Presentation on occasion of the 80th anniversary of IPHAN the Brazilian National Agency for Cultural Heritage.

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Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you something about
digital heritage, or I would rather say: heritage in a digital world. And I
believe strongly that you as heritage professionals should prepare
yourself to safeguard the important role of heritage in a society that is
transforming into the digital. I order to do so, you should learn to think
digitally.

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Through this presentation I want to make you aware of what digital
heritage might be. What the current status is of digital heritage sector
of my country, The Netherlands. Why it is important to take the
heritage into the digital, and lastly how we do it in the Netherlands,
through interaction between policy and practice. Now I won’t say we
succeed in the Netherlands. I would rather say we have learned a
little. Digital innovation is also not something that can be mastered
completely ever because it will never be finished. Technology keeps
evolving. It evolves at a faster pace constantly. It is hard to prepare
for the future, because we don’t know what to expect. So the best we
can do is to prepare ourselves for the unexpected. And in facing the
unexpected I would like to collaborate globally. That is why I am really
grateful for being here so we can start he interaction and learn from
each other.

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So let’s start by looking at what digital heritage is.

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Converting an analogue document under a scanner using some
software results in a digital form. This is something that I believe
every one in this room has some experiences with because you have
a mobile scanner, your smart phone, in your pocket. However this is
not what I mean when I talk about digitization.

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Digitization in my meaning has a much broader understanding. It
involves all activities a professional organisation does. Both at a
strategic level as well as operational. This is illustrated in this picture
here that represent my knowledge map. The larger circle is derived
from the traditional plan, do, act , check cycle, the Deming cycle. This
is strategic information management that should be part of each
organisation that pretends to work professionally, like yours.
The executing of plans, the do-phase, is worked out it greater details
because this is more business specific. In our case heritage specific.
We create collections, we document them, manage them for
preservation and present them to the public. So the costs of
preserving heritage is justified by its usages, at present day and in the
future.

6. Heritage traditionally is about objects: monuments, archeology sites, art,
archives, books, tools, ect. Different materials have different requirements
when it comes to preservation and presentation. Different professions have
evolved over time with domain specific traditions: museum professionals,
librarians, archivists, archeologists, architects. But digitization is a disruptive
process to these traditions. Once digital all these materials become
information and have more in common than in difference.

7. Once digital, heritage has a different typology. I distinguish three. It
can be digital right from the start, when it was born digital. It can have
a physical source object that was converted into a digital form, and
start a functional live apart of its physical original. Or it can relate to
digital information, describing heritage objects, digital or physical, the
so called metadata.
Again these different types of digital heritage bring their own needs. In
contrast to the physical heritage materials we have little tradition
about how to deal with digital heritage.

8. Digital heritage, by its essence as information, becomes part of an
immense information cloud that fills our present day information
society and our information lives. And this cloud also grows at an ever
increasing speed. Here you see some figures about the amount of
data that goes around.
This raises two important issues:
1. How we position our precious digital heritage within this enormous
information overload
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And 2:
what part of the information that is created today, we as society want
to preserve in order to document our own lives, our own current
culture for future generations?

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So I told you before, we are trying to face the challenges of digital
heritage already for some time in The Netherlands. Let me tell you a
little about where that brought us.

11. This is our physical starting position. Sorry for leaving out
archaeology and historical buildings.
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12. Also we started doing something, digitization projects. As you might
expect Dutch institutions started with digitizing the master pieces.
Because we were proud of them. But soon we realised we didn’t do it
for ourselves, but for our customers, the users. And we focused the
attention to he heavily used collections. And then, and this was at a
time when trust in the digital development was high and pushed up
the economy, the goal became to digitize it all. But when evaluating
those activities we should think about the why question: why are we
digitizing heritage. In response the government set up subsidizing
information plans: how to use ICT in order to fulfil organisation’s
strategic goals. Both governments as well as individual organisations
became interested in the success. How am I doing compared to my
colleagues? And this then lead to the promotion of business model
thinking.
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As a result of about 15 years of digitization almost all Dutch heritage
organizations possess digital collections. And about half of them feel
the need to collect digital born collections

14. Through all these activities and projects a lot already has been
digitized depending on the domain your looking at. Of course a major
part still has to been done, but we also acknowledge the fact that not
everything has to become digital. Investments have to pay of, not
necessary in the present but certainly in the future.
These figures by the way come from enumerate, a program financed
by the European Union and lead by my organisation. It aims at
developing a method of monitoring digitalization across Europe and
using this method every two years. We have available the data and
interpretation of 4 European surveys openly accessible also for
Brazilians.
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So now a word of warning. It is not the data itself that matter but what can
be done with it.
This diagram is telling. It shows that on average 87% of European
institutions manage digital collections, only about a third has worked out
ideas about what to do with them strategically.
If we don’t think about strategies, somebody else will. As is shown by
Google, that before individual libraries did realised the potential of converting
books all over the world into one big data cloud.

