Future heritage, our legacy Alfredo M. Ronchi EC MEDICI Framework Secretariat [email protected] [email protected] .

Future heritage, our legacy

Alfredo M. Ronchi EC MEDICI Framework Secretariat

[email protected] [email protected]

MEDICI Framework

MEDICI Framework• Established in 1995• Promotes the use of ICT & New Tech in the

field of culture - education, cultural heritage

Digital Preservation• End ’90 // Cult H Vienna ’99• St Petersburg UNESCO Information for All 2004 • New York WWW 2004• Asolo 2006• Moscow 2011

• . . .

Digital Landscape• In the last few decades we have witnessed two related

processes: the increasingly visible inclusion of electronic devices in our everyday lives, and the rush to digital formats.

• Which are the long-term implications if we rely on current digital technology to preserve our cultural memory? – Documents– Archives– Music, Movie– Artifacts– Everyday objects and documents– Heritage / Intangible Heritage– Appliances & tools– …..

• Long term preservation of digital archives is a issue not only for cultural content but even for e-government and social services.

• We have to value objectively a problem up till now widely underestimated and that is the conservation for long periods of time of digital information.

“Digital fragility”• Rapid changes in technology make

preservation of digital content a challenge. The biological clock of ICT beats smaller time slices compared to those considered worldwide in the field of cultural heritage.

• Digital formats becomes suddenly obsolete and disappear. An extraordinarily long-lived solution, such as the PC/DOS in great favour for over twenty years, represents a short-lived apparition if compared to the time spent in state owned archives.

• Systems are aging, media on which information is stored are disintegrating - the magnetic technology diskette survives without problems for thousands of hours but not enough to be considered 'permanent' for those aims.

“The ability of a culture to survive into the future depends on the richness and acuity

of its members’ sense of history.”

Everyday objects - Artefacts

Digital Installations

It is not only a matter of technology

• Of course, we cannot preserve everything; there are products and content that will not necessarily reach future generations. Perhaps we should devote some time to choosing what should be destroyed/ recycled.

• Preservation implies the use of some “resources”: physical, human, financial, etc.

• Identification of the required timeframe: 10, 25, 70, for ever....

• Evaluation of the available preservation schema for that specific typology of “object”

• Identification of the “resolution” level required

• Other criteria

Three main phases• Ideally we can subdivide the process in two different

phases: the organisational (appraisal, preparation, etc) and the preservation.

• In addition we must foresee a third phase: future access

Future AccessAccess process Setup of data

PreservationPreservation Methodologies Technoligies (clouds, …)

OrganisationAppraisal Preparation Operation systems, Applications

Approach• Operating system

– Specific system services pipelining data

– Specific system services • Applications

– Specific ontology (customizable)– User transparent management of

tags– Visible tagging– . . .

• Services (Cloud Computing, . . . .)– In house management– Traditional outsourcing of the service– Clouds (SaaS, AssS, etc)

Appraisal / Selection

Let’s consider usual documents:• Born digital or digitised? (analogue original preserved?)• Typology – doc, ppt, excel, pict, web, hypermedia,

interactive installation, etc . . .• Legal Aspects, authenticity and IPR• Relevance – short lived (notes)

Long lived

Very long lived

For ever• Context• Quality / Resolution

Plain text

Text & format

. . . .

Doc as is

• Information about the digital object, technological framework, format etc

Applications

• Ontologies• TAGs

Digital preservation phase

• This process is managed apart from backup procedures

• There are different procedures and methods accordingly with “digital object” typology, quality, time span, legal issues, etc.

• The phase may be performed in-house or outsourced (service centres, etc)

Preservation

Appraisal

Preservation

- In house

- Outsourcing• Traditional Service Centres• Clouds • ….

Future Access

Future Access

“prediction is difficult, especially if it involves the future!”

Quote from Neils Bohr, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics

Next steps

• Promoting awareness• Fostering education and training• Fostering research• Promoting direct involvement of

software developers (OS, Apps, etc)• Selecting best practices• Developing sounding strategies for

specific sectors (templates)• . . . .

Thank You

Alfredo M. [email protected]

[email protected]

Main approaches & “formats”• Refreshing

• Printing …. microfilming

• Multiple Instances (copies)

• System Preservation

• Emulation

• Migration

• Standardisation

• Encapsulation

• ….

• Plain text (for a long time the essence of interoperability and long term format;

• Text with specific formats and functions (such as camera ready pages, spreadsheets, database import/export formats)

• Multi/hypermedia content (images, movies, sounds in different formats, links, refs);

• Technical Sketches, 3D models (vector graphics, interactive scenarios);

• Content deeply merged with specific applications (archives, data base, , video games, custom applications);

• Interactive installations, virtual enhanced reality applications, etc

• Future applications involving a higher interaction with users and heterogeneous distributed data structure.