Press release from TVC

UNESCO had proclaimed 27 October as World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, to highlight the importance of audiovisual materials (films, records video and audio, radio and television) and  to encourage the protection and preservation of this documents as  fundamental part of the cultural heritage and  expression of national identity. The social and cultural development of XX and XXI centuries can not be understood without the audiovisual documents, which have become indispensable complements of written documents.

From its creation, in 1983, TVC, Televisió de Catalunya, has preserved all its production and broadcastings. Today, TVC  archive is an important part of the Catalan Audiovisual Heritage. Catalan political, social and cultural development since 1983 is reflected in TVC archive. TVC productions are complemented by older materials, retrieved in other archives or private collections for the production of historical documentaries and included also in the archive.

In  2004  TVC implemented a digital production and archive system, Digition. The  process of digitizing the old archive  tapes to incorporate its content  into the digital archive had started in 2006. Today, 45% of videotapes holdings are already digitized. For the digitizing process there have been prioritized materials in obsolete or fragile tapes, but also materials than are most likely to be used. Thus, some archive collections, like the broadcast news and sports stories from 1984, or the program “30 minutes”,  are already digitized nearly 100%.

Internal users have direct access to all the digital archive  materials,  managed and indexed by the Documentation Department. Archive holdings are widely used. More than 500 clips, about 75 hours, are retrieved from the archive by day, for different purposes: rebroadcasting, reuse in new productions, sales..

An important part of the digital archive is also accessible online. In TVC website, 3alacarta video-on-demand service, nourished daily of new productions but also incorporating part the old material digitized, offers users more than 80,000 videos online. A selection of productions with educational value is also accessible in EDU3 website. And with the participation of TVC in European projects, as   VideoActive and EUscreen,, a significant selection of digital archive holdings are also accessible through Europeana.

With the digitalization of the archive, TVC is achieving a dual objective, preservation and accessibility, that is, ensure the permanent preservation of the images in the best possible quality and provide an easy access, both to internal and external users.

Today is UNESCO’s World Day for Audiovisual Heritage and this year’s theme is “ Save and Savour – Now!”  According to UNESCO, audiovisual heritage contains the records of the 20th and 21st century, but is also vulnerable in it’s current status. There are only 10 to 15 years left to digitize audiovisual records to prevent their loss.

The theme of this edition of the World Day however is not only about saving the audiovisual heritage but also about savoring it. To enable audiences to really enjoy audiovisual heritage, providing access is vital.  This is exactly the case with a project like EUscreen. By putting digitized content online, participating archives do not only preserve their material for the future, but also open it up for the public now. EUscreen offers users from all over the world the opportunity to watch and enjoy television heritage from almost every country in Europe. The content is contextualized to offer meaningful access to this heritage. EUscreen will experiment with the publication of online collections under a CC-license in collaboration with the platform Open Images.

To celebrate UNESCO’s World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, the platform has uploaded it’s 1000th item. The item is a Polygoon news reel from the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

Screenshot 1000th item on Open Images

“Open Images is an open media platform that offers online access to audiovisual archive material to stimulate creative reuse. Footage from audiovisual collections can be downloaded and remixed into new works. Users of Open Images also have the opportunity to add their own material to the platform and thus expand the collection.” (From openimages.eu)

A platform like Open Images offers users the opportunity to reuse and remix audiovisual heritage for their own purposes and truly supports UNESCO’s thought of save and savour- now!

The first EUscreen International Conference took place on 7 and 8 October, 2010 and was hosted by Cinecittá Luce in Rome. The theme of this years conference was Context Selection Policies and Contextalisation. Over 100 participants attended the conference. The programme provided different angles on this theme with lecturers coming from the academic domain, the archives domain and the audiovisual production domain. With such a rich and interesting programme, many issues regarding online audiovisual content were addressed. In the conference report we will focus on only a few of these issues, notably contextualisation, collective memory and different users and uses.  The full conference report written by Andy O’Dwyer, Sian Barber and Wietske van den Heuvel can be read here.

Besides being the EUscreen projectmanager, Quirijn Backx also works as a photographer. She has taken photos during the conference which can be viewed here.

By Marco Rendina and Wietske van den Heuvel

The EUscreen project was presented to a professional audience during the FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2010 which took place in Dublin from October 16^th to 18^th. Johan Oomen gave a plenary presentation about the project and its links to Europeana and addressed questions of how to safeguard the audiovisual heritage. This presentation was held in conjunction with a presentation about the European Film Gateway, represented by Georg Eckes.

In the afternoon of the 18th, Rob Turnock, Johan Oomen and Marco Rendina showed the current status of the project during a EUscreen dedicated workshop. The workshop focused on how EUscreen makes television history ‘real’ and about the kind of television history EUscreen is representing. The presentations included the content selection policy and the metadata schema. The event was attended by a large audience and it was a success.

