum Information (CIMI) and the Dublin Core which is defined for network resource descriptions.

The complexity of metadata formats is parallel to the complexity of the data they carry and their function. MARC formats are designed to convey all the minute details of bibliographic information, and (often) are not appropriate for the creation of finding aids or museum registers. The Dublin Core, on the contrary, is the product of a wide community of users of Internet space and has narrowed down the number of resource description elements to 15, thus providing means for carrying information from the most varied digital objects and their varied functions. Material specificity is lost, but information transparency is gained. Realistically, it is at this level that we can find space for cross-domain co-operation, that is, at the level of transmission of the first, elementary, most general information.
Standards for digitising material are of ever growing concern to the international experts. Let us cite Terry Kuny and Gary Cleveland in their much inspiring article The Digital Library: Myths and Challenges : "Technological obsolescence, migration of digital information, legal and organisational issues all test the "limits of digital technology." There are no preservation standards for digital information." [16]

Access to materials imposes the problem of standardising holding information on the international level. This is, at first sight, more a problem for libraries than for archives and museums, but not quite so. The user would like to know where s/he can obtain, see or consult the object s/he is interested in. The Z39.50 Implementation Group (ZIG) is now designing the profile for carrying this type of information too.

9. The End User

At the very moment when the library's catalogue, archive's finding aid and museum's register are put on the Web, they have been transformed into a global finding aid. It no longer serves the public it was originally designed for, with all the "idiosyncrasies" (obviously) necessary to organise and present information on the stored material, but it has become open to the most varied types of users, with the most varied information needs and information seeking habits. The rules that governed finding aid creation and that were designed to answer specific users questions, are now scrutinised because we have to visualise anew our users - network surfers. This is definitely a very important point on which we could co-operate. Do we know who the user of our institution is? Has his/her approach towards our institutions changed in the Internet environment? Or are there, under the surface of seemingly unpredictable and unknown user's behaviour, constant needs and habits that defy technological shifts?

10. Conclusion

We can conclude the following: we expect that the mentioned principles and other elements of human communication based on the objects of symbolic culture would remain within the field of research of particular disciplines, information and communication sciences and of interdisciplinary approaches. This assumption does not intend to lessen the importance of information activities which enable these processes nor the necessity for constant research into the relevant topics and problems. Namely, solutions to practical problems and the production of various tools and guidance materials for users have been at the centre of interest of the archive, library and museum profession from the earliest days.

References:

Aparac -Gazivoda, Tatjana. Teorijske osnove knjinine znanosti (Theoretical foundations of Library Science). Zagreb : Filozofski fakultet, Zavod za informacijske studije Odsjeka za informacijske znanosti, 1993.

Aparac , Tatjana Informacijske znanosti: temeljni koncepti i problemi (Information Sciences: basic concepts and problems). // Seminar Arhivi, knjinice, muzeji (1997 ; Rovinj). / eds. Mirna Willer... [et al.]. Zagreb : Hrvatsko bibliotekarsko drutvo, 1998. Pp. 14-28.

Crawford , Walt and Michael Gorman. Future libraries: dreams, madness and reality. Chicago ; London : American Library Association, 1996.

Dillon, Martin; Eric Jul. Cataloguing Internet resources: the convergence of libraries and Internet resources. // Cataloguing and classification quarterly, 22, 3/4 (1996), pp. 197-238.

Kuny , Terry and Garry Cleveland. The digital library: myth and challenges. // IFLA Journal 24, 2 (1998), pp. 107-113.

Maroevi , Ivo. Muzejski predmet kao izvor znanja (Museum object as the source of knowledge). // Informacijske znanosti i znanje. / eds. Slavko Tkalac, Miroslav Tuman. Zagreb : Zavod za informacijske studije, 1990. Pp. 155-163.

Miksa , F. Library and information science: two paradigms. // Conceptions of library and information science: historical, empirical and theoretical perspectives. / eds. Pertti Vakkari, Blaise Cronin. London : Taylor Graham, 1992. Pp. 229-252.

Saracevic , T. Information science: origin, evolution and relations. // Conceptions of library and information science: historical, empirical and theoretical perspectives. / eds. Pertti Vakkari, Blaise Cronin. London : Taylor Graham, 1992. Pp. 5-27.

