The challenges of reconstructing cultural heritage

Advancing Preservation for Archives and Manuscripts

Cultural heritages are legacy and inherited from generation to generation, several sample of it are ancient artifacts. However, they are prone to damage and sometimes have limited access for observers to study in a museum. In supporting the younger generation to learn from cultural heritages, there are three-dimensional stereo technology which is able to support artifact exploration activities. The main goal of this study is to improve museum facilities. We present the application development work-flow with user perception of wearing 3D stereoscopic visual aid to see cultural heritage collection. We develop the 3D stereoscopic application using UNITY3D and deploy it on cardboard android device. As an experimental setup, several artifacts are placed in the scenery of this application. We ask several colleagues to test the application, and ask them about their experiences and perception in observing the artifacts using the application. A depth perception in 3D environment when exploring the scenery adheres to one perceptual principle of human-computer interaction, that is make display legible, the legibility of a visual device reaches its best when it can give the most important information to the user. The application will help students, observers and researchers or any visitors made an exploration and study from ancient collections without damaging the original one. In this way, the young generation can learn the cultural heritages using their favorite devices.

The digital medium allows visitors, curators and art historians to gain new insights into their collections through data analysis and rich, interactive visualizations. Motivated by the rise of large-scale cultural heritage collections that have emerged on the Web, we argue that Formal Concept Analysis can be used to highlight the relationships between objects and their features within digital art collections and provide a means for visitors to explore these collections via interactive, narrated pathways. Our work presents four research projects that span 10 years from 2005 - 2015 – ImageSleuth, The Virtual Museum of the Pacific, A Place for Art and a scalability study of Formal Concept Analysis as applied to a data-set from the Brooklyn Museum. Our approach is based on the idea that much of the meaning that can be interpreted from museum collections lies – at least in part – in the way that objects are related to one another. Our work examines how Formal Concept Analysis can drive explorative, narrative-based visitor experiences and reveal new insights into cultural heritage collections.

Natural and human-caused disasters have always been a risk to museums, libraries, archives, and all types of cultural heritage collections. The increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather events brought about by climate change indicate that risk assessment and emergency preparedness and response will become even more important in caring for these collections in the future. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the art conservation and heritage preservation communities in the United States have worked to develop tools and networks for organizations preparing for and responding to collections emergencies. Some of these initiatives, including an interactive map called Active Weather Risks for Museums, Libraries, and Archives, have included the integration of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in mapping cultural heritage assets and identifying location-specific risks. Continued research into the applications for GIS in responsive risk assessment and emergency planning, and the utilization of publicly available hazard data from emergency management organizations and climate scientists, will help prevent catastrophic damage to our nation’s collections.

Globalization has created new challenges and threats. The article identifies threats and challenges of globalization that have the most devastating effect on cultural and natural heritage. It analyzes efforts of the international community to minimize them. The article studies economic, foreign policy, environmental and cultural threats to the world cultural heritage. Heritage sites can be destroyed as a result of environmental and technological challenges, extremist movements and wars, uncontrolled urbanization, predatory exploitation of nature and cultural objects for commercial purposes, and rapid development of international tourism. All these factors have a negative impact on cultural and natural heritage sites. The problem of protection of natural and cultural heritage is of institutional and documentary nature. The UNESCO international organization deals with World Heritage issues, compiling a list of endangered objects of cultural and natural significance. It combines international efforts to preserve and popularize them because of their special cultural, historical or environmental significance. Damage or extinction of cultural objects is tragic for the world heritage. Due to new dangers, the entire international community must participate in the protection of the natural and cultural heritage sites. Problems that cause irreparable harm to the world heritage are due to human activities. It is necessary to develop measures that could be a response to the problems of cultural heritage protection in the context of globalization. It is necessary to make people respect cultural and natural heritage and inform them about dangers threatening cultural objects.

