Most cultural heritage institutes have little long term experience with the use of IT, other than using computers for administrative purposes or at best collection registration databases. Also one has to take into account national differences (between centralist and non-centralist countries) and differences between types of cultural heritage. In general, movable cultural heritage is less well documented than immovable cultural heritage. In that context it is not surprising the use of IT at the institutes of this survey varies enormously and the survey can therefore not be regarded as a proper investigation in the use of IT in cultural heritage institutes.
However, it does give the necessary background information on what can be found within the wide scope of cultural heritage institutions. Many institutes use tailor made software applications for their databases based on DOS, UNIX or windows. For imaging, a greater need for using standards seems to be felt, but many imaging projects are still in the experimental phase. Cooperation is dealing with pilot projects or externally funded (e.g. EC) projects rather than on structural basis to carry out major projects. A general interest is shown to have (collection) information available through the Web.
In general the cultural heritage field is not much aware of the use of and need for standardisation. As seen in Part 2 chapter 2, the field is mostly influenced by a small set of standards setting bodies. Many countries have such bodies (see See Part 2 chapter 2 for an overview), in addition to which there are some international bodies like CIDOC and CIMI. Other institutes follow developments closely or are indirectly working via projects towards larger standardisation influence. Some smaller institutes are not very involved instandardisation issues.
Focus is on data standards (some good examples internationally available) and content standards (still much need for development). The institutes stress the need for technical standards but generally do not see themselves as standard setting organisations in that field.
European standardisation initiatives would be appreciated, though concern was expressed regarding communication.
The focus of the institutes is on the traditional users of cultural heritage information, ranging from the academic community to the general public. Education is usually seen asa separate issue, though a very important one. To generate income, expectations are higher from the general public than from the cultural heritage community itself.
Products mentioned are related to what is basically fairly traditional output though in electronic format. Traditional media (meaning print) are expected to last next to the exciting, new technologies for which they do not seem to have very specific applications in mind.
Emphasis is on images, not so much on on-line research possibilities (except perhaps by the archives section). IPR issues have been mentioned frequently. These will be studied as part of the CHIO project's next phase.
Most institutes that were interviewed are very much aware of the limitations with information transfer via electronic media as a result of IPR issues, though clear policies on IPR are often lacking (the cultural heritage field tends to get very distracted by new technologies from their traditional IPR policy). There is more focus on IPR problems with (high definition) images than on text data. Related to this there is a need for improvement of data protection.
Some institutes also expressed awareness of bandwidth problems. Similarly there is quite a lot of awareness regarding the developments of paid access to information, that some institutes will use once they are considered stable technology. Most institutes in the cultural heritage field realise they are no real partner in the field of establishing technical standards. So they can only try to make sure they are making their investments in the right technology. Major obstacles for proper information transfer are still lack of fast infrastructure and uniformity in regulations.
Regarding bulk transfer, most institutes thought this not very relevant while other usually experienced) ones thought this a very major issue, related to the Web or to WAN-access.
With regards to the usefulness of Web browser technology for cultural information exchange, there is no clear viewpoint in the field. Some institutes seemed to be quite happy with the state of the art. Others were more critical and identified a series of obstacles or problems, such as: search tools, screen size, bandwidth, consistent containers, security. Other institutes made it generally quite clear that they consider the Web browser technology to be still in its infancy, also indicating that they are not sure investments in this regard can be seen as future proof. At the same time some cultural heritage institutes put major investments in Web products, indicating its adequacy for them perhaps.
When considering quality aspects related to capturing multimedia information, quite a few institutions that were interviewed indicated to have no clear policy on this issue while others made ad hoc decisions. Though this is a well known situation in the field of cultural heritage information, it is still a worrying one, considering the important investments made (and planned) in this technology by usually far from well off institutions. Re-usability of digitised source was mostly confined to making low quality images from high quality images and seemed to have little to do with planning for the longer term.
Institutes with a lot of experience with databases to process collection information, are not necessarily experienced or capable of stating a clear policy on issues such as Web browser use, creating digital sources and multimedia sources. At the same time some of these institutes are digitising images in large amounts or planning to do so.
The CHIO project needs to make sure overlap (sometimes related to as 'synergy' within this context) with other initiatives in EC DG's is clarified and avoided whenever possible. Also, during an EVA meeting on 28th June 1997 (See Part 1 Chapter1) it was stressed that the 5th Framework seems to include standards issues (guidelines, unification of methodology and terminology, re-usability of digital assets) and multi-linguality issues (dictionaries, glossaries). The project's next phase will examine these issues further.
The need for clear 'guidelines' in the field of IPR has been expressed by many institutes. It has also been part of the DGXIII and DGX MoU. This issue will be further addressed by the CHIO project team in the next project phase.
Though most institutes thought bulk transfer issues not very relevant, this seems to be due to lack of experience with transferring large amounts of data. As cultural heritage institutes can expect to have to do so in the future anyway, the CHIO project group will continue to address this issue.