Saracevic , T. Intellectual organisation of knowledge: the American contribution. // Bulletin of the ASIS 2(1976), pp. 16-17.

Shera , J. H. Librarianship and information science. // Study of information: interdisciplinary messages. / eds. F. Machlup, U. Mansfield. New York : Wiley, 1983. Pp. 249-276.

Shera , J. H. Sociological relationship of information science. // Journal of the ASIS 22, 2 (1971), pp. 76-80.

Sveuilite u Zagrebu. Centar za postdiplomski studij informacijskih znanosti. Nastavni plan i program postdiplomskog studija informacijskih znanosti. Zagreb : Sveuilite u Zagrebu, 1984.

Šola , Tomislav. A contribution to a possible definition of Museology. Paper presented at the ICOFOM Symposium "Interdisciplinarity in Museology". Paris, 1982.

Šola , Tomislav. Muzeološki prilog teorijskim osnovama informacijskih znanosti (Museological contribution to the theoretical foundations of Information Sciences). // Informacijske znanosti i znanje (Information sciences and knowledge). / eds. Slavko Tkalac, Miroslav Tuman. Zagreb : Zavod za informacijske studije, 1990. Pp. 147-153.

Taylor , R. S. Information sciences. // Library Journal 88(1963), pp. 4161-4163.

Tuman , Miroslav. Teorija informacijske znanosti (The Theory of Information Science). Zagreb : Informator, 1986.

Wersig , G.; U. Neveling. The Phenomena of interest to information science. // Information Scientist 9, Dec(1975), pp. 127-140.

VAN EYCK: AN ART HISTORICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR MUSEUM PROFESSIONALS IN AN ARCHIVAL CONTEXT, BUILT USING LIBRARY EXPERTISE
Jan van der Starre, Netherlands Institute for Art History, the Netherlands

1. Introduction

Van Eyck is the acronym for Visual Arts Network for the Exchange of Cultural Knowledge, a research project which is supported by the European Commission in the framework of the Libraries Programme [17] .
The goal of the project is to realise a workstation (PC software) for art historians, museum professionals, auctioneers and art dealers and people in arts-related professions which will allow uniform simultaneous access to several relevant art historical databases. The system will enable the user to find answers to a variety of questions, such as:

• which landscape painters were active in Amsterdam during the second half of the 17th century,
• were do I find reproductions of their works,
• which painters depicted cats,
• what are the known names of Bruno Keil.

The system will respond with a list of retrieved records which consist of a short description of the work of art or the artist including -if available- an electronic image.
The system is aimed in particular to give the user an overview of data available throughout the world. The text records therefore will be necessarily short. They comply with the Core Record which was specially developed for the project. I will come back to this later.
The big advantage of the system is that the user does not have to know the peculiarities of all art historical databases, such as search languages, record structures and logon procedures. They will be accessed through the uniform interface of Van Eyck. Therefore, the user will not notice that he or she is accessing several databases. All participating databases appear to form one virtual database. If a user wants to, s/he can also access the participating databases one at the time, either using the Van Eyck interface or the interface of the database itself.
In this way a variety of questions may be answered in a very easy and cost effective way.

2. Status of the project

The first phase of the project started in 1993, and the final completion date was December 1997. We now have a working operational prototype and a test database and we are preparing for the next phase. This phase will briefly be discussed at the end of this paper.

3. Target audience

The target audience for the system is quite varied:

• Art historical researchers,
• Museum professionals,
• Education (students and educators),
• Auction houses and art trade,
• Police and customs
• General public (either individually or represented by public libraries)

As the main focus of today's conference is on the convergence of technologies, I will concentrate on a few aspects which show, in one way or the other, the use of technologies or techniques from either the museum, library or archival sector. I hope that discussion of these aspects shows that a system like Van Eyck could only be built using expertise from the three aforesaid sectors.

4. Core Record

The Core Record was developed with effectively two aims:

• to define a common data platform for the participating archives, and
• to specify a basic data set which could be used in stand-alone systems, specially developed for art historical databases.

The Core Record was developed by archives [18] which specialise in the documentation of traditional works of art (excluding architecture). The implication is that modern art in the form of installations, performances, multimedia or electronic art is not well catered for. The Core Record therefore relates almost exclusively to paintings, prints and drawings (art 'on a flat surface'). The Core Record is based upon an extensive survey [19] of over 20 systems world-wide, taking from these systems the common denominator fields, i.e. fields which exist in virtually all surveyed systems.