Abstract. The research aims to preserve and support the historical memory of Perugia's Fontivegge district through an analysis and valorisation of the existing cultural heritage. The selected case study is represented by the original design of the station, ideated by architect Antonio Cipolla. In order to enhance this project, which was never realised, it was decided to exploit the three-dimensional reconstruction of the building, which had already been elaborated previously, to create a virtual reality experience, through users can visualize, explore and walk inside the build. The purpose is to consolidate the relationship between the historical memory of the city and its users, allowing them a new interaction with the space and bringing them to a deeper level of knowledge and understanding of the place they live. To increase the user base of this virtual experience, it was decided to create an application for mobile devices. The Unreal Engine software was selected for development, given the ease of exporting projects for the main mobile platforms (Android, iOS) and the specific functions for reading GPS data. In fact, the application only allows the exploration of the virtual scenario to real users of the place, so they physically visit it and thus can understand the differences and similarities between the real scenario and the virtual historical reconstruction. Once the geolocation is verified, the app provides the 3D model for a panoramic view of the build under examination and, subsequently, an immersive experience in which it is possible to freely navigate within the virtual reconstruction.

This study explores the historical significance of religious sites in Hazara, a region in northwestern Pakistan. Despite their cultural and historical importance, these sites have received little scholarly attention, resulting in a significant gap in our understanding of the region's cultural and religious heritage. This research aims to address this gap by conducting a comprehensive historical analysis of religious sites in Hazara. Hazara's rich cultural and religious heritage is reflected in its numerous mosques, shrines, and temples, which are a testament to the region's complex history and cultural diversity. However, the lack of documentation and analysis of these sites has limited our understanding of their historical significance and cultural importance. This study draws on primary sources, including historical texts and archival records, to gather information on the history and development of religious sites in Hazara. Field observations were also conducted to document the current state of these sites and gather information from local communities. The findings of this study highlight the significance of Hazara's religious sites as symbols of cultural identity and religious tradition. The study also identifies challenges facing the preservation and conservation of these sites, including lack of funding, infrastructure, and institutional support. The research contributes to our understanding of the cultural and religious dynamics of Hazara and provides valuable insights into the region's history and cultural heritage. The study's findings have implications for policymakers, conservationists, and local communities working to preserve and promote Hazara's cultural and religious heritage.

Digital unification of cultural heritage refers to the process of digitizing and/or aggregating already digitized materials that are thematically, historically, or otherwise connected but preserved in different collections and institutions. Through digital unification, cultural heritage collections become more accessible and valuable while ensuring their protection and long-term preservation. This paper explores the goals and types of digital unification projects according to the IFLA Guidelines for Setting Up a Digital Unification Project (2019) and the documents on which they are based. Special emphasis is placed on the activities of the National and University Library in Zagreb in initiating and implementing collaborative national and international projects of digital unification of library materials over the past two decades. Finally, Croatian projects are analyzed according to the criteria outlined in the IFLA Guidelines, highlighting key challenges and achievements.

Archives and cultural heritage institutions face a mounting backlog of uncatalogued or sparsely described materials that constrain public access and scholarly research. This paper examines the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) as a practical, strategic tool to alleviate these backlogs, enhance collection discoverability, and advance the mission of democratic access to historical records. Case studies showcase large language models and computer-vision techniques applied to handwritten prisoner-of-war index cards, administrative records and extensive photographic and video archives. Each case study outlines the workflow for extracting structured metadata at scale or the enabling of novel visual and semantic search capabilities. Results demonstrate that AI can process photographs, video footage and handwritten index cards with remarkable speed and accuracy. Structured metadata derived from these methods unlocks new genealogical and historical research pathways by transforming unstructured content into searchable datasets. While acknowledging ongoing challenges, including transcription errors, algorithmic bias and seamless integration into existing archival workflows, the findings affirm that AI has matured into an accessible, scalable solution for reducing persistent cataloguing backlogs across institutions of all sizes, augmenting, rather than replacing, the indispensable expertise of professional archivists. The paper presents a straightforward framework to help archival organisations launch their own AI initiatives to accelerate backlog reduction, elevate institutional visibility, unlock fresh avenues for research and ultimately broaden public engagement with cultural heritage collections. This article is also included in The Business & Management Collection which can be accessed at https:// hstalks.com/business/.