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Now as an audience you might think by now: a lot of difficulties, why
should I bother?

17. Well I guess I don’t have to tell you we heritage professionals cover a
basic need of societies. Also in The Netherlands, the population has
an historical interest.
80% above 12 years of age have an interest in at least one historical
subject like their family or their region, historical cities or building,
historical objects or traditions and handicrafts.
20%, with corresponds to 3 million people, even has several historical
interests.
75% of the people use historical information, 20 % even weekly.
Traditional media like books, news papers and television are still little
more important then new ones, predominantly the Internet.
We have 20000 people voluntary contributing to heritage
organisations.
25 to 7 % of the population in the Netherlands participate in historical
activities themselves.
This interest is still important, also in a digital age.
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18. But the world we are living in is changing rapidly. And as a result the
way we interact with the historical interest of society will have to
adept.
Digitization for heritage is caused by these changes, but at the same
time digitization is a trigger for these changes. The use to technology
allows us not only to do things differently, but also to do different
things. The big changes that take place offer opportunities for
heritage to do different things.
So, what are these trends:
Value chains used to be linear. Raw materials were factored into end
user products that were used and then disposed of. In order to safe
the world we gradually switch to a circular economy where everything
is recycled. This refers not only to physical products but also to ideas,
traditions, knowledge. The raw materials of our sector.
We used to organize activities hierarchically, vertically, top down. But
the open access to information rebuilds society bottom up. People
and interest find eachother through vertical connections. From
hierarchies to network; from institutions to people; from authority to
autenticy.
Money used to rule the world. Everything from power to products
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19. could be exchanged into currency. But today new currencies emerge: time,
energy, nutrition, care, attention. All this can be used to exchange value to
redistribute value.
For a long time people, at least in the western world derived their status on
property. Can I afford a car, a house, a television. But nowadays people
realize this build up of property is limited. It is enough and often even better
not to own stuff that you want to use. Think of light. If you need to buy a
lamp the company that sells you the lamp has an interest for the lamp to
break the sooner the better. But if the lamp stays owned by its producer, the
company has the interest of having to replace the lamp as less as possible.
And lastly we learn that organization are far less important as long as you
can organize what you want to do. This is something that is hard to learn as
we see in the heritage sector in the Netherlands.
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20. Once you think beyond the traditional limitations the possibilities open
up. New ways of working come about because of human civilisation
but also in order to deal with big challenges the global civilisation
faces nowadays. Maybe it goes to far to state the heritage has to play
its role in each of the major challenges but we can no longer be
satisfied by taking care of historical collections in order to safeguard
them for future generations. We have to commit to helping achieve
welfare and well being. And we have something to contribute.
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But we need this contribution to be seen. Our voices to be heard.
When looked at place that attract the most attention in the digital
world, heritage sites are not among them.

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And we can make the link more specific, zooming in on culture and
art. All these sites at this very moment in history take a share in
offering internet users around the world a piece of heritage, of culture.
Yet they lack the key expertise of selecting, preserving and
reprosessing their content to make it future proof. At the moment
these big internet players probably couldn’t care less. So here is our
opportunity: convince them directly of the importance of historical
awarness or, if that fails work via our governments or even better via
our users, the public. Once this public interest is accepted as key to
the future of civilisation, the heritage professional comes in a strong
position to deliver its valu to society.

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So this is already a first image of a collaborative approach. And by
collaborative I mean world wide. Maybe I can make things somewhat
clearer by telling you how we try to create value with heritage in a
digital way in the Netherlands.

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So this is in a nutshell the Dutch national policy. Invest in the
foundation of the sector through innovation, strategies, competences
en funding.
Nd giving professionals in the field the right instruments to collaborate
and connect: shared concepts, infrastructure, laws and quality
framework.

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So finanly I have the opportunity to talk about my own organisation,
or, even more important, its role.
We share the knowledge, monitor its application, grease the different
stakeholders into collaboration and connect them to the bigger world.

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We are small, temporary, independent though our funding from the
central government. And we are good!

27. From the start we have been practically the only cross domain
organisation at the national level. In this simple illustration it shows
why knowledge sharing is important and how every dicipline, from its
tradition, has something valuable to contribute. This is difficult
because of the difference, but also very powerfull if succeed.

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After almost 10 years of hard work, DEN was happy to be one of the
authors of this important policy document.

29. I know want to show you a short animation, explaining how we want
to realise this strategy.
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Now look at the practice. Again from the Dutch perspective.
Doing different things instead of doing things differently
(NDE)
Vele handen
Wikimedia
Rijksstudio
Holland Festival
(Crossroads)
Europeana
(Mode Muse)
(Grachtenfestival)
(Erfgoed Leiden)
Straatwaarden
Delpher
Chatbot

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The future of heritage depends on using our heritage professions and
traditions to the benefit of audience using technoly. And while
technology and audiences already heavily engage online in
commercial networks, us heritage professionals are still for the larger
part hiding in the corner.
Now we have to get out of our confort zone.