A limitation is that the Core Record is meant for recording basic data on art objects. In effect, the Core Record basically only allows for data which can be used for identification purposes, with a few exceptions. Complete provenance cannot be entered, data-elements for auction data (dates of sales, prices, etc.) are not provided for. The focus of the Core Record is centred upon queries, such as:

• Who created the work?
• When was it created?
• Where is it now?
• What is the subject (either broad or specific)?
• Is there an digital image and/or a reproduction available?

More extensive descriptions of works of art may require more than 200 fields, whereas the Core Record only has 55.

5. Concordances

The Van Eyck system makes use of concordances between field content. There are two types of concordances:

1. one-to-one translations,
2. conceptual relations.

One-to-one translations

Archives of any nationality may participate in the Van Eyck system. Archives/libraries will have made descriptions of works of art in their national language. Uniform access to a virtual multilingual database is only possible when on certain access points provisions have been made in the form of translations. In the Van Eyck system these access points are:

• artistic school
• type of object
• materials/technique
• support
• shape
• type of image
• gender
• nationalities/countries

In the scope of the project for these fields, translations were made from Dutch terminology into English. It is perfectly possible to have other languages available but they have not yet been implemented.
The number of fields with concordances is limited to the eight mentioned above. No concordances were made or will be made for geographical names, for example, because that will take years to complete. We hope that in the near future we can use the results of developments at the Getty, such as the Thesaurus of Geographical Names and AKA.

Conceptual relations

With regard to subject based access, a similar mechanism has been developed. We constructed a special keyword list consisting of general terms on depicted subjects, the so-called Umbrella. From concepts in this list relations are established with concepts in local indexing- systems. The user may use a term in the Umbrella to retrieve information from the databases. S/he does not need to be concerned with details of the local indexing systems, their structure, nature or particularities.

For example, the concept 'festivities' is represented in Iconclass (used in the Witt library) in the codes 12A6, 12B91, 12E91, 12F91, 43A, 44B154, 46B12 and 46B19 and possible subdivisions. The same concept in the keywords list of the RKD is 'festiviteit', plus such other keywords as 'vrolijk gezelschap', 'vertier', 'dansen', 'ganstrekken', 'kermis', 'seizoensfeest', etc. The user then will select 'festivity' from the Umbrella and the Van Eyck system uses the Iconclass codes listed above to access the Witt database and the keywords, as mentioned above, to access the RKD database. Needless to say, such a query may result in some noise, but noise can be reduced by using other selection elements, such as dates, artistic school, etc.

6. Technology

The technology used is based upon the concept of a client/server structure, in which the various Oracle databases of the partners are the servers. To the user they appear as one database. Therefore we could speak of a virtual database. The client is custom built, and communication is possible using standard ISDN connections or Internet. During the next phase the client will be re-built into a Web-based client, using Verity software for retrieval.

7. User involvement

During the project we ensured sufficient user involvement in order to tailor the system to the needs of our target audience. The participating archives know their customers very well and used that knowledge as input into the system specification. Furthermore, two "public" prototypes were extensively tested in the "real world", i.e. we asked typical prospective customers to use the system in a controlled environment and give us their comments. This has proven to be very valuable and has given us the confidence that at the next stage only minor adjustments are needed.

8. Plans for the future

As stated above, we are about to enter the next phase of the project. Activities in this phase will concentrate on the following:

• Re-design of the client interface using standard Web-interfaces and Verity search software;
• Drafting of a detailed business plan, allowing the partners to bring the prototype to the "real world";
• Design of a marketing strategy and consequently starting up of the Van Eyck Consortium;
• Building of an administrative infrastructure, allowing maintenance of the system, billing of customers;
• Continued input of data and enlargement of the informational base (i.e. bringing more archives into the Consortium).

9. Conclusion

The Van Eyck system was built in an environment which could be called archival, for the benefit of users in the museum and art history field. In this respect we have to take care of the various needs of the two sectors. We could do this however only by bringing in techniques from the library field, in particular as regards indexing and retrieval.
Technology has been evolving very rapidly as we have noticed in the course of the project. When Van Eyck was defined, the Internet was still in its infancy and there was no way we could foresee the importance of the Web. Nevertheless, by adhering to standard, proven technology, we managed to build a system which is sufficiently capable of being adjusted to present and future days' developments.