Large amounts of cultural heritage content have now been digitized and are available in digital libraries. However, these are often unstructured and difficult to navigate. Automatic techniques for identifying similar items in these collections could be used to improve navigation since it would allow items that are implicitly connected to be linked together and allow sets of similar items to be clustered. Europeana is a large digital library containing more than 20 million digital objects from a set of cultural heritage providers throughout Europe. The diverse nature of this collection means that the items do not have standard metadata to assist navigation. A range of methods for computing the similarity between pairs of texts are applied to metadata records in Europeana in order to estimate the similarity between items. Various methods for computing similarity have been proposed and can be classified into two main approaches: (1) knowledge-based, which make use of external knowledge sources and (2) corpus-based approaches, which rely on analyzing the frequency distributions of words in documents. Both techniques are evaluated against manual judgements obtained for this study and a multiple-choice test created from manually generated categories in cultural heritage collections. We find that a combination of corpus and knowledge-based approaches provide the best results in both experiments.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide a methodology for automatic annotation of a multimedia collection of intangible cultural heritage mostly in the form of interviews. Assigned annotations provide a way to search the collection. Design/methodology/approach Annotation is based on automatic extraction of metadata and is conducted by named entity and topic extraction from textual descriptions with a rule-based approach supported by vocabulary resources, a compiled domain-specific classification scheme and domain-oriented corpus analysis. Findings The proposed methodology for automatic annotation of a collection of intangible cultural heritage, applied on the cultural heritage of the Balkans, has very good results according to F measure, which is 0.87 for the named entity and 0.90 for topic annotation. The overall methodology enables encapsulating domain-specific and language-specific knowledge into collections of finite state transducers and allows further improvements. Originality/value Although cultural heritage has a significant role in the development of identity of a group or an individual, it is one of those specific domains that have not yet been fully explored in case of many languages. A methodology is proposed that can be used for incorporating natural language processing techniques into digital libraries of cultural heritage.

