future heritage, our legacy alfredo m. ronchi ec medici framework secretariat...
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Future heritage, our legacy
Alfredo M. Ronchi EC MEDICI Framework Secretariat
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)• . . . .
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.