Digital Presentation and Preservation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage. Conference Proceedings

27-37

Authors: Boyan Bonchev

The evolution of metadata standards used for building the Semantic Web makes possible single, integrated access to regional digital libraries. The ambition of Europeana project is focused at realisation of such an integrated, secured multilingual access to digital collections of European cultural heritage artifacts distributed at various European countries. The present paper represents in brief both the goals and evolution of Europeana and its technical implementation steps. It discusses possible ways of contributing to this effort by submitting descriptive metadata according two specific notations – the flat property-value format of Europeana Semantic Elements (ESE) and the Europeana Data Model (EDM) specifying how resources as networked.

52-59

Authors: Galina Bogdanova, Radoslav Pavlov

This article briefly reviews the software developments for digital presentation and preservation of Bulgarian folklore treasure created within the project “Knowledge Technologies for Creation of Digital Presentation and Significant Repositories of Folklore Heritage” by teams of the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics.

71-77

Authors: Krassimira Ivanova, Iliya Mitov, Peter Stanchev, Phillip Ein-Dor, Koen Vanhoof

In this paper, we present one approach for extending the learning set of a classification algorithm with additional metadata. It is used as a base for giving appropriate names to found regularities. The analysis of correspondence between connections established in the attribute space and existing links between concepts can be used as a test for creation of an adequate model of the observed world. Meta-PGN classifier is suggested as a possible tool for establishing these connections. Applying this approach in the field of content-based image retrieval of art paintings provides a tool for extracting specific feature combinations, which represent different sides of artists' styles, periods and movements.

85-92

Authors: Mariana Damova

Europeana is the European virtual museum which was established in 2008. Its ambition is to create a common space allowing to access the cultural heritage of Europe from a single portal, by creating a network in all European countries. To make the initiative technically possible, Europeana has built a technological infrastructure to aggregate metadata from the different Europeana countries and memory institutions, while keeping the original digitized content on their sites. This paper presents Bulgariana, the Bulgarian chapter of Europeana. It is part of the technical infrastructure of Europeana, an established technical aggregator of Bulgarian cultural heritage content. It uses the two Europeana representation models ESE and EDM. Bulgariana is also a community building initiative putting in place a Bulgarian wide network of professionals and institutions working together to preserve and present Bulgarian cultural heritage around the world.

103-111

Authors: Nadya Vladimirova

The paper deals with digitization as a method of protecting and preserving cultural and historical heritage of Armenians in Bulgaria. It attempts to establish the level of development of this process in the country, to identify the good examples and information gaps in order to outline the priorities and perspectives.

123-131

Authors: Tereza Trencheva, Tania Todorova, Ivan Trenchev

The purpose of this paper is to introduce Digital Rights Management (DRM) and its implications for content producers, consumers, and libraries. Simply stated, DRM is a technology that allows copyright owners to regulate and manage their content when it is disseminated in a digital format, and it is the reason why some patrons cannot access some of the downloadable digital content provided by libraries. In the first part of this paper, we provide a short introduction to DRM by outlining the entities, the various technologies used as well as usage restrictions that come with DRM. In the second part of the paper are discussed the alternatives for the libraries, using DRM as a tool for library copyright policy and the main documents, which present the position of library organizations towards in-formation legislation.

142-152

Authors: Ralitsa Dutsova

The paper aims to represent a bilingual online dictionary as a useful tool helping preservation of the natural languages. The author focuses on the approach that was taken to develop compatible bilingual lexical database for the Bulgarian-Polish online dictionary. A formal model for the dictionary encoding is developed in accordance with the complex structures of the dictionary entries. These structures vary depending on the grammatical characteristics of Bulgarian headwords. The Web-application for presentation of the bilingual dictionary is also described.

