Recover, Rebuild, Grow is the Europeana 2021 conference, taking place on 10-12 November 2021. The rich programme of speeches, presentations and interactive activities aimed to raise voices from across the cultural heritage sector to empower digital transformation and find ways to supporting a sustainable, responsible and inspiring cultural heritage sector for today and tomorrow.
In addition to the conference programme, a virtual environment on Gathertown allowed participants to interact and explore more resources including a virtual poster session where also PAGODE poster was showcased.
In June 2021 the Europeana Aggregators’ Forum and Europeana Foundation will hold the first ever Aggregators’ Fair, and PAGODE has a prominent participation with one ignite talk by Kostas Kostantinidis (Postscriptum) on day one and a dedicated session entitled Behind the scenes of PAGODE: building an aggregation value chain by Antonella Fresa (Promoter), Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik and Maja Veselič, (University of Ljubljana) and Sofie Taes (PHOTOCONSORTIUM) on day two.
Highlights from PAGODE, pitch by Kostas Kostantinidis, 16 June h. 14.45 CEST
Behind the scenes of PAGODE, workshop by Antonella Fresa, Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik, Maja Veselič, Sofie Taes , 17 June h. 13 CEST
At this online web conference, the Europeana Aggregators’ Forum opened their virtual doors to cultural heritage professionals and anyone with an interest in high quality, open cultural heritage content. The exciting programme gave participants the opportunity to listen to inspiring speakers, join panel discussions, take in training webinars and ask questions of the people working in aggregation. It has been a great opportunity to find out more about how high quality cultural heritage content is being made accessible to new audiences through Europeana, and how one can get involved.
PAGODE – Europeana China is proud to open the online symposium about missionary activities and East Asian collections in Europe, organized by the Science and Research Centre Koper; the Department of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana and the Regional Museum of Celje.
PAGODE Roundtable discussion, 20th May 2021 h. 11.00 – 12.30 CEST
DIGITIZATION AND CURATION OF MISSIONARY COLLECTIONS IN EUROPE
Moderated by Jonas van Mulder, KADOC Documentation and Research Centre on Religion, Culture and Society, KU Leuven, Belgium
With participation of • Ismo Malinen, Chief Intendant of the Picture Collections, Finnish Heritage Agency (Finland) – view presentation • Carine Dujardin, Head Public Services and Sharing Expertise at KADOC-KU Leuven (Belgium) – view presentation • Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik, Department of Asian Studies, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia) – view presentation • Antonella Fresa, Promoter srl (Italy) and Sofie Taes, Digital Curator, Photoconsortium (Italy) and KU Leuven (Belgium) – view presentation
The second general assembly of PAGODE project took place on 22 June 2021 in an online meeting, to review the progress of the project and to plan the project’s activities in the final period: PAGODE is in facts going to end on 30 September 2021.
The uncertainities of the covid -19 evolution forced the project team to review the tasks originally foreseen for the project’s conclusion. Due to safety reasons, physical meetings are in facts not advisable and this caused the need to consider alternative ways of engaging audiences and of transferring knowledge to colleagues and pros.
PAGODE’s end will therefore be celebrated with
PAGODE Digital Festival, a series of short online seminars to discover beautiful collections of Chinese heritage, in the period May – September (go to programme)
Final Conference, an online event on 23-24 September 2021 (go to programme)
PAGODE book, an exclusive and high-profile publication, to tell the stories of the project and to share beautiful images of cultural heritage content
During the General Assembly, more details were unveiled about these initiatives. Additionally the status of all the project’s activities was reviewed, with a particular attention to the development of the upcoming Europeana China virtual exhibition. The meeting was open to partners and associate partners, with a special invitation also forwarded to the HaDEA agency of European Commission. Hosted on Zoom by the University of Ljubljana, 22 June.
General Assembly – agenda
9,00 – 9,30 Online check-in
9,30 – 10,00 Reserved session only for the beneficiaries: activity 1 Project Management and finances (MISE & Promoter)
Morning session: 10,00 am – 12,00 pm CET
10,00 – 10,15 Welcome by the Coordinator
10,15 – 10,20 Approval of the agenda and introduction by the Technical
Coordinator
10,20 – 11,00 The thematic space of Europeana China Feature Page (Photoconsortium and Europeana Foundation)
view presentation by Sofie Taes (Photoconsortium) and Jolan Wuyts (Europeana)
11,00 – 11,40 Activity 2 Annotation and ingestion to Europeana
PHOTOCONSORTIUM, International Consortium for Photographic Heritage, and EUROPEANA, the European Commission’s digital platform for cultural heritage are proud to present a prime accomplishment of PAGODE – Europeana China. This project, aimed at creating a dedicated thematic space that highlights and celebrates Chinese heritage in Europe, officially launches a feature page on April 4th, showcasing a variety of Chinese and China-related cultural heritage items and resources from European cultural institutions such as museums, libraries and photographic archives.