Den Haag, 12 August 1998
Jan H.E. van der Starre

DANISH AUDIO HISTORY / CULTURAL NETWORK DENMARK
Eva Fønss-Jørgensen, State and University Library, Denmark

Abstract:

The paper will focus on the vision behind the project Cultural Network Denmark, created by the Danish Ministry of Culture. - Cultural Network Denmark aims to provide better and easier access for the citizens to the cultural heritage preserved by libraries, museums and archives in Denmark by means of digital technology and the Internet. Grants have been made available for a series of pilot projects to support the network idea and to set up examples of "virtual" institutions and co-operation between them. - One of these projects was Danish Audio History, co-ordinated by the State and University Library in Aarhus, who previously participated in Project Jukebox, supported by the Libraries Programme of the European Commission. An account of these projects will be given, and finally some considerations on the future development of cultural institutions in the digital age will be lined up.

1. Background

The convergence of libraries, museums and archives in the digital age was anticipated by the Danish Ministry of Culture back in 1995, whenCultural Network Denmark was created. The vision behind Cultural Network Denmark (in Danish: Kulturnet Danmark) is a network of virtual cultural institutions. This vision is being realised through Web technologies by interconnecting and integrating digitised cultural information in such a way that the institutions on the Web appear and perform as being one institution: the virtual gallery, the virtual museum, the virtual archive and the virtual library. The establishment of Cultural Network Denmark was one of the priority areas in the Danish government's IT Political Action Plan, which came into force in 1995.

The overall objective of Cultural Network Denmark is to provide the citizen with better and easier access to the cultural heritage kept in government institutions under the Ministry of Culture (app. 50) and to state supported cultural institutions (app.150).

One of the most important goals of Cultural Network Denmark is to encourage and stimulate the digitisation of collections of all kinds and to foster increased co-operation between the institutions under the Ministry of Culture.

2. The role of the State and University Library

The State and University Library in Aarhus is a national library with large collections of printed material. The administration of the Legal Deposit Act is one of the library's responsibilities. In 1987 the library was asked to establish a national archive for radio and television, and two years later - in 1989 - we took over a collection of more than 150.000 gramophone records and historical recordings issued since the turn of the century. That was the start of the State Media Archive in Denmark. But that was back in the good old analogue days - before 1990 when digitisation was not on the agenda of the libraries.

The State and University Library has traditionally been focussing on providing broad access to its collections, both to the general public through the public library system, and to the research community at the university of Aarhus. Since the beginning of the 1990s we have participated in different projects aiming at providing online access by means of new technology, specifically to the sound collections of the State Media Archive.

The first of these projects was Jukebox, an international project which was supported by the Libraries Programme of the European Commission.

3. Project Jukebox

Project Jukebox was carried out over a 3-year period from 1993-96. Our library acted as the co-ordinator and the other participants were: Discoteca di Stato from Italy, British Library/National Sound Archive and Western Norway Research Institute. The technical consultant was UNI-C, Denmark, and Hein Information Tools acted as consultant in the copyright area.

The aim of Project Jukebox was to set up and test a pilot system for a new library service, where library users at remote distances could get on-line access via ISDN to digitised historical sound recordings (primarily music) held in their own national archives as well as archives in other European countries.

Jukebox was a great experience for all the participants. The users loved the new service, and - apart from the user interest documented in the project - a major benefit was the experience of "going digital" and the upgrading of the skills of the staff. Not to mention the experience we got in the copyright area where we managed to establish a fruitful dialogue with the copyright organisations and to make contacts which we could use in future projects.

4. Danish Audio History

The participation of our library in Project Jukebox provided the foundation for further projects in the digital area. The opportunity came with the technological development: Back in 1996 when Project Jukebox was finished, the Internet was becoming commonly used and smart compression formats for sound and pictures were being developed. And - as said - on the political scene in Denmark the government launched its IT Political Action Plan with Culture Network Denmark as one of the priorities. In the development phase, grants were made available for a series of pilot projects - among these projects, Danish Audio History, which ran from 1996-98. (The result can be seen on http://www.statsbiblioteket.dk/dlh /).