IntroductionIn regional Australia and New Zealand, museums and art galleries are increasingly becoming primary sites of cultural engagement. They are one of the key tourist attractions for regional towns and expected to generate much needed tourism revenue. In 2017 in New South Wales alone, there were three million visitors to regional galleries and museums (MGNSW 13). However, apart from those (partially) funded by local councils, they are often run on donations, good will, and the enthusiasm of volunteers. Regional museums and galleries provide some paid, and more unpaid, employment for ageing populations. While two-thirds of Australia’s population lives in capital cities, the remainder who live in regional towns are likely to be in the 60+ age cohort because people are choosing to retire away from the bustling, growing cities (ABS). At last count, there were about 3000 museums and galleries in Australia with about 80% of them located in regional areas (Scott). Over the last 40 years, this figure has tripled from the 1000 regional and provincial museums estimated by Peter Piggott in his 1975 report (24). According to a 2014 survey (Shaw and Davidson), New Zealand has about 470 museums and galleries and about 70% are located outside capital cities. The vast majority, 85%, have less than five, full-time paid staff, and more than half of these were run entirely by ageing volunteers. They are entrusted with managing the vast majority of the history and heritage collections of Australia and New Zealand. These ageing volunteers need a diverse range of skills and experience to care for and interpret collections. How do you find the time and budget for professional development for both paid staff and volunteers? Many professional development events are held in capital cities, which are often a significant distance from the regional museum—this adds substantially to the costs of attending and the time commitment required to get there. In addition, it is not uncommon for people working in regional museums to be responsible for everything—from security, collection management, conservation, research, interpretation and public programs to changing the light bulbs. While there are a large number of resources available online, following a manual is often more difficult than learning from other colleagues or learning in a more formal educational or vocational environment where you can receive timely feedback on your work. Further, a foundational level of prior knowledge and experience is often required to follow written instructions. This article will suggest some strategies for low cost professional development and networking. It involves planning, thinking strategically and forming partnerships with others in the region. It is time to harness the power of modern communications technology and use it as a tool for professional development. Some models of professional development in regional areas that have been implemented in the past will also be reviewed. The focus for this article is on training and professional development for workers in regional museums, heritage sites and keeping places. Regional art galleries have not been included because they tend to have separate regional networks and training opportunities. For example, there are professional development opportunities provided through the Art Galleries Association of Australia and their state branches. Regional galleries are also far more likely to have one or more paid staff members (Winkworth, “Fixing the Slums” 2). Regional Museums, Volunteers, and Social CapitalIt is widely accepted that regional museums and galleries enhance social capital and reduce social isolation (Kelly 32; Burton and Griffin 328). However, while working in a regional museum or gallery can help to build friendship networks, it can also be professionally isolating. How do you benchmark what you do against other places if you are two or more hours drive from those places? How do you learn from other colleagues if all your colleagues are also isolated by the ‘tyranny of distance’ and struggling with the same lack of access to training? In 2017 in New South Wales alone, there were 8,629 active volunteers working in regional museums and galleries giving almost five million hours, which Museums and Galleries NSW calculated was worth over $150 million per annum in unpaid labour (MGNSW 1). Providing training and professional development to this group is an investment in Australia’s social and cultural capital.Unlike other community-run groups, the museums and heritage places which have emerged in regional Australia and New Zealand are not part of a national or state branch network. Volunteers who work for the Red Cross, Scouts or Landcare benefit from being part of a national organisation which provides funding, support workers, a website, governance structure, marketing, political advocacy and training (Winkworth, “Let a Thousand Flowers” 11). In Australia and New Zealand, this role is undertaken by the Australian Museums and Galleries Association AMaGA (formerly Museums Australia) and Museums Aotearoa respectively. However, both of these groups operate at the macro policy level, for example organising annual conferences, publishing a journal and developing Indigenous policy frameworks, rather than the local, practical level. In 1995, due to their advocacy work, Landcare Australia received $500 million over five years from the federal government to fund 5000 Landcare groups, which are run by 120,000 volunteers (Oppenheimer 177). They argued successfully that the sustainable development of land resources started at the local level. What do we need to do to convince government of the need for sustainable development of our local and regional museum and heritage resources?Training for Volunteers Working in Regional Museums: The Current SituationAnother barrier to training for regional museum workers is the assumption that the 70:20:10 model of professional development should apply. That is, 70% of one’s professional development is done ‘on the job’ by completing tasks and problem-solving; 20% is achieved by learning from mentors, coaches and role models and 10% is learnt from attending conferences and symposia and enrolling in formal courses of study. However, this model pre-supposes that there are people in your workplace whom you can learn from and who can show you how to complete a task, and that you are not destroying or damaging a precious, unique object if you happen to make a mistake.Some museum volunteers come with skills in research, marketing, administration, customer service or photography, but very few come with specific museum skills like writing exhibition text, registering an acquisition or conserving artefacts. These skills need to be taught. As Kylie Winkworth has written, museum management now requires a [...] skills set, which is not so readily found in small communities, and which in many ways is less rewarding for the available volunteers, who may have left school at 15. We do not expect volunteer librarians to catalogue books, which are in any case of low intrinsic value, but we still expect volunteers in their 70s and 80s to catalogue irreplaceable heritage collections and meet ever more onerous museum standards. That so many volunteers manage to do this is extraordinary. (“Let a Thousand Flowers” 13)Workers in regional museums are constantly required to step outside their comfort zones and learn new skills with minimal professional support. While these challenging experiences can be very rewarding, they are also potentially damaging for our irreplaceable material cultural heritage.Training for museum professionals has been on the agenda of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) since 1947 (Boylan 62). However, until 1996, their work focused on recommending curricula for new museum professionals and did not include life-long learning and on-going professional development. ICOM’s International Committee for the Training of Personnel (ICTOP) and the ICOM Executive has responded to this in their new curricula—ICOM Curricula Guidelines for Professional Museum Development, but this does not address the difficulties staff or volunteers working in regional areas face in accessing training.In some parts of Australia, there are regional support and professional development programs in place. For example, in Queensland, there is the Museum Development Officer (MDO) network. However, because of the geographic size of the state and the spread of the museums, these five regionally based staff often have 60-80 museums or keeping places in their region needing support and so their time and expertise is spread very thinly. It is also predominantly a fee-for-service arrangement. That is, the museums have to pay for the MDO to come and deliver training. Usually this is done by the MDO working with a local museum to apply for a Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF) grant. In Victoria there is a roving curator program where eligible regional museums can apply to have a professional curator come and work with them for a few days to help the volunteers curate exhibitions. The roving curator can also provide advice on “develop[ing] high quality exhibitions for diverse audiences” via email, telephone and networking events. Tasmania operates a similar scheme but their two roving curators are available for up to 25 days of work each year with eligible museums, provided the local council makes a financial contribution. The New South Wales government supports the museum advisor program through which a museum professional will come to your museum for up to 20 days/year to give advice and hands-on training—provided your local council pays $7000, an amount that is matched by the state government—for this service. In 2010, in response to recommendations in the Dunn Report (2007), the Collections Council of Australia (CCA) established a pilot project with the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder in West

