The third of the three transmedia exhibitions included in the European Digital Treasures project, European Discoveries: From the New World to New Technologies, was successfully opened at the General Archive of the Indies (Spain) on the 29th of April.
The exhibition, open to the public until the 29th of July, analyses the scientific and technological discoveries that have been vital engines for the material progress and wealth of Europe, through the documentary treasures kept by the European archives.
This exhibition tries to show that discoveries and inventions lie at the heart of Europe’s cultural heritage. Archives in Europe abound with documents and materials that witness the constant desire to explore and to discover, and these documents tell thousands of different stories. The three pillars of this exhibition –Medicine, Energy/Industry, Transport/Navigation– are an attempt to provide a glimpse of the multifarious variety of stories, events and personalities involved in discoveries of many different types, during the long history of Europe. It is thus an exhibition not only about the discoveries themselves, but also about their archival memory, recording one of Europe’s most distinctive cultural traits.
In addition to the documents, the exhibition is completed with transmedia tools to bring its content closer through experimentation and play.
The opening was chaired by Severiano Hernández Vicente, Head of the Spanish State Archives, by María Oliván, Head of the Transparency, Document Management & Access to Documents Unit of the European Commission, and by Esther Cruces, Director of the General Archives of the Indies.
The transmedia exhibition “Exiles, Migration Flows and Solidarity”, included in the European Digital Treasures Project, was opened in Lisbon (Portuguese National Archive – Torre do Tombo) on the 28th of April.
Nowadays, when Europe is facing serious migration crises, the present exhibition, the outcome of the European cooperation, analyzes issues like exiles and migration flows from a historical perspective, through 47 key documents spanning several centuries, kept in European archives. These documents are divided into three main categories:
work-related migration, encompassing stories of individuals and groups of individuals, but also of the transfer of expertise, vital to the economic and cultural development;
war-related migration, covering various types of conflicts, from rebellions and civil wars through to the world wars of the 20th century;
human costs associated with political uprising, turmoil and persecution.
All these documents are also included in the exhibition catalogue – have a look!
As in previous exhibitions, this one combines different technological tools that allow the public to get to know our written past through multiple channels. Visitors can interact with original documents, digital reproductions, quiz and video games, augmented reality experiences to explore parallel worlds and videos presenting the project.
On display are also the merchandising products, inspired by the selected documents for the three Digital Treasures exhibitions.
The opening was chaired by Silvestre Lacerda, General Diretor from the Books, Archives and Libraries of Portugal, by Severiano Hernández, General Subdirector of the Spanish State Arquives, by María Oliván, Head of Unit of Transparency, Document Management & Access to Documents of the European Commission and by Ole Gausdal, International Director at The National Archives of Norway.
Opening Ceremony with Silvestre Lacerdo (DGLAB) and the Digital Treasures partners.
It also counted with the musical performance of the young entrants to the “Young Digital Treasures” contest.
Participants of the Young Digital Treasures contest framing the opening ceremony with their musical performance!
The exhibition can be visited until June 30th 2022 in Portugal.
The second speech on September 3rd was held by Torsten Hiltmann and Philipp Schneider. Torsten Hiltmann is a professor for Digital History at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin since 2020. His research focuses on the integration of Machine Learning and Semantic Web Technologies into historical studies and on the epistemological change of historical research through the application of digital methods.
Philipp Schneider is a research assistant at the chair of Digital History at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin since 2020. He works in a project called “Coats of Arms in practice”, where he is responsible for modeling and contextualizing heraldry as a historical source with the help of Semantic Web Technologies.
Torsten Hiltmann.Philipp Schneider.
Abstract. The paper addresses the issue of reusing data from historical archives (and GLAM institutions in general) in data-driven research projects by presenting a catalogue of supporting factors. These factors center around the FAIR principles and how archives and other GLAM institutions can support research by implementing them in their data services. Mainly, historical data should be made accessible through APIs, be describable through its historical context, and to be as interoperable and reusable as possible. These preconditions for using archival data in data-driven historical research are presented by using the example of the research project “Coats of arms in practice”. It aims to study the development and usage of heraldry as a tool of visual communication in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. It employs a data-first approach by integrating data of coats of arms as well as the historical contexts of sources in which they were used into a single Knowledge Graph, built with Semantic Web Technologies. The coats of arms themselves will be described with the help of a specific ontology. Image detection methods based on Machine Learning are used to detect (and describe) coats of arms in image data of historical sources that have not yet been described. This paper focuses on the reuse of archival data from a research perspective. We would like to address the preconditions archival data and GLAM data in general has to meet from the point of view of data-driven research – especially when such research draws on data from multiple institutions.
