ECultValue

eCultValue book - UPTAKE
issuu.com/kibla/docs/ecult_book_online

eCultValue Video Production
ecultmovies.kibla.org

Project abstract
Cultural heritage is one of the main assets of Europe and the deployment of research results in the areas of interactive storytelling, personalization and adaptivity, coupled with mobility-enabling systems, has the potential to increase access to resources, improve user experiences and boost the ICT industries. But take-up is slow and collaboration often difficult.
The aim of eCultValue is to encourage the use of new technologies that have the potential to revolutionise new ways to access cultural heritage and experiences offered by cultural resources in real and virtual environments or a mix of both.
For this purpose, eCultValue will look into technologies arriving from EU funded projects (Analysis of available technologies), promote these technologies to people who will apply them (Capacity building of eCult Ambassadors and validation in Living Labs) and relate technologies to use-case scenarios (eCult on-line Observatory and eCult Dialogue Days).
eCultValue will involve all stakeholders in the cultural value chain, adapting the "triple helix" approach to the cultural environment, to capture multiple reciprocal relationships between IT providers, cultural content holders and users/visitors/artists.
The implementation will be carried out by a partnership that covers all stakeholders, from academia/research to museum networks to ICT providers and user communities.

Concept and objectives
The aim of eCultValue is to encourage the use of new technologies that have the potential to revolutionise:

New ways to access cultural heritage and
experiences offered by cultural resources

in both, real and virtual environments or a mix of them ("augmented reality").

For this purpose, eCultValue will

look at technologies arriving from EU funded projects
promote these technologies to people (stakeholders) who will apply them
relate technologies to use-case scenarios for easier take-up

with the overall goals of: take-up of technical solutions to broaden the access to cultural content and allow innovative user experiences.

Challenges and Opportunities
Cultural heritage is one of the main assets of Europe, recognized already in 1974 by the European Parliament in an initial resolution for Community action to preserve Cultural heritage, and followed through to the 2010 Digital Agenda and the Innovation Union Communication. It is virtually a field of unlimited possibilities, and combined with the use of new technologies, it has the potential to become an important sector to leverage Europe's economic and societal goals in the frame of the Europe2020 strategy. Very often though, there is an issue of understanding among technology developers and museum experts, and a shortcoming in addressing user needs. New technologies have not fully “found their way” to the traditional museums, while very often developers are not aware of what the museums and visitors really want or need.
It is, however, crucial for the future of Cultural Heritage institutions to not only timely respond to the challenges of our digital era, but seeing them as fantastic opportunities for Europe's rich cultural resources. Museums have to get again more appealing also to the younger generation, which is the “born digital” generation. It is a challenge that several cultural heritage institutions are facing, especially traditional style museums, how to raise interest for the on-site collection and make it available even for visitors that are not physically in the museum. The use of new technologies can not only solve this problem and attract virtual visitors, but can also raise in general interest about the institution and contribute to the general promotion of it. The deployment of research results in the areas of interactive digital storytelling, personalization and adaptivity, and mixed reality, coupled with mobility-enabling systems, promises a lot to make not only cultural heritage sites more attractive but also to provide new means to make cultural knowledge, interpretation, and analysis more effectively conveyed to the public hence to encourage cultural tourism.
Additional opportunities for the exploitation of cultural collections are offered by several online platforms and web applications. Europeana is a flagship effort for Europe, but competition is already underway: for example, since February 2011 Google has launched its Google Art Project, which allows online users to virtually visit 17 international museums. This is an additional reason which calls for alertness and efficiency of European efforts. At a first glance, the access to online collections may look in competition to the museums that hold the physical collections. It has to be considered, however, as an additional opportunity that is offered to extend their audiences and field of activities.
It is therefore imperative for the traditional museums to “catch the technology train”. The TrandsWatch 2012: museums and the Pulse of the Future identified seven trends that are highly significant to museums and their communities. Amongst them are three related to new technologies:

Crowdsourcing
Mobile, distributive experiences
Augmented reality

This confirms the efforts in European research programmes, to focus on new ways to cultural content, in particular to new experiences that the most recent technologies offer. As a support action, eCultValue will enable the exchange between Cultural Heritage stakeholders and between projects themselves for a better mutual understanding in order to foster this take up. In identifying best practices, methods and solutions that enable new, user-centred experiences for real and virtual visitors the project will provide benefits not only for museum sector but also for entrepreneurs. The main goal is to increase or keep high visitor rate in museums and at the same time to foster research and provide income in the ICT sector thus encouraging sustainable development.

EcultValue project partners:

European Society of Concurrent Enterprising Network (ESOCE), Italy
www.esoce.net

Research and Innovation Centre in Information, Communication and Knowledge Technologies ATHENA (ATHENA RC / IMIS), Greece
www.athena-innovation.gr

European Multimedia Forum (EMF), United Kingdom
www.e-multimedia.org

Association for Culture and Education KIBLA (ACE KIBLA), Slovenia
www.kibla.org

The European Museum Forum (TEMF), United Kingdom
www.europeanmuseumforum.info

Cultural Heritage on Line (CHOL), France
www.museum-images.com

More info:
www.ecultvalue.eu
www.ecultobservatory.eu