“International exchanges have been and are still at the basis of the evolution of our society. In particular, this is true in the relationships between Europe and China. While goods are moving and determining the economic values of these exchanges, people move with their ideas and cultures. Mutual understanding and acknowledging the value of the variety of cultural heritage in the world is key to support the creation of healthy spaces for business development.” says dr. Mauro Fazio, Italian Ministry of Economic Development, the PAGODE project coordinator. “Digitisation, curation and access to digital treasures of Chinese heritage held in European institutions, as the main objectives of this project, are expected to contribute to the process of digital transformation in the light of a more inclusive, equal and global growth.”
Jolan Wuyts, Collections Editor at Europeana: “In Europeana we have the opportunity to highlight collections that can be otherwise underrepresented, showcasing Chinese Heritage in European collections is one of those opportunities. The PAGODE project enables users to dive into Chinese heritage collections while at the same time being guided by important context and curation from PAGODE project partners. Collecting these editorials in a single feature page allows Europeana to give a platform to PAGODE’s curation efforts and other editorial on Chinese heritage in one place.”
VISIT THE NEW THEMATIC SPACE
Themed galleries, blog posts and curated digital content will guide visitors through this online treasure trove. Image by image, story by story, visitors can immerse themselves in the rich narratives of two worlds that have been meeting and mixing for centuries. The feature page will offer ample opportunity for discovering the stories of Empress Cixi, of the mandarin duck, of the Chinese junk, and exploring thousands of curiosities and stunning images of Chinese heritage in Europe. To be added to the page in September 2021 is a virtual exhibition of Chinese heritage and art in Europe.
On 26 January the General Assembly of PAGODE project was called in an online meeting, to review the progress of the project and to plan the next activities for the remaining months. PAGODE is in facts going to end on 30 September 2021.
A very busy period is therefore ahead: with digitization to be completed; massive ingestion of new collections to be published in Europeana; a second round of the crowdsourcing campaign; automated metadata enrichments via Artificial Intelligence; and the preparation and launch of the PAGODE exhibition to be presented online as a virtual exhibition in Europeana, and to be hopefully inaugurated in physical form at the Museum of Graphics in Pisa, on 24th September, accompained with a collection day to engage local Chinese communities sharing photographs from family albums. The very last event of the project will then be on 27-28 September with the final conference organized by KIK-IRPA, unless travel restrictions will apply..
The meeting was open to partners and associate partners and included a presentation of the upcoming Europeana China thematic space, that will highlight in Europeana portal all the contents and editorials delivered by the PAGODE project.
Activity 2 Content annotation and ingestion to Europeana
EUROMED is an biannual conference organized in Cyprus and dedicated to Digital Cultural Heritage Documentation, Preservation and Protection. Due to the covid-crisis the event has been turned into a webconference, online via Zoom and also as a streaming on Facebook @UNESCO_DCH: https://www.facebook.com/Unesco.DCH
PAGODE – Europeana China presented a paper that was illustrated in the session “Preservation and Use and Re-use“, on 5th November h. 17 CET.
Originally a project event focused on dataset enrichment, due to the covid-crisis this event was expanded and transformed in an online gathering, to discuss and share knowledge on metadata curation, strategies for the use of vocabularies and thesauri, semantic enrichment by natural language processing and entity extraction methods, all with a strong focus on building capacity inside Cultural Heritage Institutions. With the participation of Europeana, a section was specifically dedicated to the process of aggregation of data for publication in Europeana portal, also considering the requirements of the Europeana Publishing Framework.
PRESENTATIONS FROM THE SPEAKERS
Kostas Kostas Kostantinidis, Postscriptum / Welcome and speakers’ presentations – PDF
Henning Scholz, Partner & Operations Manager at Europeana Foundation / Deep impact – digital transformation with high quality data – PDF
Maja Veselič, Dunja Zorman, Department of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana / The Use of Thesauri and Vocabularies in Chinese and China-related Cultural Heritage – PDF
Valentina Bachi, Sofie Taes, Photoconsortium / “Scenes and People from China”: a crowdsourcing campaign to collect tags on heritage photography in Europeana – PDF
Haris Georgiadis, Head of e-Services Unit, E-infrastructure and Information Systems Department, National Documentation Center (EKT) / Semantic Enrichment Strategy for SearchCulture.gr – PDF
Vassilis Tzouvaras, Technical Consultant, PostScriptum / Semantic enrichment using natural language processing and entity extraction methods – PDF
Xiaoying Zhou, Digital Resources Integration Team at the National Library of China / Digital Resource Metadata Specification – PDF
Liyu Fang, Senior Engineer at the Department of Digital Media, Palace Museum / The Management of the Digital Resources in the Palace Museum – PDF
Additionally, with the occasion of this event, participants had the opportunity to discover the PAGODE Annotation Pilot and to be involved in an annotation sprint to “Scenes and People from China”, by looking at images available in Europeana and adding more descriptive tags. “Scenes and People from China” is a carefully selected collection that offers a glimpse of life in China throughout the 20th century as well as portraits featuring people with Chinese roots or ancestors. From casually posing families to stately portrayed celebrities and from evocative landscapes to impressive heritage sites, this gallery helps to paint a picture of China seen through the eyes of its residents and visitors. Chinese communities abroad are depicted as well, adding an extra dimension to this visual reflection of Sino-European relations. With the annotation sprint we easily reached 100% of the annotation target!
