Maastricht University First University in The Netherlands to Sign NDE Manifesto
"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together," a well-known African proverb goes. During the online event Digital Heritage @UM on Wednesday 16 June 2021, Nick Bos, vice president of the Executive Board of Maastricht University (UM), signed the manifesto of the Digital Heritage Network (NDE).
With the signing of the manifesto, and with it the National Digital Heritage Strategy, UM recognises the power of the network and reinforces its ambitions to make its digital heritage more visible, usable and sustainable.
Tasting
In recent years, a lot of work has been done on digitisation and digital findability of heritage, and UM is proud to have presented a tasting of this. UM wants to make its heritage collections easier to find, more useful and more sustainable for the widest possible audience, but also for scientific purposes. The university does this by contributing to the establishment of an innovative digital infrastructure that makes it possible to offer its collection of data linked, open and enriched. This makes it easier to share this data with others and enrich it with new linked information, making collections as accessible as possible. This infrastructure creates the conditions for new ways of publication, research and use.
LimburgCollection
At three o'clock on the dot, the event was opened by moderator Wouter Daemen, heritage coach at the House for the Arts Limburg, the provincial hub for the national network. UM Library Director Ingrid Wijk then welcomed the participants and emphasised the importance of visible and usable Limburg heritage for anyone interested in it. In short, a LimburgCollection with Linked Open Limburg as the technical infrastructure.
Research
Sally Wyatt, Professor of Digital Cultures at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASoS) opened the event remotely via a Zoom connection. Her story focused on the needs of the researcher and what they encounter when conducting research. ‘I want to emphasise how valuable this is for our students and our research. We hope that our own research expertise will contribute to greater use of digital heritage in our teaching and research programmes. And we are currently looking into how we can strengthen our own technical facilities in order to make our growing research and teaching in this area itself visible, usable and sustainable. So we hope that our research will increase the visibility of the collections, and we hope our tendency to look for complexities will contribute to realise the ambitions of the manifesto,’ Wyatt said.
NDE and Linked Open Limburg
Network manager NDE Wilbert Helmus briefly talked about the significance of the NDE before going into the involvement of the national network in the plans in Limburg. 'I am very pleased that we can get to work with UM, and more specifically the University Library (UB), to connect the Limburg heritage via the Linked Open Limburg infrastructure, based on the layers of visibility, usability and sustainability.’
DRAPO
Four pre-recorded project presentations informed viewers about the developments surrounding linked open data and participatory heritage projects in research and education at UM. The videos answered questions about visibility, usability and sustainability of digital heritage in the project and the added value created by collaboration. The first video showed the DRAPO Limburgish flag and banner culture project of the Social Historical Centre for Limburg (SHCL). With DRAPO, SHCL maps the current and older (historical) association banners. ‘So far, the Limburg public has added about 600 banners to the database. This public participation has enriched the collection. A fluid give-and-take has been achieved between the curators and the public.' For this digital public gallery, SHCL uses Nodegoat, a web-based research environment for the humanities.
More information on Limburg banners.
Making Special Collections visible and findable in Wikidata
In a second video, Odin Essers, curator of the UM Special Collections, talked about a Wikidata project at the UB. An important role within this project is reserved for a Wikidata specialist from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, one of the sectoral/national nodes of the NDE. Until April 2022, this specialist will help the UB to develop expertise in the field of linked open data and making Special Collection items usable. ‘Via Wikidata we can offer our collection data linked, open and enriched. This way we can share this data more easily with others and enrich it with new linked information. In this way, larger and often unexpected target groups can discover our content,’ says Essers. With the knowledge gained, the UB wants to contribute to Linked Open Limburg, the technical infrastructure of the LimburgCollection.
More information about the special collections.
Creating digital collections
In the third video, Costas Papadopoulos, Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities & Culture studies, and Susan Schreibman, Professor of Digital Arts & Culture, talked about the FASoS course 'Creating digital collections' of the MA Media Studies: Digital Cultures programme. The aim of this collaboration with the Dutch Mining Museum in Heerlen was to create digital 3D replicas of exhibited artifacts to tell the stories of mining history. The artifacts were digitised in 3D using photogrammetry. The datasets were then processed using Agisoft Metashape. ‘Ultimately, these projects provide new digital visitors for institutions, showcasing the value of digitisation and the opening up of their collections to a broader audience.'
More information via Mining the Netherlands.
Terra Mosana
In the last video, Vivian van Saaze, director of the Maastricht Centre for Arts and Culture, Conservation and Heritage, talked about Terra Mosana, a collaboration between municipalities, heritage sites, museums and universities, aimed at enhancing the tourist appeal and sense of a common identity within the Euregio Meuse-Rhine (EMR) through the digital exploitation of cultural heritage. This exploitation will be done through digital stories about the common history of different cities in the EMR. This is based on the development and use of 3D models from the past and present and on the expected evolution that our archaeological and urban heritage can undergo via virtual and augmented reality. As an example, Van Saaze mentions a digital walk, through Maastricht in 1752.
More information about Terra Mosana.
More information about the digital walk.
Panel discussion
After the videos, it was time for the panel discussion. During this discussion, heritage specialists explored future collaborations. Participants were Ivo Dahlmans (secretary of the Limburg Digital Heritage Advisory Committee and NDE architectural council member), Martijn Hermans (chairman of the Limburg Digital Heritage Advisory Committee), Bert Mennings (director of the Limburg Museum) Claartje Rasterhoff (researcher and teacher at FASoS and former project coordinator of the Amsterdam Time Machine) and Thijs Temmerman (student of the master’s programme ‘Kunst, Cultuur en Erfgoed’). Moderator Wouter Daemen presented statements to the participants about the sustainability, usability and visibility of digital heritage, in which the user was always central. Dreams for the future were shared and a lively discussion took place at the table about all kinds of aspects of digital heritage, such as open access to heritage (Open Access), the importance of contextual information, and making choices in offering your digital heritage.
The signing
After the panel discussion, it was time for the highlight of the afternoon, the signing of the manifesto by Nick Bos and Wilbert Helmus. After Helmus indicated the importance of the signing for the NDE, Nick Bos took the floor with a short speech about his own experiences while writing his dissertation more than 25 years ago. ‘It usually took a lot of effort and time to find the sources you were looking for, material that was part of extensive archives, libraries and heritage collections. Digitisation has changed this because a large part of these sources is now accessible online. However, this is not enough. We're not there yet. Heritage is still too often hidden behind an institutional website for which you need a user account or even have to pay. The information about this heritage is limited and not linked to other data. That is why we want to contribute to the establishment of an innovative digital infrastructure that makes it possible to offer our collection of data linked, open and enriched. This makes sources accessible and makes it possible to establish relationships between sources from a multitude of collections that would otherwise not be visible,' says Bos.
By signing the manifesto, which was enlarged for the occasion, Bos emphasised his words with which UM has joined the Digital Heritage Network. The event was festively concluded with a delicious piece of cake.
Did you miss the event?
Watch parts of it, or the full broadcast, here.
Would you like to know more about UM's ambitions in the field of digital heritage? Then have a look at the article ‘Limburg fully engaged with national strategy’ (in Dutch).
The event Digital Heritage @UM was organised by Maastricht University Library together with the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Maastricht Center for Arts and Culture, Conservation and Heritage with the cooperation of various provincial and national partners. The event was made possible by a financial contribution from the Limburg University Fund / SWOL.