You can watch the whole session on YouTube here and read the manuscript paper here!
Written by Torsten Hiltmann, Philipp Schneider & the European Digital Treasures Team.
After two years of online conventions and zoom conferences, we are happy to announce that the upcoming ICARUS Convention #28 will be held in person in Paris from 23rd to 25th of May, 2022 as a hybrid event!
Within the programme of the convention, the European Digital Treasures project will hold their workshop “New Business & Conceptual models” led by Yvan Corbat!
One of the key objectives of the Digital Treasures project is to generate a greater added value, profitability, visibility and economic return of European archives, through the identification and implementation of new business models and activities.
The workshop will include practical examples of new activities being implemented by some partners of this project:
The second speech was held by Artem Reshetnikov who is a deep learning researcher at Barcelona Supercomputing Center. Working in several companies and research centers, he received big experience in Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing and applying it to the tasks of different domains. For a long time, he was thinking about how to combine his two main passions: machine learning and art. The solution is the project where he works now: Saint George on a Bike is a project about the enrichment of metadata of paintings using Deep Learning and NLP approaches.
Abstract.“Saint George on a Bike” project proposes several novel approaches to enrichment of metadata (captions, tags, relationships between objects, iconographic description) for the Cultural Heritage domain, which relies on combining Deep Learning and semantic metadata about paintings. Working with cultural heritage presents challenges not existent for every-day images. Models for objects detection or caption generation are usually trained with datasets that contain correct descriptions of current images or labels for objects, which were generated manually. Apart from this conceptual problem, the paintings are limited in number and represent the same concept in potentially very different styles. Finally, the metadata associated with the images is often poor or inexistent, which makes it hard to properly generate quality metadata. Our approach can assist in generation of metadata for different tasks. By taking into account an exiting metadata of Cultural heritage objects and additional techniques, we can generate tags, relationships between objects or descriptive text which is likely to be directly related to the scene depicted in an image.
You can watch the whole session on YouTube here and read the manuscript paper here!
Written by Artem Reshetnikov & the European Digital Treasures Team.
Following the example of its Spanish, Portuguese and Norwegian partners, the National Archives of Hungary opened its first transmedia exhibition at the Várkert Bazár in Budapest. The first of the three exhibitions planned as part of the European Digital Treasures international project, European Discoveries: from the New World to New Technologies, opened in the Hungarian capital. Following a special private opening on 21st of January 2022, the exhibition was opened to the public the following day, 22nd of January 2022.
This day has a special significance in the cultural life of Hungary, as it is the day when Hungarians celebrate the Day of Hungarian Culture, in memory of the day Ferenc Kölcsey revised his manuscript of the Hungarian National Anthem in 1823. However, on this day of remembrance, the National Archives of Hungary wanted to commemorate not only Hungarian cultural values, but also the common European values, historical and ideological experiences that link Hungary with other European countries.
European Discoveries: from the New World to New Technologies is a digital exhibition dedicated to the latter, which presents European discoveries in three pillars, covering medical science, industrial achievements and transport and traffic, preserved in the archives of Malta, Montenegro, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Serbia and Hungary, through documents of historical value.
In addition to the printed panels, the 43 manuscripts and records presented in the exhibition can also be seen in a digital catalogue, according to the unified project concept. The National Archives of Hungary presents some original archival material on the exhibition site as well. Visitors of the exhibition space can also see some designer products inspired by the documents – with a separate description of the source of inspiration – and play an RPG game and quiz based on the documents presented in the project, in the dedicated game space.
The European Discoveries exhibition at the Castle Garden is attracting a lot of interest. In addition to the digital descriptions, visitors can browse through the exhibition with a handy English and Hungarian catalogue to learn more about the documents on display.
The multilingual nature of the exhibition helps our visitors from abroad to learn more about the European archival material. Our exhibition venue is one of the best exhibition spaces of the Castle Garden. The highly equipped hall and its digital facilities provide a suitable place for all visitors to access and explore digital content.
The first exhibitions actuality – European Discoveries – is attracting many group visits; we are getting high engagement in the requests from schools, universities and other institutions.
Our professional Public Education team offers guided tours at the exhibition site as well, for registration please contact: kozmuvelodes@mnl.gov.hu
The exhibition is open until the end of April 2022, at the beautiful site at the foot of Buda Castle.
