Steering Group composition
Henk Alkemade
Andrija Sagic (Chair)
Clemens Neudecker
Georgia Angelaki
Johan Oomen
Ina Blumel
Cosmina Berta
Martin Weiss
Glen Robson
Tiziana Lombardo
Sk Abdul Gafur
Gregory Markus (Community Manager)
Antoine Isaac (Community Manager)
Marloes Bontje (Community Manager)
In January an open call will be made for those wishing to join the EuropeanaTech Steering Group.
Community aspiration for 2024
Grow EuropeanaTech’s role as a facilitator of knowledge exchange within the Europeana Network Association, identify and serve the needs of a community with very different levels of technical maturity
Support and accelerate the identification and adoption of new and innovative technologies for the cultural heritage sector, which may come from the ecosystem of other data spaces, research infrastructures, etc.
Contribute to the shaping of the common European data space for cultural heritage.
To make these aspirations more concrete, the EuropeanaTech community recognises two main, overarching goals, that are aligned with the intentions of the common European data space for cultural heritage and cover a timespan of several years to come.
1) Capacity building to support adoption of new and existing technologies in view of the common European data space for cultural heritage
This means developing a strand of activities aimed at upskilling members in areas such as AI, data quality and the Europeana Publishing Framework, Europeana Data Model, IIIF, multilinguality, 3D, heritage acoustics, etc. with a set of appropriate activities including developing more resources, localising resources and running webinars.
2) Continue to explore cutting-edge advancements in our sector
We will develop activities following the discussions at the EuropeanaTech 2023 conference. An open call to propose and join new Task Forces and explore other cutting-edge advancements that can be used by the cultural heritage sector will be issued.
Priority areas
In 2024 we will focus - within the previously mentioned main goals - on the following priority areas. Our priority areas of focus directly align with the Europeana 2021-2025 strategy:
“Tech is changing all the time. Reflecting its public service role, Europeana will develop and use cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, e-translation and machine learning in line with the European Commission’s Ethics guidelines for trustworthy AI”
1) From shelf to Europeana: supporting the workflow
In order to reach the goals specified in the common European data space for cultural heritage, organisations will need to increase their digital output and look at each step of the workflow between shelf and Europeana. We aim to encourage and support cultural heritage institutions - especially small and medium sized ones - at each step by sharing available best practices and Open Source tools. As each institution/organisation is different, the particular steps will have to be adapted to local circumstances, including, for example, materials present, budget, the workforce, applicable laws etc. Next to the addition of new datasets to Europeana and opening them up for (re-)use, this will greatly contribute to the digital skills of the cultural heritage professionals.
The EuropeanaTech community will also follow and support wherever appropriate the work of the new cross-initiative working group on innovative operating models for the data space, especially regarding linked data and decentralized aggregation.
2) AI in relation to cultural heritage
The Steering Group will continue to support the community with AI related efforts following the conclusion of AI in Relation to GLAMs task force. These will include:
Offering webinars and editorials on Pro to explore the latest AI-related developments and gather insights into the adaptation of selected technology and workflows. Through this, we will provide a space for discussion and expertise to continue the focused growth of AI within digital cultural heritage.
Coordinating, sharing knowledge and seeking collaboration with other AI related groups, for instance: AI4Media, AI4Culture, AI4LAM, AI+Museums Network and AI-driven cultural heritage projects under the Horizon 2020 - Research and innovation program.
3) 3D Content
The Steering Group will remain proactive with efforts in relation to 3D, supporting the actions in the data space implementation plan. This includes engaging in dialogue with the IIIF 3D community and with 4CH - centre of competence on 3D in cultural heritage.
Task Forces and Working Groups
Linked Data Integration and Publication: Theory and practice Task Force
Heritage Acoustic and Sound Working Group
Workflow from shelf to Europeana Task Force
● The EuropeanaTech IIIF working group will continue to support the uptake of IIIF in the EuropeanaTech and Aggregator communities by exploring one off webinars and look to produce documents and other outputs that will help the community implement IIIF.
The Datasheets for Digital Cultural Heritage joint Working Group with Europeana Research will continue their work on Datasheets for Digital Cultural Heritage, in 2024 with a focus on disseminating and evaluating the use of the first version of the datasheets. We intend to publish the results in an open academic journal on digital humanities as well.
● The Data Quality Committee will continue its work among others on detection of problem patterns.
Contributing to the priorities of the Europeana Network Association
The EuropeanaTech Community work plan for 2024 contributes to the strategic priorities of the Europeana Network Association in a number of ways:
EuropeanaTech will continue its efforts to disseminate and raise awareness of best-practices plus recent innovations within digital cultural heritage R&D, directly aligning and propagating ENA's strategic priority to transfer knowledge across the Europeana Network Association. For instance, via the Linked Data Integration and Publication: Theory and practice and the Workflow from shelf to Europeana Task Forces.
EuropeanaTech will continue to organise opportunities for different community members to communicate with the network at large to promote various milestones or events like EuropeanaTech 2023 and ongoing blog series.
As part of the EuropeanaTech 2023 conference, EuropeanaTech will develop a more diverse and inclusive program to both highlight the necessity for diversity within technical related matters and the impact that having more diverse voices in the R&D decision making process has across the entire cultural heritage spectrum.
EuropeanaTech will continue to offer support and be open to the activation of Task Forces relevant to EuropeanaTech. While the budget is limited, EuropeanaTech can assist in different ways in terms of dissemination and liaison across various stakeholders and the other communities.
Communications and outreach
The EuropeanaTech Steering Group will coordinate with Europeana Foundation and the community at large to continue organising regular webinars and outreach activities that are relevant for the EuropeanaTech community.
EuropeanaTech will contribute news posts to Europeana Pro in coordination with the Europeana Foundation editorial team.
EuropeanaTech will report on community highlights through the EuropeanaTech mailing list.
EuropeanaTech will make a dedicated page on Europeana Pro for promoting the open call for Task Forces
EuropeanaTech will make two announcements about a Task Force open call in the spring and autumn.
Other activities
In 2024 we will do a first round of investigation into the need for and the possibilities for a mentoring/matchmaking program, based on the needs of the community members, the input gathered from the EuropeanaTech Conference (workflow, digital tools, storytelling, IIIF) and the availability of mentoring-capacity in the community.
Discussing with the Climate Action Community how we can work together on, for example, minimising the carbon footprint of digitisation, processing and dissemination and ensuring that sustainability is always one of our concerns in all projects.
Making sure diversity and inclusion aspects are always taken into consideration in all projects.
Budget
Including reserve list of activities in case there is extra budget by July 2024:
Workflow from shelf to Europeana Task Force - Q2: EUR 2 500
Linked Data Integration and Publication: Theory and practice Task Force - EUR 2 500
Datasheets for CH datasets: follow up publication in Journal of Open Humanities (50% publication fees, shared with the Europeana Research Community) - Q3 EUR 250
Task Force open call - 1000EUR (in reserve, if needed)