32. The good thing is, for all the core activities and charactaristics of our
traditional profiles, new versions have emerged in other sectors of
society. So we know what to do.
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In the digital world we can no longer trust on our position as guardians of
collections. Collections of information with a historical aspect are being
formed, stored and used also without us professionals taking part. So we
better start engaging in these networks.

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Traditional separated responsibilities and authorisations between producers,
preservers and uses are blurred. Professionals are not self-declared, they
earn their reputation by their activities, independent of the fact if he or she is
within or outside institutions.

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Let’s be modest. Our collections are there because of our uses. Put
them in the focus of your plans of your activities.
What remains of the traditional reputation of experts and institutions
let’s united informally. The network is the organisational form for the
future. And don’t try to place yourself at the centre. As you can see
from the image there is no centre. Hubs have their value depending
on the view point within the network.

36. What should keep us going is the acknowledgement that digital
cultural information allows for endless new value propositions. Not
just as surrogate to promote the real stuff. Intestinally the arrow is
pointing outward. Towards the user, cause that is where the value
comes from. The highest value is in the network, publicly available for
re-use with as little barriers as necessary.
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37. Users have different needs only:
knowledge, reputation, entertainment,
connection, money. They combine
different personas. The offer we make
them has to fit.

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But are you doing enough to understand your users and their digital
needs. In The Netherlands almost half of the institutions don’t
measure the usages of their digital services. Those that do, use
mostly webstatistics. Important but with limited to evaluate the real
impact.

39. At high level our sector is valued for its useful and trustworthy
content. As is shown in the survey asking users of Europeana as
culture search application to compare its offer to that of likewise
applications like Google.
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41. Let’s start with the obvious one: the Rijksmuseum. When they re-
opend in 2012 after a decade of renovating the building they also
opened up their collection. Launching the Rijksstudio. Already
containing some 200000 images including the masterpieces of
Rembrandt. Available in high resolution unrestricted. The
Rijksmuseum feels that their collection should be owned by the
general public, the tax payers who pay for the museum. Because you
can access the images online and can organise and process them as
much as you like, the museum attracts people that normally are less
likely to visit the museum. The Rijksstudio has strengthens the brand
of the Rijksmuseum. This is a strategy not every museum can afford.
But the Rijksmuseum’s strategy pays off. The new government of The
Netherlands has made a visit to them obligatory for all school kids.
The Rijksstudio allows its user free reuse of the rich material. Their
motto: we don’t care if people want to put Rembrandt on their toilet
paper as long as it is a good quality Rembrandt. Take a loo at what
users imagined to do with the collection last year.
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44. The next example is a festival. They don’t have the luxury of a more
or less static collection of out of copy works like the Rijksmuseum.
But also they put heir full history online: music, posters, audio-visuals,
pictures. It took them a year to clear the copyrights. They worked with
Google and let all the famous artist that performed over the years at
the festival draw Google searches towards their archive, adding to
their reputation. The festival itself is not history. Every year a new
festival is organised. The digital archive draws visitors to the physical
festival, where they enrich the performances that in turn end up in the
digital archive. The festival faces the challenge of keeping he archive
up to date ingesting born digital material almost real-time. This
reminds us that the heritage of the future is produced today, mostly in
digital form. At DEN we call this the digitalculturecontinuum.
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45. Now while the previous examples were of a single institution, I now
like too draw your attention to a collaboration program. Based in The
Netherlands but European by its scope and activities. Their mission is
to transform the world with culture. In doing so a large collection is
aggregated. Europeana also aggregates the professionals and their
knowledge by facilitating a large network. DEN is partner as well.
Collaborative we work on creating different values for the people of
Europe. One of the output of their work is the Impact Framework, a
method and toolkit to plan and evaluate the impact made by your
endeavours. Let’s have a look.
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47. To finish up, I cannot leave Wikimedia out of the picture. Not at all
institution but highly successful. Heritage has been in focus at the
Wikimedia community right from the start.
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48. The mission of making available all of the world’s knowledge is
powerful. Heritage content used on Wikipedia gets immense visitor
number 1000 times higher then at individual heritage websites. The
community brings together almost all languages, all cultures and as a
result also all perspectives. People from Brazil have a different view
on for instance slavery then those in Holland. Working together with
Wikimedia is tempting and profitable but the consequences for formal
institutions and the way society traditionally works with information
are difficult to foreseen. But at the same time I believe we don’t have
a choice then to embrace new developments like these if we want
heritage to stay of meaning in future information society, which brings
me back the start of my presentation.
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I leave you with some observations that are being discussed in The
Netherlands. If they are relevant to Brazil, I am happy to continue our
interaction after this presentation. I hope you enjoyed it and got
something out of it useful for your own interest.