Digital Heritage

In the fields of documentation and conservation of cultural heritage assets, there is a constant need for higher quality records and better analytical tools for extracting information about the condition of artefacts. Digital photography and digital image processing provide these capabilities, and recent technological advances in both fields promise new levels of performance for the capture and understanding of colour images. This inter-disciplinary book covers the imaging of decorated surfaces in historical buildings and the digitisation of documents, paintings and objects in museums and galleries, and shows how user requirements can be met by application of powerful digital imaging techniques. Numerous case studies illustrate the methods.

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Digital Heritage, EuroMed 2020, held virtually in November 2020. The 37 revised project papers and 30 revised short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 326 submissions. The papers are on topics such as digital data acquisition technologies in CH/2D and 3D data capture methodologies and data processing; remote sensing for archaeology and cultural heritage management and monitoring; interactive environments and applications; reproduction techniques and rapid prototyping in CH; e-Libraries and e-Archives in cultural heritage; virtual museum applications (e-Museums and e-Exhibitions); visualisation techniques (desktop, virtual and augmented reality); storytelling and authoring tools; tools for education; 2D and 3D GIS in cultural heritage; and on-site and remotely sensed data collection.

This book provides an overview of various application spheres and supports further innovations needed in information management and in the processes of knowledge generation. The professions, organizations and scientific associations involved are unusually challenged by the complexity of the data situation. Cartography has always been the central field of application for georeferencing digital cultural heritage (DCH) objects. It is particularly important in enabling spatial relation analysis between any number of DCH objects or of their granular details. In addition to the pure geometric aspects, the cognitive relations that lead to knowledge representation and derivation of innovative use processes are also of increasing importance. Further, there is a societal demand for spatial reference and analytics (e.g. the extensive use of cognitive concepts of "map" and "atlas" for a variety of social topics in the media). There is a huge geometrical-logical-cognitive potential for complex, multimedia, digital-cultural-heritage databases and stakeholders expect handling, transmission and processing operations with guaranteed long-term availability for all other stakeholders. In the future, whole areas of digital multimedia databases will need to be processed to further our understanding of historical and cultural contexts. This is an important concern for the information society and presents significant challenges for cartography in all these domains. This book collects innovative technical and scientific work on the entire process of object digitization, including detail extraction, archiving and interoperability of multimedia DCH data.

Exploring the use of digital methods in heritage studies and archaeological research The two volumes of Digital Heritage and Archaeology in Practice bring together archaeologists and heritage professionals from private, public, and academic sectors to discuss practical applications of digital and computational approaches to the field. Contributors thoughtfully explore the diverse and exciting ways in which digital methods are being deployed in archaeological interpretation and analysis, museum collections and archives, and community engagement, as well as the unique challenges that these approaches bring. In this volume, essays address methods for preparing and analyzing archaeological data, focusing on preregistration of research design and 3D digital topography. Next, contributors use specific case studies to discuss data structuring, with an emphasis on creating and maintaining large data sets and working with legacy data. Finally, the volume offers insights into ethics and professionalism, including topics such as access to data, transparency and openness, scientific reproducibility, open-access heritage resources, Indigenous sovereignty, structural racial inequalities, and machine learning. Digital Heritage and Archaeology in Practice highlights the importance of community, generosity, and openness in the use of digital tools and technologies. Providing a purposeful counterweight to the idea that digital archaeology requires expensive infrastructure, proprietary software, complicated processes, and opaque workflows, these volumes privilege perspectives that embrace straightforward and transparent approaches as models for the future. Contributors: Lynne Goldstein | Ethan Watrall | Brian Ballsun-Stanton | Rachel Opitz | Sebastian Heath | Jolene Smith | Philip I Buckland | Adela Sobotkova | Petra Hermankova | Theresa Huntsman | Heather Richards-Rissetto | Ben Marwick | Li-Ying Wang | Carrie Heitman | Neha Gupta | Ramona Nicholas | Susan Blair | Jeremy Huggett

Theoretical and practical perspectives from a range of disciplines on the challenges of using digital media in interpretation and representation of cultural heritage.

Museums and archives all over the world digitize their collections and provide online access to heritage material. But what factors determine the content, structure and use of these online inventories? This book turns to India and Europe to answer this question. It explains how museums and archives envision, decide and conduct digitization and online dissemination. It also sheds light on born-digital, community-based archives, which have established themselves as new actors in the field. Based on anthropological fieldwork, the chapters in the book trace digital archives from technical advancements and postcolonial initiatives to programming alternatives, editing content, and active use of digital archives.

The Future of Digital Data, Heritage and Curation critiques digital cultural heritage concepts and their application to data, developing new theories, curatorial practices and a more-than-human museology for a contemporary and future world. Presenting a diverse range of case examples from around the globe, Cameron offers a critical and philosophical reflection on the ways in which digital cultural heritage is currently framed as societal data worth passing on to future generations in two distinct forms: digitally born and digitizations. Demonstrating that most perceptions of digital cultural heritage are distinctly western in nature, the book also examines the complicity of such heritage in climate change, and environmental destruction and injustice. Going further still, the book theorizes the future of digital data, heritage, curation and the notion of the human in the context of the profusion of new types of societal data and production processes driven by the intensification of data economies and through the emergence of new technologies. In so doing, the book makes a case for the development of new types of heritage that comprise AI, automated systems, biological entities, infrastructures, minerals and chemicals – all of which have their own forms of agency, intelligence and cognition. The Future of Digital Data, Heritage and Curation is essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of museums, archives, libraries, galleries, archaeology, cultural heritage management, information management, curatorial studies and digital humanities.

From the practice of a museum institution, six chapters reflect on the challenge of change in the areas of digitization, narrative, inclusivity, and participation.