CIPA 2003 XIX th International Symposium, 30 September-04 October, 2003, Antalya, Turkey 
they are relevant, meeting agreed criteria and 
satisfying real needs by providing added value. 
- standards are responsive to the real world; they are 
available, current technology and do not unnecessarily 
invalidate existing products or processes 
- Standards are performance based, specifying essential 
characteristics rather than detailed designs. 
The most compelling reason for using standards is protecting 
the long-term value of data as well as acting as a basis for 
sharing information. 
In addition, since more and more cultural heritage centres 
throughout the world invest in documenting their collections 
(e.g. museums, archives, libraries), often with sophisticated new 
technologies, the need for standards to manage the information 
these collections contain becomes more and more urgent 
(Bower et al., 2001). 
Acknowledging the existing standardization efforts done in the 
area of cultural heritage by several bodies, this paper will avoid 
stating commonplaces. Rather, the aim of this paper is to raise 
awareness regarding the emerging importance of 
standardization in cultural heritage on the international scale 
and aid in the effort to build the basis for an international 
voluntary consensus type standard. 
Motivation for this effort is a result of years of collaboration of 
the authors in different areas of cultural heritage, where the 
need for data analysis, sorting, indexing, retrieving and 
exchange was identified 
2. STANDARDIZATION: THE WAY FORWARD 
The days where a kilobyte was regarded as ‘a lot of data, and 
10 Megabytes was an ‘enormous database’ are a recent 
memory. 
Today, however, the whole world is dealing with databases of 
multiple terabytes. -If one considers the internet revolution and 
the end of the previous century and its dramatic growth the last 
few years, one can easily realize the enormous amount of data 
circulating the globe every day. The on-line “complex 
multimedia encyclopedia” with millions of computers, 
databases and information worldwide connected together 
providing information and data are a challenge to any user 
attempting to crop out valuable information. When there are 
millions of archaeological sites, billion of archaeological 
items/artifacts distributed all over the world and each one of 
these has its own unique idiomorphic/situation/ 
complexity/civilization of description (like excavation reports, - 
pictures, manufacturing technology, originality, substance- 
materials, etc) how can one come to an easy, quick and 
meaningful conclusion about this piece and especially about a 
special civilization when there are thousands of archaeological 
departments and museums around the world using individual 
methods of documentation, archiving, restoration and 
exhibitions? How can someone use the efficiency of the 21 s1 
century IT to have an easy, quick and meaningful access to 
several terabytes of worldwide civilization data? 
It is a fact that there are thousands of archaeologists, historians, 
anthropologists, scientists, researchers, restaurateurs and 
students working and/ or researching at different places, using 
individual methods of reporting, documenting and archiving 
and as a result it is not surprising to establish that much of their 
hard work and effort is not available to different interested 
parties. This situation becomes even worse when the majority 
of the above mentioned experts have neither the IT tools nor an 
unlimited access to the Internet as well as the knowledge of 
how IT can be a useful device/mechanism in their work. 
There is, however, a tested solution to this problem, a bridge to 
unite these islands of research exists in the documentation of 
cultural heritage and that is through the use of modern 
information technology tools, specifically through the use of 
worldwide accepted formats of structuring data. 
It is at this point where IT and cultural heritage experts must 
come together to build the foundation for a new digital 
documentation format which can be used for archiving and 
catalogizing that can be accessed by all - everywhere around 
the world and at any time of the day. The laying of the first 
stone will pave the way to success in creating and developing 
the encyclopedia of worldwide civilizations. The large amounts 
of data that are required in order to acknowledge or recreate 
these civilizations can be efficiently managed, updated and 
distributed through the use of IT. 
IT and the creation of standardization in this area of 
documentation can also address other obstacles in the cultural 
heritage sector, such as language (use of virtual 
lexicas/glossaries/dictionaries, e-Translators), legal and 
regulatory issues (identification methods), lack of knowledge of 
standardization methods by experts (e-Education/Learning), 
lack of a national/regional/international initiation as well as 
technical and infrastructure issues. 
3. STANDARDIZATION: THE STATE OF THE ART 
Every government in each country is currently facing new 
challenges in all areas which affect its own society. The 
increasing concern for health and safety, the protection of the 
environment and the protection of cultural heritage, combined 
with dramatic increases in world trade and competition have 
brought to light the importance of standardization while at the 
same time altering the national/international needs. The 
European Union, USA, Japan and other international societies 
(like IEEE or VDI) are successfully promoting their technology 
and practices in these developing areas to other nations around 
the world through their own standards (protocols) and processes 
through their national representation (ANSI, SLBS, DIN, 
ELOT, BSI, etc ) in the international standards activities of the 
European Committee for Standardization (CEN), European 
Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC), 
European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI), 
International Standard Organization (ISO: from Greek 
Toog=equal), the International Electro-technical Commission 
(IEC) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). 
Furthermore, such organizations have the ability to provide on 
line information on technical standards/protocols, and - 
regulations and conformity assessment procedures which can be 
obtained globally. This aspect of service is necessary to ensure 
that the private sector, exporters, government 
departments/agencies and the general public are kept abreast 
with these trends and developments which have the capacity to 
affect their competitiveness (ISO, ANSI, VDI, CEN). 
Emerging economies with the potential for explosive growth 
are looking to and adopting ISO, CEN and IEC standards.