Love songs by King D. Dinis (fragments). Torre do Tombo Archive.
The document, also known as “The Sharrer Parchment”, discovered in 1990 at the Torre do Tombo Archive, includes musical notation, found for the first time in love songs, and is the oldest known register of Portuguese secular music.
The love songs take us back to a cultural tradition of the European medieval courts, where courtly love was favored, that is an amorous compliment aside from patrimonial, family, and political pressures that were inevitably present in marriage alliances.
King D. Dinis was a prolific and well-known author of troubadouresque poetry of Iberian tradition: 137 poems were identified, 75 love songs, 11 satirical songs and 51 amigo songs. This king developed his musical and poetic genius in the context of the confluence of European cultivated courts to which he was linked by family and cultural bonds: his father, King Afonso III, spent his youth in the court of the king of France (Louis VIII), and married the Countess Mathilde de Boulogne, knowing the cultural atmosphere of the French court.
One of the educators he chose for his son Dinis was Americ d’Ébrard, of Aquitaine, who introduced him to the culture from beyond the Pyrenees and to the troubadouresque schools. On his mother’s side, he was the grandson of Alfonso X, the Wise, King of Castilla and Leon, the author of a vast poetic work, including the well-known “Cantigas de Santa Maria”. Later, D. Dinis married Isabel of Aragon, from a court that cultivated poetry. There was great proximity between Aragon and the South of France and their troubadouresque courts.
The troubadour poetry of courtly love emerged in the Iberian Peninsula, influenced also by the pilgrimage routes of the Way of St. James, under a strong Provencal influence, considering minstrels and troubadours constituted an international and migratory brotherhood, traveling from one court to another in the Peninsula.
If the amigo songs, where the troubadour embodies a female voice, are part of an Iberian tradition of popular origin, the love and satirical songs belong to a troubadouresque tradition of European courts and feudal lords, of Provencal origin, between the 12th and 14th centuries.
In love songs, the troubadour, a noble man and author of the melody and the lyrics, expresses his passion for “his lady”, a woman of unique beauty and virtue that, according to the canons of this ritualized love, isn’t identified. Only the submission of the troubadour is exposed, who expects a reward, that could be a present, a look or something significantly more physical, being the service and the suffering of the lover the biggest proof of his love. This “service” of loyalty and love for the lady mirrors, in the romantic relationship, the dependence relations that united vassal and lord in the feudal system.
What is the human reality hidden behind these rituals and conventions? What is the point of all these secrets and precautions? In most love songs the “servant” expects to receive a favor of the lady, but keeps the favor a secret. For the Portuguese Culture historian António José Saraiva, we have to consider that these protagonists are frequently feudal lords, kings and sons of kings, the songs’ theme is clandestine love, outside of marriage, so the secrecy is a precaution, not literary fiction. Clandestine love and adultery are a recurrent theme of medieval love literature and of the great romantic couples that the Middle Ages have left us: Tristan and Isolde, Lancelot and Guinevere, …
Click here to listen to one of the 7 love songs: A tal estado me adusse, senhor. In this song, the troubadour tells his lady about the state her beauty and qualities have left him in: nothing gives or will give him pleasure, until he sees her again.
Written by Maria Trindade Serralheiro (text) and Ana Isabel Fernandes (trad.) Senior Technicians, General Directorate of Books, Archives and Libraries, Portugal.
The European Digital Treasures team wants to present the various presentations held within the workshop “New Digital Exponential Technologies Towards The Generation Of Business Models” on 2nd and 3rd of September, 2021 at the Provincial Historical Archive of Alicante (Spain). For this reason, we will post about each of the presentations within the upcoming weeks – stay tuned!
Kerstin Arnold.
The first speech was held by Kerstin Arnold who has been working in the archives domain for more than 15 years! Having been part of various projects creating and establishing Archives Portal Europe, Kerstin is now the initiative’s acting COO in the role of the APEF Manager. She holds a Master degree each in Communication Science and in Library and Information Management and also is a member of the Technical Subcommittee on Encoded Archival Standards (TS-EAS) at the Society of American Archivists.