In recent decades, museums and cultural heritage institutions have faced increased scrutiny regarding their societal relevance, prompting a growing interest in the connection between cultural heritage and wellbeing. Many museums have partnered with the healthcare sector, using cultural heritage collections to promote wellbeing. Meanwhile, healthcare institutions integrate cultural heritage into rehabilitation or palliative care. However, research on the relationship between cultural heritage and wellbeing remains predominantly quantitative, focusing on measurable impact and endorsing instrumental approaches to value what cultural heritage can do for individuals and society. This mirrors a broader, contentious trend in the cultural sector, where impact measurements are used to justify cultural investments. Even qualitative studies tend to prioritise provable outcomes, aligning with this instrumental logic. This article challenges the dominance of this approach by shifting the focus from proving impact to understanding participants’ lived experiences in wellbeing-oriented cultural heritage interventions. Rather than assessing such interventions through the lens of their measurable benefits, we explore how participants themselves articulate their value. Therefore, we draw on the findings of ErfGoedVoelen, a wellbeing-oriented cultural heritage intervention that arose from the collaboration of three Ghent (Ghent is one of the three main cities in Flanders, Belgium) museums.

Virtual 3D reconstruction of historical costumes is becoming significant in preserving cultural heritage. This article focuses on preparing materials for reconstructing the attire of Field Marshals Mikhail Mikhailovich Golitsyn (1675-1730) and Alexander Mikhailovich Golitsyn (1718-1783), who owned the chambers of Dyak Yemelyan Ignatievich Ukraintsev in Moscow's Bely Gorod (White City). To provide deeper context, the history of Ukraintsev's chambers has been thoroughly examined, identifying key historical figures and their roles in shaping this architectural monument's destiny. The study analyzes existing research on historical costumes and the evolution of Russian military uniforms in the 18th century, from Peter the Great's reforms to those of Paul I. Special attention is paid to studying and identifying the distinctive features of the Field Marshal's parade uniform – the highest military rank in the Russian Empire established by Peter I. This work continues a larger project focused on the virtual reconstruction of the historical landscape of Moscow's Bely Gorod. The need to develop a comprehensive methodology for the virtual reconstruction of Field Marshals' parade uniforms from the period under study stems from the absence of specimens available for direct digitization through photogrammetry. This publication is the first of two interconnected articles on this topic. The subsequent work will present an analysis of existing experience in studying historical costumes in the context of virtual reconstruction, considering current trends in this field. The practical outcome of this work is the 3D visualization of uniforms based on historical patterns using modern technologies, as well as the presentation of animated models of M.M. Golitsyn and A.M. Golitsyn in the authentic historical environment of Moscow's Bely Gorod. The methodological value of the study lies in synthesizing virtual 3D reconstruction methods with historical costume reconstruction, combining digital technologies with traditional approaches to studying historical clothing.

The article presents the results of research on the prospects for developing tourist routes. In the modern world, where globalization and rapid technological advancement significantly alter our way of life, the preservation and promotion of cultural heritage gain particular importance. A crucial task today is the preservation and promotion of national cultural heritage. One of the effective ways to achieve this goal is the development of tourist routes, which not only preserve historical and cultural sites but also make them accessible to a wide audience. Cultural heritage can serve as an important factor in the development of tourism and the economy. Tourist routes not only contribute to the preservation and promotion of historical and cultural landmarks but also foster regional economic growth by attracting tourists. Research on these routes helps create conditions for the sustainable development of tourism. This is especially important in the context of globalization and the growing interest in cultural tourism, which allows countries and regions to maintain their identity and cultural uniqueness. Research on tourist routes helps identify new opportunities for infrastructure development, the creation of new jobs, and the improvement of the quality of life for local residents. Cultural tourism is a form of tourism that focuses on the cultural aspects of a destination, including its history, heritage, arts, customs, and traditions. It involves visiting places of historical or cultural significance, such as museums, galleries, historical sites, and cultural festivals, with the intent to learn about and experience the local culture and lifestyle. Tourist routes are a powerful means of promoting cultural heritage. By providing structured and engaging ways for visitors to experience cultural sites, these routes help preserve and celebrate the unique cultural identities of different regions. They offer educational benefits, support local economies, and foster a deeper appreciation for cultural diversity and heritage. The article characterizes the main forms of tourist routes, highlighting their role in the preservation of cultural heritage.