The main aims of Danish Audio History were to present selected `stories' on the Internet, primarily based on the sound collections of the participants, but also supplemented with texts, photos and other sources to illustrate the audio files.

Using the RealAudio format, the homepage presents about 150 sound recordings such as historical speeches by famous Danish men and women (actors, writers and politicians), Danish dialects and songs from a popular cabaret in 1935. Other subjects are music-ethnological recordings from Mongolia recorded by the Danish explorer Henning Haslund-Christensen in the 1930´s, Danish folk songs recorded on phonograph in 1907, songs by the world-wide famous singer Lauritz Melchior and the history of the women's liberation movements in Denmark told via text, photos, music and interviews with influential persons from the Danish Women's Association and the Red Stockings from the 1970´s.

What is interesting in this connection is the project consortium , because the participants not only represent different cultural institutions but also different sectors. The were contributions from the following types of institutions:

• library
• museum
• archive
• university (researchers)
• high school
• school of conservation
• broadcast
• publishing house

The point is that all these types of institutions contribute with materials and know-how in order to `tell the stories' from the 20^th century represented by the selected audio examples. By combining materials and expertise from different institutions, access to cultural heritage has been improved considerably. This is documented by the fact that the total number of hits (i.e. listening to sound) on Danish Audio History's homepage was more than 21.000 in 1997.

5. Conclusion

To conclude I will line up some considerations on the development of digital services of cultural institutions in the future.

There is no doubt that both with Project Jukebox and Danish Audio History we have chosen the right way to go if we - as cultural institutions - want to play an active role in the information society

But we are still only at the very beginning. What we have seen with these projects is only the "tip of the iceberg" or rather a "show window". We, the librarians, archivists and custodians, have so far selected and digitised material which we think will interest our users. There are, however, millions of items remaining to be digitised (and in some cases also to be catalogued!). The next step must be to provide a so-called critical mass of digitised documents so that our users can search the huge collections and - with a click on the mouse - get immediate access to the digitised sound, text or picture, or, if the item has still not been digitised, to order it digitised for access within few days. But this demands enormous investments and resources.

Apart from the necessary resources to digitise the collections, we have to develop new methods for searching and presenting the material on the Internet. In this connection the need for really good user interfaces is obvious. Experiments concerned with presentation of digitised historical documents (sound, pictures, texts) for specific target groups such as the educational sector could result in the attraction of new user groups. At the moment our library runs such a project called "Commercial Films in Education" which will digitise selected commercial Danish films from the 1950s to be used at high school level.

Other important issues for the future are:

• The development of digital standards which can be used both for access and preservation purposes
• The development of tools for measuring the use of digital resources
• The implementation of electronic payment systems
• The development of security tools to control the use of our materials, e.g. by watermarking
• This last thing leads to the very important issue of copyright (which I did not elaborate very much in this paper). But copyright and a continuous dialogue with rights holders about the specific needs of cultural institutions, is maybe the most crucial item for our future.

6. Links

Cultural Network Denmark : http://www.kulturnet.dk
Danish Audio History: http://www.statsbiblioteket.dk/dlh/
Project Jukebox: http://www.statsbiblioteket.dk/service/jukemenu.html

TIME TRAVELS IN VIRTUAL ONLINE LANDSCAPES: VIRTUAL REALITY - A NEW CHALLENGE IN DRAMATURGY?
Ingo Braun, Kulturbox GmbH Electronic Media, Germany

Kulturbox is not a museum, an archive or a library. It is a private firm, the only one present at this seminar. Several historical events led to the birth of Kulturbox.

The immediate causes of establishment of Kulturbox were two-fold:
Firstly, the wrapping up of the Reichstag building in 1995 by Christo Javacheff and Jeanne-Claude de Guillebon.

We wanted then to present this event on the Internet and were allowed to do this. The whole event of the wrapping up of the Reichstag building was recorded on the Internet. This event inspired us to develop further ideas about presenting cultural information on the Internet. From then on a cultural information centre evolved on an ad hoc basis. We began with 2 people; today there are 40 people working in our organisation. It became an instantaneous success. The Technical University of Berlin, which hosted our Website, experienced difficulties with this success. We have had up to 1000.000 million hits.

The second immediate cause of the "invention" of Kulturbox was the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The reunion of both part of the city brought both central libraries of Berlin together. The organisational change was led by Mrs Claudia Lux.

