CIPA 2003 XIX th International Symposium, 30 September - 04 October, 2003, Antalya, Turkey 
678 
- Free training and application of the standards by the 
responsible body in key institutions (e.g. e-Education) 
- Promotion of the project by state organizations 
The turning point will be when a growing society accepts and 
uses the standards to such an extent that the benefits of this 
effort are visualised. 
Thereinafter, the sustainability of the project has to be 
guaranteed. The responsible body can achieve this by charging 
training, know-how and / or consulting in other institutions. In 
addition it can act as a testing organisation that certifies the 
good operation of a documentation project. 
This is a series of steps any successful standardization effort has 
to take to be successful. Past experience has shown that 
standardization efforts in cultural heritage have several kind of 
problems that need more time to be solved. Consequently, no 
magic or fast solution is going to be given when the decision to 
push such a project forward is to be seen. Time will be needed 
in order to visualise the benefits of standardisation. 
5. EXPECTED RESULTS AND BENEFITS 
The greatest result of an international standardization effort is 
that every researcher can join forces with other experts and no 
one is left behind. Rich and poor countries alike will take their 
place in the research and development of cultural heritage the 
world over. Single countries will not conduct their 
work/research alone but will be connected to the international 
community of cultural heritage and expertise. The work 
accomplished by the experts will no longer be asynchronous 
resulting into efficient research and development trends that 
occur worldwide. 
Worldwide standards for the documentation, searching, 
archiving, cataloguing, preservation and restoration will be 
globally available and used by all interested parties, thus, 
minimizing the costs of documentation and searching/retrieval 
of information. In addition a unique universal, uniform, and 
easy to use multimedia data structure for the development of 
small and large databases will be created. Complex 
relationships between the different items (pieces of data in the 
database) will begin to create the first results of international 
on-line searching of standardized data which is an advanced IT 
tool for the researcher in the area of cultural heritage. For 
example, a question about the route of Alexander the Great or 
the Pharaohs will be the result of a query search on database 
which includes distributed data from all related web portals. 
6. CONCLUSIONS 
The first step is the acceptance by all that standardization is the 
way forward for cultural heritage while at the same time an 
independent world recognized international body leading the 
undertaking. It is imperative that the leadership come from a 
world organization because of the existing funding and 
infrastructure that it can offer to such a great and 
=development. It must also be in the position to work 
together with different governments, private organizations and 
NGOs in order to offer the support that professionals in cultural 
heritage will need when initiating these changes. And in this 
way cultural heritage research can take full profit of IT 
development. These massive changes will provide the only 
possibility to follow the progress and take advantage of other 
research done in other fields, which is of course the ultimate 
goal of IT and standardization in cultural heritage. 
Finally, the greatest achievement of all from the work of 
standardization and IT will be the world wide webpage of the 
cultural heritage of each country which can have its own 
webpage linked together with others under the umbrella body of 
an official international body as stated previously. There, one 
can find the virtual museum and virtual libraries, virtual 
exhibitions important to that specific country/civilization. What 
is implied here is that pieces of archaeological interest may be 
physically distributed in all different museums of the world but 
located in one virtual museum on the specific country’s web 
page/library. Artificial Intelligence and data mining facilities 
can search and collect different pieces of the information 
requested much like the train compartments are joined together 
along the train route. One question may generate information 
from a number of different digital resources distributed 
throughout the entire world. These are then connected together 
and provide a wealth of information for the enquiring person. 
In the future we envision the inclusion of GIS technologies, 
Virtual Reality and 3D-reproduction techniques to support and 
give an accurate reconstruction of those civilizations which may 
no longer exist in today’s world. In this way the reconstructed 
past will come alive. 
Cultural heritage is at a crossroad. It is time to look to the future 
and make positive decisions for the generations to come. It’s a 
risk we all have to take. 
REFERENCES 
ANSI, http://www.ansi.org/ (accessed 18. June 2003) 
Barcelo, J.A., Briz, I., and Vila A., 1999; New Techniques for 
Old Times. A General Introduction to Computing Proceedings 
of the 26 th CAA, Barcelona, March 1998, BA R. S757, 
Archaeopress, Oxford. 
Bower, J., Roberts, A., 2001. Developments in museum and 
cultural heritage information standards. ICOM-CIDOC and the 
Getty Information Institute 
http://www.willpowerinfo.myby.co.uk/cidoc/standl.htm 
(accessed 9 June 2003) 
CEN, http://www.cenorm.be/ (accessed 28. June 2003) 
Crofts, N., Dionissiadou, I., Doerr, M., Stiff, M., (eds.) 2001. 
Definition of the CIDOC object-oriented conceptual reference 
model. ICOM/CIDOC CRM Special Interest Group 
http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/officiaI_release_cidoc.html (accessed 10 
June 2003) 
Custer, J.F., (1999); GIS and archaeology: A demonstration. 
North American Archaeologist. Vol. 20(2), pp. 199-202 
Dekoli, M. and Hadzilacos, Th., 2002. The utilization of 
computer technology in archaeology: Dispilio /998-2002. 
Proceedings from the Theoharis conference, Thessaloniki, 
2000. (GR) 
Doher, Martin, 2000. Background of the CIDOC Conceptual 
Reference Model. 
http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/papers_presentations.html (Accessed, 
23.06.2003)