Kostas Konstantinidis, CEO at PostScriptum Welcome Note
Wang Chao Cultural Counsellor Embassy of People’s Republic of China in the Hellenic Republic Welcome Note
Mauro Fazio, PAGODE Project Leader, Italian Ministry of Economic Development Welcome Note
Antonella Fresa, Promoter, Technical Coordinator for PAGODE The PAGODE – Europeana China action Short bio: Antonella Fresa is the director of implementations at Promoter Srl and Vice-President of Photoconsortium. She is technical coordinator and communication manager of national and European projects on digital cultural heritage and project manager of digitalmeetsculture.net magazine of Promoter. Her interests lay in particular on virtual museums, digital cultural archives, participatory approaches in culture, smart cities, urban regeneration, digital preservation and e-infrastructures. She regularly serves as independent expert of the European Commission and of national and regional research bodies. She is an Enterprise fellow at Coventry University and member of the Advisory Board of CSI-COP project on citizen science
Henning Scholz, Partner & Operations Manager at Europeana Foundation. Deep impact – digital transformation with high quality data Mr Scholz presented European Foundation, its priorities and ecosystem while he focused on the importance of the quality and openness of data and the impact it can have on institutions which publish content on the web and the benefits that can be created. Short bio: Henning is responsible for the relationships with cultural heritage professionals. As a paleontology curator and BHL-Europe coordinator, Henning contributed digital objects to the portal even before joining Europeana in 2012.
Xiaoying Zhou, Deputy Leader of National Library Digital Resources Department of the National Library of China. Digital Resource Metadata Specification Ms Zhou presented the Metadata Application Framework (MAF), the Metadata structure, established in the National Library of China, the standardized the application process of metadata, and the research carried out from 1989 on standardizing data, the “Name Standardization Group” that was established in 1995. Short bio: Xiaoying Zhou, is a librarian, Digital Resources Integration Team and deputy leader of Chinese National Library Digital Resources Department. She is postdoctoral student of the Chinese National Library. Her research expertise is knowledge organization, data mining and digital resource integration.
Liyu Fang , Senior Engineer at the Department of Digital Media, Palace Museum The Management of the Digital Resources in the Palace Museum Ms Fang presented the Palace Museum and the organization infrastructure, the management of the digital resources and all information activities taking place at the Palace Museum. Short bio: Liyu Fang joined the Palace Museum in 2004 as a developer. Through 16 years of work, she has rich experience in museum informatization. Her research focuses on digital preservation of cultural heritage and the century-long history of visual documentation of the Forbidden City. At present, she is curating the museum’s digital resources, and collection of old photos.
Maja Veselič, Department of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. Short bio: Maja Veselič is a sinologist with a PhD in anthropology. She works at the Department of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana where she teaches courses on contemporary China and conducts research on religion in East Asia. She is also a member of the project East Asian Collections in Slovenia, which aims to digitize East Asian objects in national and local museums, rendering the vast majority of these collections publically accessible for the first time.
Dunja Zorman, Department of Asian Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. Short bio: Dunja Zorman holds a university degree in sinology and sociology. She has been working in the outbound Chinese tourism sector for more than a decade, though she has also spent several years in the more general China-related business consultancy. Now Dunja works as a research assistant in the Department of Asian Studies at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, where she is researching new ways of presenting Chinese cultural heritage in Europe and the development of China-related cultural tourism.
Valentina Bachi, Photoconsortium Short bio: Valentina Bachi is a project manager at Photoconsortium, Europeana’s thematic aggregator for photography, and she is an expert in the management and dissemination of digital cultural heritage projects. For PAGODE, she is in charge of the coordination of content providers for the ingestion of datasets to Europeana, and of the sustainability task
Sofie Taes, Photoconsortium Short bio: Sofie Taes is an alumna of KU Leuven (Belgium), where she graduated in musicology and Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Currently she works at the Institute for Cultural Studies (CS Digital) at KU Leuven and at Photoconsortium, as a digital curator. She has curated a wide range of editorials and virtual exhibitions for Europeana as well as the physical exhibitions All Our Yesterdays, Thousands are Sailing and Blue Skies, Red Panic. Currently she is active in several European projects involving digital cultural heritage and user engagement strategies, among which Europeana XX: Century of Change, PAGODE – Europeana China and inDICEs.
