23 EU Member States Sign Up to Cooperate on Digitising Cultural Heritage

From the European Commission:

On April  9th, 23 European countries signed a Declaration of cooperation on advancing digitisation of cultural heritage. They will work closer together to better use state-of-the-art digital technologies in addressing risks that Europe’s rich cultural heritage is facing, enhancing its use and visibility, improving citizen engagement, and supporting spillovers in other sectors such as in tourism.

The declaration has three pillars of action:

• A pan-European initiative for 3D digitisation of cultural heritage artefacts, monuments and sites;
• Re-use of digitised cultural resources to foster citizen engagement, innovative use and spill-overs in other sectors;
• Enhancing cross-sector and cross-border cooperation and capacity building in the sector of digitised cultural heritage.

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Over the past decade, Member States have actively supported digitisation and digital preservation of cultural heritage and provided access to the corresponding digitised resources for study, use and re-use. Europeana, Europe’s digital platform for cultural heritage, has for example made available over 50 million digital records from the collections of thousands of cultural institutions across Europe.

The Declaration of cooperation on Cultural Heritage was launched at Digital Day 2019 and signed by the following EU countries: Belgium, Czechia, Estonia, Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland, Sweden, The United Kingdom, Norway.

Projects on Digital Cultural Heritage Funded by the EU

• INCEPTION – innovation in 3D modelling of cultural heritage
• i-MareCulture – Immersive technologies for access to European underwater cultural heritage
• GRAVITATE – 3D reconstruction of cultural heritage objects
• Time Machine – Mapping 2000 years of European History

Direct to Declaration of Cooperation Signed Today

Additional Resources

Filed under: Digital Preservation, News, Preservation