×

You are using an outdated browser that does not fully support the intranda viewer.
As a result, some pages may not be displayed correctly.

We recommend you use one of the following browsers:

Full text

Title
New perspectives to save cultural heritage
Author
Altan, M. Orhan

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)