161-166

Authors: Galina Bogdanova, Kilian Stoffel, Todor Todorov, Nikolay Noev

We describe an ontological representation of data in an archive containing detailed description of church bells. As an object of cultural heritage the bell has general properties such as geometric dimensions, weight, sound of each of the bells, the pitch of the tone as well as acoustical diagrams obtained using contemporary equipment. We use Protégé platform in order to define basic ontological objects and relations between them.

172-176

Authors: Konstantin Rangochev, Margaret Dimitrova, Desislava Paneva-Marinova

This paper discusses the variety of the digitized content of an electronic encyclopedia on the veneration of saints according to Bulgarian sources. The emphasis is on medieval Slavonic Church manuscripts and on present-day records of Bulgarian folklore narratives and songs. The combination of these sources provokes discussion of the so-called folklore Christianity and adds new dimensions to the understanding of the role of the cults of saints for culture and of the religiosity of the Bulgarians.

183-186

Authors: Georgeta Nazarska

The paper describes the creation and content of the digital archive of photographs, films and materials from fieldwork (interviews, surveys, and observations) of students from the Information Funds of the Cultural and Historical Heritage program at the State University of Library Studies and Information Technologies, Sofia, Bulgaria. The text discusses the educational opportunities of the archive, and the plans for publishing it as CD and for conversion into an electronic archive on the Internet.

193-198

Authors: Lilia Pavlova-Draganova, Detelin Luchev, Maxim Goynov

This paper describes a project of a multimedia digital library for fashion objects. The presented work aims to provide an environment for the National Art Academy students works, showing in front a professional and non-professional public the significant values of the fashion domain.

205-210

Authors: Zlatan Zlatanov, Milush Blagoev, Irina Nikoevska

The project demonstrates the use of modern technologies for preservation and presentation of the cultural and historical heritage. The idea is a database of cultural and historical heritage sites to be created applying three-dimensional laser scanning technology and a combination of geodetic and photogrammetric methods and shooting techniques. For the purposes of carrying out this project, we have focused on some heritage sites in the central part of Sofia. We decided to include these particular buildings because of the fact that there is hardly another city in the world where within a radius of 400 m are located four temples of different religions - Jewish, Muslim, Orthodox and Catholic. In the recent years, preservation of cultural heritage has been increasingly linked to objectives of sustainable development. Today, it has become clear that cultural heritage is also an economic resource that should be used for further economic development (through compulsory preservation of its authentic cultural values). There has been a more active public debate on the role of cultural heritage, regarding the following topics: improving the quality of life through development of cultural tourism, leading to an increase of the employment rate, constantly improving the business climate, etc. Cultural heritage preservation is becoming one of the priority objectives of the urban development policy. The focus has been shifted to new ways of preservation, mainly combinations of sophisticated technological solutions and their application for the purposes of preservation and dissemination of the cultural heritage.

216-219

Authors: Dimitar Minev

Digitization offers excellent opportunities for the preservation and safe-keeping of valuable library collections. The article recounts the first coordinated attempts of “Ivan Vazov” Public Library – Plovdiv at digitizing some of its treasured collections such as manuscripts, early printed books and archives through partner projects and revealing them to the world community.

222-227

Authors: Vania Grigorova, Kalina Sotirova, Viktoria Naoumova, Anna Sameva, Milena Dobreva, Krassimira Ivanova, Peter Stanchev

The digitization practice for retro-converting of the mathematical periodicals, published by the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IMI-BAS) and the followed benefits for long-term preserving and assuring open access to these materials is discussed in the article.

231-233

Authors: Maria Karadecheva

The goal of the online catalogue “Relics from the Bulgarian museums and the Unification of Bulgaria in 1885” (http://muzeini-relikvi.net) is simple – to connect museums from across the country and inspire them to collect and upload different cultural relics (in this case – relics from the Unification of Bulgaria). The idea behind this is to engage them in a culture of sharing and participating in common initiatives, where, for example, a curator from Varna will be able to see that some of the artifacts he or she needs for an exhibition are in Karlovo or Plovdiv.