By Sally Reynolds, Birgit Gray and Wietske van den Heuvel

One of the activities of EUscreen is visiting relevant conferences and meetings, so knowledge can be shared with different stakeholders who represent the different user groups and networks that EUscreen is addressing through the project. Sally Reynolds from ATiT and Birgit Gray from Deutsche Welle have written a small report about their recent conference visits for EUscreen. A more detailed overview of all conference visits can be found here.

ALT conference in Nottingham, UK

The ALT (Association for Learning Technology) conference took place this year from 7-9 September in Nottingham, UK and attracted over 500 people to what is probably one of Europe’s leading academic conferences on educational techology attracting more and more participants and members from non-UK organisations.

ALT this year offered a terrific mix of provocative presentations, really stimulating discussions and workshop sessions and a rich mix of networking opportunities. Despite the general atmosphere of doom and gloom in the UK Higher Education sector, ALT-C was awash with new initiatives, innovative developments and a great sense that education technology held the key to many of the challenges facing universities. Sally Reynolds was there to highlight the MEDEA Awards and the Media & Learning Brussels 2010 conference as well as to promote the Media in Education Newsletter.

She was also there to explore opportunities for collaboration particularly in relation to the use of media in teaching and learning including the use of existing media resources provided through the EUscreen project. Interest in the use of video is high within the ALT community where a new Video in Teaching & Learning special interest group was launched this year.

ICL conference in Hasselt, Belgium

Sally Reynolds presented the work being undertaken by ATiT in relation to the use of media resources for teaching and learning at the recent 13th annual ICL conference held in Hasselt from 15-17 September. During her presentation, Sally described the growing interest in using media for teaching and learning and several of the initiatives in which ATiT in involved. This includes the annual MEDEA Awards as well as the courses being run for teachers and trainers by ATiT on how to use existing media resources as well as how to create their own video clips. During her presentation Sally promoted the EUscreen project which will provide high-quality video material for teachers to use in classrooms.

Deutsches Kulturerbe auf dem Weg in die Europeana in Berlin, Germany

Birgit Gray from Deutsche Welle (DW) gave a 20-minute presentation at the event “Deutsches Kulturerbe auf dem Weg in die Europeana” (German cultural heritage on its way to Europeana) on 4 Oct 2010. The two-day conference entailed presentations from German partners in Europeana-related projects and from other relevant institutions. DW presented its three projects related to Europeana: VideoActive, EUscreen and Assets.  About 100 participants from German libraries, national archives, audiovisual archives and other interested participants from the digital library domain attended the presentation about EUscreen.

Press release from Europeana

Europeana, Europe’s digital library, museum and archive, has launched two online exhibitions that explore highlights of art and literature – Reading Europe and Reshaping Art Nouveau.

Reading Europe: European culture through the book showcases the full texts of 1,000 of Europeana’s most fascinating books, from medieval cookbooks to 18^th century English bestsellers. Many literary masterpieces can be found in their earliest printings, including Don Quixote in the first Spanish edition and Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot in the first Russian edition. Visitors can browse richly decorated manuscripts and discover compelling historical works like Jammers Minde – the fascinating 17^th century autobiography of a King’s daughter and her 22-year imprisonment in Copenhagen’s infamous Blue Tower.

Reading Europe offers a unique opportunity to view literary gems in 32 languages, from Albanian to Yiddish. It was commissioned by Europeana and curated by The European Library, working with experts in Europe’s national libraries. It gives users an engaging introduction to some of Europe’s literary highlights, selected from among nearly 5 million  digitised texts on Europeana.

Reshaping Art Nouveau takes visitors on a cross-border journey that encompasses everything from domestic furnishings and decorative art to architecture and advertising. It tells the story of how the curved lines and floral themes of Art Nouveau – Jugendstil in German, Stile Liberty in Italian – brought an elegance and a hint of decadence to urban life as it swept through every European capital around 1900.

The stories behind the artists and styles are told in a narrative accompanying the remarkable collection of images. These range from the well-loved posters of Czech artist Alphonse Mucha and the stained glass designs of Scotland’s Charles Rennie Mackintosh, to the infamous book illustrations of Aubrey Beardsley and rare photos of fashions designed by Vienna’s celebrated Gustav Klimt.

The two new exhibitions unite geographically distant items in a single online space, illustrating how digitisation helps Europe’s citizens explore a shared heritage. Europeana.eu brings printed collections together with paintings, films, sounds, museum artefacts and archival documents in its collection of over 12 million items, revealing previously hidden links and inspirations.

By Johan Oomen

Last week, Europeana hosted the excellent Open Culture event. EUscreen demonstrated their pilot implementation of the WordPress widget (developed by Sound and Vision) that makes use of the Europeana API. This presentation outlines its main functionality.

The First International Conference on Context Selection Policies and Contextualisation has started with a warm welcome by Marco Rendina and Sonja de Leeuw. The conference takes place in Rome and is hosted by Cinecittá Luce. Over 100 partcipants have registered for the two-days conference. The first day programme contains four key note lectures and a number of case studies,  providing the participants with an academic point of view on contextualisation and content selection policies in the audiovisual domain. The full programme can be found here. The conference can also be followed on Twitter.