Haris Georgiadis, Head of the Digital Services Unit at the National Documentation Centre. Semantic Enrichment Strategy for SearchCulture.gr Short bio: Dr. Haris Georgiadis is Head of the Digital Services Unit at the National Documentation Centre. In this capacity he is managing, as technical and scientific coordinator, several European and national projects that collectively contribute to the development of a national infrastructure for high quality, interoperable, open access, scientific and cultural digital content and data. In particular, he is the technical director and the main developer of the National Aggregation SearchCulture.gr and the semantic enrichment infrastructure Semantics.gr. He has co-authored 7 scientific journal and conference articles that present various aspects of the above-mentioned infrastructure. Before joining EKT Haris worked in the private sector, as a Researcher at Oxford University’s Computing Lab and he has been a Software Engineer at the Europeana Foundation. He holds a Bachelor degree in Informatics from the University of Piraeus, a MSc at Information Systems and a PhD degree at Information Systems from the Athens University of Economics and Business. His research interests include designing of digital content management systems, processing and optimizing queries on non-traditional data, search engine optimization, metadata theory, semantic web and linked data.
Vassilis Tzouvaras, Technical Consultant, PostScriptum Short bio: Dr. Vassilis Tzouvaras received the Bachelor of Engineering in the Department of Electronic & Systems Engineering of Essex University, the Master of Engineering in the Department of Automatic Control & Systems Engineering in Sheffield University in UK, and the Ph.D. in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of National Technical University of Athens in the field of knowledge technologies, and specifically in extending OWL with fuzzy set operators. Since 2005, he is a senior researcher at the Artificial Intelligence and Learning Systems (AILS) of NTUA and technical consultant at Postscriptum. He is carrying out research in the areas of machine learning, knowledge representation, ontology engineering, reasoning and semantic search. He is active in the Europeana developments and many related projects. He has published 15 journal papers and 60 conference papers. He is also member of the subgroup of the Digital Cultural Heritage and Europeana (DCHE) formed by the DGConnect which has been established to provide the DCHE with advice on certain aspects of the Europeana Digital Service Infrastructure, such as Europeana’s general objectives, governance, strategic priorities, evolution and sustainability. He is also technical consultant of the Enterprise Greece responsible for organising and promoting Greek startups.
Orfeas Menis – Mastromichalakis, Researcher Orfeas Menis – Mastromichalakis is a graduate of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). He completed his undergraduate studies in November of 2019 in the field of Information Technology and his diploma thesis was “Art Style Recognition of Artworks with Convolutional Neural Networks”. Since then he works as a Research Associate in the Artificial Intelligence and Learning Systems Laboratory of the National Τechnical University of Athens, where he holds the position of Ph.D. student and researcher since October 2020. His research interests include Artificial Neural Networks, Image Processing and Analysis with CNNs, Fuzzy Systems, Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI), and Natural Language Processing (NLP).
EVA Florence is an annual appointment, that started as a small workshop in 1991, then becoming in few years a well-defined conference in the EVA (Electronic Imaging & the Visual Arts) international series. Due to the covid-crisis the conference has been turned into a videoconference to be held on 20th July under the coordination of the University of Florence, professor “emeritus” Vito Cappellini and professor Enrico Del Re.
PAGODE – Europeana China presented a paper that will be illustrated in the afternoon session “Access to the culture information”.
EVA FLORENCE programme: PDF – contacts: vito.cappellini@unifi.it
Paper “PAGODE – Europeana China” authored by Valentina Bachi (Photoconsortium) and Antonella Fresa (Promoter srl): PDF
image from the paper
PAGODE – Europeana China is co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility Programme of the European Union, under GA n. INEA/CEF/ICT/A2019/1931839
The PAGODE Semantic Workshop is organized by the project team at the Department of Asian Studies, University of Ljubljana. Its aim was to set the common ground for the curation of Chinese cultural heritage in the Europeana Digital Library. The workshop was held as an online event on Zoom on 9-10 July 2020.
The purpose of the PAGODE Semantic Workshop is to discuss the semantic background and the metadata curation methods of the already existing as well as newly added China-related content in Europeana. We took this occasion to review the definition of Chinese cultural heritage as well as discuss the list of keywords and use of thesauri that are developed within the Activity 3.1. of the PAGODE Project.
Above all, the workshop gave the participants the opportunity to tackle specific problems arising from the practical application of semantic definitions and of the metadata specifications. The project partners and the associated content owners were invited to present the material that is difficult to categorise or otherwise problematic as related to specifications.
Ultimately, the PAGODE Semantic Workshop provided the means for an improvement of the existing metadata scheme and enable further development of methodological approaches.