At the moment, there are some 19 projects currently running.
It was our aim to create appealing Web applications, such as the project "Universes in Universe" and Z-VLB Zeitreisen.

The Universes in Universe project aims at giving a worldwide overview of contemporary art.

The Zeitreisen project aims at the 3-dimensional and dynamic presentation of social, cultural and artistic change and development throughout time. The participants in the project are the Museum für Arbeit und Technik in Mannheim, the Bauhausarchiv in Berlin, Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv in Berlin and Frankfurt, Werkbundarchive Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz and Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin.

The original idea of the Zeitreisen project was to experiment with 3-dimensional online landscapes to be presented in libraries, museums and archives. With the help of pictures we reconstructed an urban district that had a history of 200 years, "Unter den Linden". This 3D landscape with its history of 200 years changes over time. The user gets different vistas of the urban landscape, after he or she has chosen some specific date within the range of the historical period. By means of this technique, we will be able to present the reconstruction of the architectural development over 200 years. At the same time, the 3D landscape will be an exhibition platform for museums, libraries and archives which they can use for their own exhibitions. All kinds of data will be used in these exhibitions; sound, images and text.

The advantage will be that a time-variable virtual reality platform can supply a range of new and interesting possibilities to show objects in their historical context, which has been very difficult until recently. In classical exhibitions the context is usually reduced to the literal frame in which the object is presented. The historical context is then available as an explanatory text and therefore only accessible in a detached and cerebral way. At best visualisations of the object are supplied in catalogues and can be studied at home after the visiting the museum.

A virtual reality landscape allows one to connect a single historical object with the corresponding urban context and its real life component. In exhibitions with objects related to historical change, this is of particular advantage. The historical context is, as it were, automatically delivered by the time-travelling function, as long as the development takes place within the timespan covered by the system.

Another benefit of digital exhibitions will be that one can use fragile objects without harm. The fragility of the objects poses a well known problem for those museums that initiate exhibitions with objects form several different collections. The context relation of the museum's objects opens a multiple synergy when the virtual reality platform is used for several exhibitions about differing issues. This can have very practical advantages e.g. when objects of an exhibition with subject A can be used as set for an exhibition with subject B and so forth. Therefore we hope that the tremendous work effort we have to put into the set objects of our V.R. world, can be made more economical if the V.R. platform is extensively used by museums.

The third benefit is that it will be possible to put together exhibitions with objects from different museums within a relatively short time. It will also be possible to make "just in time" exhibitions on the virtual reality platform for special occasions.

Finally, virtual landscapes will offer the opportunity to experiment with new forms of instruction and education.

The reconstruction of a historical environment is not easy. We have the problem of historical memory. Our recollection, for instance, of the inter-bellum period is formed by the paintings and photography of that period and in the colours then used. So our remembrance of the past is not realistic. If we want to reconstruct the past, we ideally will have to do that in sepia or black-and-white and we cannot reconstruct the past in the bright colours in which we see the world now. In the reconstruction of the past, we very often neglect street sounds, such as the yelling of a fish monger or a paper boy or the off-key tremolo of a barrel organ. Just a neat architectural reconstruction will not convince the spectator. He most probably will expect the dirt of the street, the patina of the buildings or even the smell of the street. But how do we reconstruct these subtleties of bygone times, how do we reconstruct the imagery in our collective memory, which is filled with images of early photographs and paintings? For reconstructing the past we have to adapt to the visual aesthetics of the 19th century city and landscape painting.

The user can navigate through the virtual landscape with the help of hyperlinks. These hyperlinks are built under some of the images. For instance the links under the images of advertising columns will lead the user to a database with images of posters of the time. The choice of period, will lead the user to news bulletins or musical records of the time. Images of paper vendors will lead the user to databases with newspaper images of the chosen period. We also want to use sound as a helpful means in the navigation process of the end user.
It is planned that the landscape will be made available on the Internet in 1999. We expect that bandwidth problems will arise. We also have to reckon with the administration of copyright on the images.
We also plan to design a guided tour of the virtual historical landscape. The guided tour addresses users who have little experience with navigation in three dimensional worlds. It also addresses users looking for very specific information. The guided tour will lead the user to historically interesting sites. At every stop during the tour, additional information will be provided. The visitor himself will decide whether to make the next step or not. At any point during the guided tour, the user must be free to make his own excursions by navigating freely through the 3D space.