Abstract. Archives Portal Europe is a comprehensive and open resource on archives from and about Europe, that currently holds archival descriptions from more than 30 countries and in more than 20 languages. Following traditional approaches of archival description, the portal allows users to access the documents via the contextual entities of the records creators and the holding repositories, next to a general keyword search. To evaluate options for subject- or topic-based access points, Archives Portal Europe is working on an automated cross-lingual topic detection tool that aims at enabling users to identify relevant documents related to a topic well beyond the narrowness of direct keyword matching. Synergising different approaches for concept-based and entity-based topics, the tool then also is meant to allow for active topic tagging in order to improve coverage of topic-based relations between the heterogeneous and multilingual documents present in Archives Portal Europe. Building on the current status quo in the portal, this paper presents the tool’s set-up, initial results from the proof-of-concept phase, and next steps envisaged during alpha and beta development of the tool, which will be made available as Open Source to also be of benefit for other, similar initiatives in the cultural heritage sector.
You can watch the whole session on YouTube here and read the manuscript paper here!
Written by Kerstin Arnold & the European Digital Treasures Team.
The first from the series of three exhibitions was inaugurated at the National Archives of Malta (Rabat, Malta) last Friday, 28th of January 2022. Within the framework of the European project European Digital Treasures, the first exhibition is titled: ” The construction of Europe – History, Memory and Myth of Europeanness over 1000 years”.
The narratives displayed here combine different technological tools that allow us to get to know our written past through multiple channels. On the basis that these documents have the remarkable ability to tell the micro-stories that made possible the great construction of Europe, these innovative products allow visitors to experiment and play, to learn and share, as well as to feel moved by our common past.
Construction of Europe – Documents.
Construction of Europe – Opening Ceremony.
Construction of Europe – Documents.
The opening was attended by partners of the project from Spain, Hungary, Norway, Portugal and Austria!
With the objective of evaluating the impact of the exhibition “European Discoveries: from the New World to the New Technologies”, which took place in Lisbon, at Torre do Tombo National Archive (ANTT), from July 22 to October 30, with the Portuguese public, the information collected in the scope of the guided tours carried out by ANTT was used. The limitations resulting from the pandemic affected the number of visitors, reducing the impact of an event with these characteristics. In the current year 2021, the total volume of visitors to ANTT, compared to the same pre-pandemic period, dropped by 35%. Nevertheless, between September and October 2021, it was possible to carry out a total of 13 guided tours to groups, involving 125 visitors, broken down as follows:
• 4 groups from secondary education (15-17 years): 49 visitors;
• 6 higher education groups (17-25 years): 58 visitors;
• 3 groups of other visitors (over 45 years old): 18 visitors.
Guided Tour.
The exhibition was also seen by 730 individual visitors, 13 of whom shared comments in the “Visitors’ book”. Among the latter, there are two professors and an archivist from Brazilian Universities.
Having characterized the universe of visitors, there is nothing better than listening to the testimony of the person responsible for conducting the visits, Maria Trindade Serralheiro, ANTT-DSIEQ technician.
Interviewer: Generally speaking, and from the point of view of visitors, what are the advantages of conducting guided tours of this type of exhibition?
Maria: The great advantage lies in the fact that the information transmitted can be directed to different audience profiles, allowing the visitor to enjoy mediation that meets their cultural interests, their knowledge or even their perceptions of matters related to the exhibited documents. As an example, visits aimed at groups of students can be more directed towards a specific curricular content, pre-established when scheduling the visit with the responsible teacher. In this specific case, it could focus on knowledge of primary sources and themes such as bioethics, human rights, public health, European citizenship, etc.
This is an innovative exhibition, given that it is a collaborative production carried out by European archives, whose thematic scope should be highlighted by the mediator, as it can contribute to reinforcing the awareness of identity belonging, both national and European. The archival documentation, properly framed, referring to different times and spaces, can contribute to sustain the affirmation of a shared memory.
Interviewer: Given the visits made to previous exhibitions, did this one stand out?
Maria: Yes, the visits stood out for their access to a great diversity and types of documents, only possible in a collaborative protection such as “European Digital Treasures”. In addition, alignment with the curricular programs at different levels of education was not only possible but also advantageous, as it enabled integration in a European context, which, although it has always existed, is not always highlighted with the deserved relevance in national school curricula. It should be noted that European History is present in the curriculum of History, but in a very discontinuous way, not allowing the establishment of belonging, an identity rooted in a European context.
Interviewer: Did the other activities carried out within the scope of the EDT project with teachers and schools, in the context, for example, of the “Course of Literacy in Archives”, have an impact on the number or profile of visitors?
Maria: Except for a single specific case, it was not found that the activities developed with the professors through the “Literacy in Archives Course” had worked as a motivational factor for a visit to this exhibition. In fact, as the Portuguese teachers participating in the course stated, it will only have an impact when translated into the mother tongue of students and teachers, as is, in fact, expected in European projects.
