Meemoo collaborating on ten approved project applications

3 Sep 2020

This summer, Culture Minister Jan Jambon approved funding for 19 cultural heritage projects at home and abroad, together worth a total of €1,271,000. Meemoo is involved as a partner in ten of these projects.

We’re working on projects – involving topics such as linked (open) data, digital archiving, IIIF and Wikimedia – in the following collaborations:

1. Best practices for archiving social media in Flanders and Brussels

Social media posts are important for communicating a wide range of social issues. Despite their significance as a source of (scientific) research, however, they are still only very rarely archived. As one of the lead partners in this project together with proposer KADOC (Interfaculty Documentation and Research Centre on Religion, Culture and Society at KU Leuven), we’re conducting preliminary research into capturing individual social media accounts and introducing and preserving them in the digital archive, and will then implement the capturing, introduction and preservation processes in practice. We’re also documenting, publishing and presenting results from the pilot projects and supporting other partners.

2. Digitale Architectuur Traject Archiefbank Vlaanderen (DATA). Improving user-friendliness and interconnectivity in linked open data time

Archiefbank Vlaanderen is preparing for the future with DATA (Digital Architecture Process Archiefbank Vlaanderen). And as a pioneering service provider within the cultural heritage sector, they need to invest in their IT infrastructure. Meemoo is providing advice about a state-of-the-art infrastructure with APIs for presenting, exchanging and re-using data, which will allow Archiefbank Vlaanderen to enter the linked open data era.

3. Planning for the future: ICE understood and included

The Cultural Heritage Act aims at an integrated approach to working on tangible and intangible cultural heritage, which is quite a challenge, considering they both use different logic. How can you give intangible heritage a place in your collection planning? This project, proposed by WIE (Werkplaats Immaterieel Erfgoed), aims to provide an answer. Meemoo is providing advice and supervising the digital aspects, mainly focusing on movable heritage.

4. Artists' films and videos from Belgium in the 1970s  

This project, proposed by ARGOS (Centre for Art and Media), is researching the early use of media in the context of 1970s Belgian art. Art-historical historiography is strongly associated with rescuing and saving works that have remained under the radar. This means we can unlock a missing piece of recent Belgian art-history and make it available to both broad and specialist audiences. Meemoo is providing advice and support for the digitalisation, storage, unlocking and exchanging of audiovisual artworks, and contextualising archive content that is at risk of becoming lost.

5. IIIF image infrastructure linked to the VKC ecosystem, phase 2: Hybrid collections, annotations, multi-layer viewer and IIIF link with meemoo

The second phase of this project is building on the existing set-up which makes digitised images and associated metadata accessible for re-use on the web. The project was proposed by the former VKC (since 2024 part of meemoo) and forms the link between the meemoo ecosystem, exploring IIIF annotations and IIIF multi-layer viewers, and preparing a metadata manual.

6. Grenzeloos Digitaal Erfgoed (Digital Heritage Without Borders): international accessibility and multilingual searchability of data from ErfgoedBrugge.be

Bruges’ cultural heritage collections have a global reach. But at the same time, ErfgoedBrugge.be, which provides access to almost 565,000 digitised heritage items from diverse collections, reaches hardly any international target groups. This project, proposed by Erfgoedcel Brugge, is mapping their expectations, unlocking heritage data via external international platforms, and developing methods for implementing multilingual searches on their platform. Meemoo is advising how to unlock data to external platforms and defining descriptive rules with regard to multilingual searches. We’re also providing training to help project staff and participants develop their knowledge on open data.

7. Cinema Rural. A Belgian and European directory of moving images of agriculture and rural life 

The aim of Cinema Rural is to chart and describe moving image content about agriculture and rural life in Belgium – safeguarding the preservation of this heritage, and facilitating research at a domestic and international level. We’re supporting the pilot projects on links between databases and monitoring the exchange of data. The project was proposed by CAG (Agricultural Heritage Centre).

8. Wiki’s Women Design Female designers on Wikipedia. Working towards more inclusive design heritage registration in Flanders and Brussels

Many female designers stay under the radar of researchers and heritage institutions. The VAi (Flemish Architecture Institute), who proposed this project, wants to make up for this backlog by registering and unlocking female designers’ cultural heritage in Flanders and Brussels on Wikipedia, and contributing to more inclusive design heritage registration. Meemoo has been publishing cultural heritage on Wikimedia platforms for quite some time already, and is supporting, supervising and monitoring six Wikipedia editing sessions in this project.

9. Flore de Gand

This project highlights nineteenth century horticulture in Ghent using archive items, image content and three historical herbaria. Digital technology is enabling us to validate, digitise, save and link all the data. Ghent University’s project is based on collaborations between various disciplines and co-creation by citizens, with results provided to the heritage sector via various platforms, workshops and public events. We’re contributing to the sustainability of the content created, and sharing our expertise on making content accessible in the Wikimedia ecosystem.

10. MMMONK Medieval Monastic Manuscripts – Open – Network – Knowledge

Make unique and fragile manuscripts available worldwide? With MMMONK – a collaborative project between Bruges Public Library, Ghent University Library, the Major Seminary in Bruges and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ghent – 734 medieval manuscripts are being made freely available for the long term via the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF). It concerns handwritten scripts from the abbeys of Ten Duinen, Ter Doest, Sint-Pieters and Sint-Baafs, which are being digitised and compiled in a rich virtual library with features that will enable innovative digital research. We’re a member of the advisory group that’s supervising this project, and are working together with Bruges Public Library and Ghent University Library (and VKC - Flemish Art Collection) to organise the IIIF Fridays.

You can find an overview of all the approved projects here (in Dutch).

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