As we have seen, we can connect individual objects via the historical context we can create on the virtual reality platform. A prerequisite for doing this is that we have an exact knowledge about the exhibited objects. As a consequence we have to put an exact date on the objects, something which is not always possible. Furthermore the linking of objects to contemporary information resources, such newspapers, pamphlets and posters demands much of our intellectual resources. Therefore we must have a vast knowledge about those objects. This cannot be achieved by a single curator. Knowledge of several disciplines is needed at the same time. The convergence process we are confronted with is not only a matter of new common technologies but enforces the co-operation of people from different disciplines, such as social history, architectural history, history of art and technology.

[1] Šola, Tomislav. Muzeološki prilog teorijskim osnovama informacijskih znanosti, p. 148.

[2] Taylor, R. S. Information sciences, p. 4161.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Gernot Wersig and U. Neveling , for example,stress the connection between Librarianship, Museum sciences, Archivistics and Education, which are at the same time interconnected with other disciplines such as Psychology, Sociology, Economics, Political Sciences and Technology. They placed all these disciplines inside the field of Information Sciences, and the basic element for such an approach is the notion of 'special users group'. Cf. The Phenomena of interest to information science, pp. 137-139.

[5] Crawford, W. and M. Gorman. Future libraries: dreams, madness & reality. Chicago, London: American Library Association, 1996.

[6] Saracevic, T. Intellectual organization of knowledge, pp. 16-17.

[7] Sveuilite u Zagrebu, 1984., p. 1.

[8] Ibid. Croatian authors have offered some interesting contributions to the theoretical discussions about the field of Information Sciences and their related disciplines (for example, Teak's concept of ETAKSA and his interpretations of the domain of Informatology, the approach taken toward the classification of the academic disciplines at the University of Zagreb, Tuman's interpretations of the theoretical foundations of Information Science, Maroevi's and ola's interpretations of Museology, Aparac-Gazivoda's approach to the theoretical questions of Library Science. However, the impact of these theoretical contributions outside Croatia and the former Yugoslavia is low, mostly because of language barriers and the lack of availability of Croatian books and journals outside the country.

[9] Ibid; Cf. also Saracevic, T. Information science: origin, evolution and relations, pp. 5-27.

[10] Elaine Svenonius (ed) The conceptual foundations of descriptive cataloging. San Diego: Academic Press, 1989.

[11] Functional requirements for bibliographic records: final report. IFLA Study on the Functional requirements for bibliographic records. Approved by the Standing Committee of the IFLA Section on Cataloguing. München etc.: K.G. Saur, 1998.

[12] Dillon, Martin and Eric Jul. Cataloguing Internet resources: the convergence of libraries and Internet resources. In: Cataloguing and classification quarterly , vol. 22, no. 3/4, 1996, p. 198.

[13] Tillett, Barbara. Progress report from the IFLA UBCIM Working Group on MLAR and the ISADN. In: SCATNews, no. 8, June 1997, pp. 4-5: URL: http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/scatn/news8.htm and updated report for 1998.

[14] Bourdon, Françoise et Sonia Zillhardt. AUTHOR: vers une base européenne de notice d'autorite auteurs. In: International cataloguing and bibliographic control 26, 2(1997), pp. 34-37.

[15] See: http://www.dbc.dk/ONE/oneweb/index.html .

[16] Kuny, Terry and Gary Cleveland. The digital library: myths and challenges. In: IFLA journal 24(1998)2; pp. 107-113.

[17] The project is co-funded by the European Commission (DGXIII). Partners are:

• Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) (The Hague, Netherlands),
• Witt Library (London, UK),
• Trinity College of Dublin, Art History Department (Dublin, Ireland),
• Birkbeck College (London, UK),
• University of Utrecht, Department of Computers & Humanities (Utrecht, Netherlands),
• Vasari Ltd. (Aldershot, UK),
• BSL (Brightside of Life) (Maarssen, Netherlands),
• SSL (Systems Simulation) (London, UK).

[18] The term 'archives'is used in its most generic sense, archives, text bases, libraries, databases.

[19] Survey of International Standards for Minimum Art Object & Image Description / dr. C. Hourihane. - London : Witt Library, 1995. - 104 p.