Visitors to this exhibition fit the usual profiles: secondary school students (10th, 11th and 12th grades) and groups of students starting university education who come to know the ANTT’s potential for research .
Interviewer: What knowledge did visitors reveal about European History?
Maria: They revealed some knowledge, very fragmented, favoring emblematic and high-impact facts, such as the European Wars, for example, but with little relation to the European political, social and cultural space as a whole.
Interviewer: Is it important that students have some preparation for the visit or, on the contrary, is it better that there is no prior preparation?
Maria: When they are motivated and curious students, preparation doesn’t make much difference. It is important that the school proceeds with the exploration of the contents covered in the exhibition, through the respective catalog, the information accessible through QR-CODE or the website of the promoters.
The contact with such a great diversity and typologies of documents from European archives is very stimulating to broaden horizons and to develop the awareness that archives are fundamental to interconnect peoples, times and places through the construction of a collective memory and that everybody can access it freely, through digital platforms. In this European approach, there is a phenomenon of cultural relativization between the “I” and the “other”, which proves to be very healthy.
Interviewer: Of the various exhibition centers – medicine, energy and industry, transport and navigation – which ones aroused the most interest?
Maria: It was undoubtedly the “pillar” of medicine, the theme of combating the disease, because in a context of public health crisis caused by the pandemic, scientific discoveries in the area of medicine are front-page news. In front of an exhibition that highlights the creativity of European scientific discoveries and technological innovations, the curious and creative young visitors said that if they were allowed to make a scientific discovery to improve the quality of human life, it would be in the area of medicine that they would like to make their contribution.
This nucleus also allowed some reflection on scientific knowledge. The work of Garcia de Orta, a Portuguese physician who wrote about plants and other medicinal products from India (1563), was a pretext to question the nature of scientific knowledge, based on his phrase “What we do not know today, we will know tomorrow”. In times of uncertainty in the face of a pandemic that confronts us with the fragility of knowledge about a new virus, we see how in the past, in similar contexts, scientific discoveries were able to save lives and bring relief; the recognition of ignorance – “what we do not know today” – as a condition for discovery and, on the other hand, optimism in human capacities – “tomorrow we will know” – as a horizon of hope. And also about the obsolescence of scientific knowledge, based on a Nobel Prize in Medicine awarded to a practice of psycho-surgery, prefrontal leucotomy, which was later banned.
The centers (energy and industry, transport and navigation) also deserved special interest, depending on the training areas of the visitors. Students at the Aviation School, for example, “felt at home” in the face of pioneering aviation experiences and the complex and risky challenges of contradicting the law of gravity…
Interviewer: Did the fact that many documents are not physically present have an impact?
Maria: Yes, document reproductions are at a great disadvantage compared to originals. In future exhibitions, it would be good to improve the quality of the reproductions, so that they can compete with the originals. In this domain, but extending to all selected documentation, it would be important to improve contextualization, which is not always accessible to a non-specialized audience.
Interviewer: What is the impact of video games?
Maria: In a 45-minute group visit, the exploration work focused on the exposed documents, leaving this resource to be explored in the next visit or, eventually, at home or at school.
Interviewer: What is the impact of merchandising products?
Maria: The products’ creativity and aesthetics were highly valued, but the fact that they could not be purchased following the visit was disappointing, taking on the role of prolonging the visitor’s fascination.
Interviewer: What are the positive aspects to highlight?
Maria: For young people, Europe is, above all, a space without borders and a space of choice: where to live, where to study and where to practice your profession. Exhibitions of this nature are a resource that archives can make available to support decision-making based on knowledge of the multifaceted history of European culture.
In the visitor satisfaction survey, 85% rated the theme of the exhibition as “Very interesting”. The students who registered comments in the “Visitors’ book” used phrases such as: “Bué gira”, “I really liked it”, “Very cool”. Regarding the contents, phrases such as: “Very interesting”, “Very enlightening”, “Historically rich” stand out. As for the relevance of the themes in general: “Relevant themes”, “it never hurts [the European approach to History]; “The approach to the European dimension was lacking in secondary education”, “the exhibition multiplied my interest”.
Interviewer: What are the aspects to improve?
Maria: The dissemination strategy, which would benefit from being more aimed at schools, through, for example, promotional videos.
Guided Tour.
Written by General Directorate of Books, Archives and Libraries, Portugal.
