Between May and July 1997 the CHIO project team made a series of visits to representatives of the Cultural Heritage sector in preparation of the second deliverable of the Cultural Heritage On-Line project.
The institutions to be visited were selected to cover different actors in the field of cultural heritage protection, based on the description of cultural heritage as worded in Part 1 Introduction and more specifically on the following analysis.
There are many actors in the field of cultural heritage, and become such as soon as they preserve some of their past and /or tradition, for example: universities, industrial organizations, broadcasting companies and training centres on virtually any aspect of life. This also includes story tellers, folk dancers up to the amateur who lovingly restores old boats or cars, or maintains an old house and garden.
It is not possible to collect the cultural heritage information compiled by all these participants in the field. Fortunately, some of these preservation activities result in transfer from the 'amateur' to the 'professional' protector of cultural heritage.
Who are the professional actors? Some of them are partly working in the field, partly out of it. These are archives and libraries. These institutions have their role to play as company archives or libraries, where current or recent information is the only focus. Some of them have a longer term responsibility and maintain historical archives or antique ('old') books and manuscripts. In that case they are definitely professional actors in the cultural heritage field and producers of various types of cultural heritage information.
Other institutions are fully focused on protection and research of cultural heritage, as well as on providing information on this 'core business'. These institutions are museums and sites & monuments bodies, as well as specific documentation centres.
This can be brought together in the following diagram:
They make sure that the creators of culture, and thereby the compilers of cultural heritage will see this heritage protected and continued as an heritage.
The actors can be described somewhat further, though a full overview is not possible. Traditional general groupings will help defining the field, however.
Museums have 2- and 3-dimensional collections on :
- art (including contemporary)
- ethnography (including folk)
- history (including maritime; archaeology; daily life)
- technique (including railway: industry)
- natural history (including palaeontology)
Sites & Monuments agencies have, landscapes and structures like:
- nature parks (including protected landscapes)
- archaeological sites (including under water)
- historical monuments and buildings (including cityscapes)
- industrial sites
Archives deal with:
- historical text documents
- historical images (photos and audio-visual material)
Libraries deal with
- 'old books'
- cartography
It was kept in mind that some specific institutions that are not completely fitting into this overview can be very relevant because of specific information production activities (e.g. art documentation centres).
This description identifies as main groups of actors: museums, sites & monuments institutions, (special) libraries, documentation centres, (historical) archives, and industrial heritage bodies. In addition to the visits, the CHIO project team met with two representatives of the cultural heritage field during a session in Brussels on 23rd June 1997. A checklist of questions was compiled to structure the interviews, meetings and reports. This Survey Report follows mostly the structure of that list of questions in chapters 3 to 8. While the contents of chapter 3 is based on the information provided by each separate institute during visits, chapters 4 to 8 are general compilations based on the interviews and meetings results.
The CHIO project team organised a special session with representatives from DG's 3, 10, 12 and 13 on 18th June 1997. In addition to that, a member of the CHIO team attended a meeting in London (28th June 1997) on the 5th Framework. The result of these meetings are not specifically included in this survey report, as the project team came to the conclusion that the synergy with other DG projects needs to be analysed further in the next project phase.
This part finishes with an overview of conclusions reached within the individual chapters, with suggestions for further research.