CSC Europe EEIG Klosterwiesgasse, 32/1 A-8010 GRAZ AUSTRIA

CSC Europe EEIG Klosterwiesgasse, 32/1 A-8010 GRAZ AUSTRIA

http://www.csceurope.org
info@csceurope.org

CSC Europe is the international platform for data services, regional cultural service centres, Cultural Heritage Institutions (museums, archives, libraries, etc.) and companies active in the production, archiving and publishing of digital data.

CSC Europe has been established as a consequence of the European IST-project REGNET. In order to start the network at the earliest possible date the EEIG has already been founded with its seat in Graz in June 2002 by AIT, IMAC, TARX and CSC Austria. Several content partners (museums, etc.) and ICT-partners of the REGNET-consortium have joined CSC Europe by a provisional written agreement. The latter leaves open the way those institutions will join CSC Europe in the future (directly or via regional service centres). The legal framework of the CSC Europe EEIG is constituted by internal agreements and the CSC Europe EEIG statutes. The Grouping has been registered in Graz, Austria where it also has to day its central office.

A pool of services is generated through the cooperation of the different regional service centres with the CSC Europe EEIG and the input of the REGNET project. These services might be for instance special knowledge in standards, theme-based research, Topic Map Generation, digitalizing or other.

Person name:

Walter Koch

Short CV:

Dr. W. Koch was born on the 16th of February 1947 in Graz. He received a PhD in Mathematics and Physics from University of Graz in 1970. He is an ao.Univ.-Professor at the University of Graz and a Guest Professor at the University of Krems. Furthermore he is chairperson of the CSC Europe EEIG and head of the Steinbeis Transferzentrum (IMCHI – Information Management and Cultural Heritage Informatics). Prof. Koch's relevant experience includes: From 1976 to 1998: Head of different research institutes at JOANNEUM RESEARCH Ltd. In Graz: Consultant and contractor to different national and international organizations (eg UNESCO, DFG,EC, ESA, Austrian ministries, Graz municipality) Member of several international and international scientific associations (eg. ICOM, ÖGDI,ONORM, VÖB) Project experience: bibliographic information, information systems, IT-management, EU Projects (TAP, Raphael, TenTelecom, IST – Information Society Technologies: COVAX -Contemporary Culture Virtual Archives in XML, OpenHeritage -Enabling the European Culture Economy, CULTIVATE -Cultural Heritage Application Network, REGNET – Cultural Heritage in REGional NETworks (Coordinator)), CIMI, EUREKA - is a pan-European network for market-oriented, industrial R&D, MEDIA.ALP – Interreg IIIB, DISMARC - eContentPlus. Project management and scientific consulting of the cataloguing and digitising project for cultural heritage in South Tyrol (Bolzano).

Person name:

Vic Haesaerts

Short CV:

Vic Haesaerts was born on 22 June 1948 in Mechelen, Belgium and has a degree in Electronic Engineering. He possesses a large experience in the management of innovative projects in several sectors: Computer manufacturing, Telecommunications, Finance and Cultural Heritage. Experience from 1970 on: MBLE; computer manufacturer (UNIDATA) PHILIPS Data Systems; software integrator TELINDUS; telecommunications networks integrator SESA; ICT-project consultancy Generale Bank (now FORTIS Bank); finance (technological research) TARX; Cultural Heritage, digitising, publishing, scenarios, themes and knowledge. His research activities were mainly focused on artificial intelligence techniques, electronic distribution channels, thematic approaches of information resources and knowledge engineering. As partner in the EU-project REGNET, he was responsible for the thematic and knowledge layer of the content part of the project and for the overall assessment. At this moment he is managing director of TARX, founding member of CSC Europe EEIG and expert-evaluator (since 1988) for IST-projects of the European Commission.

Person name:	Dr. Josef Herget
Short CV:	Born 16/11/1957 Languages: German, English, Czech Diploma in Business Administration, MSc in Administration Science, MSc in Information Science, PhD in Information Science in Small and Medium Sized Companies. From 04/1995 to date: Transfer Center Information Markets & Management Consulting / since 1997: IMAC, Constance. Managing director. Tasks & expertise: Managing a research based consultancy in the field of new media and information systems, services and markets. Project leader in several EU and national projects. Member of the international task force on Telematics in the EUREGIO Bodensee. Evaluator for the EU in GD XIII in the field of Telematics and GD XVI in the field of regional information society. Member of the EU research panel on information engineering (1994-1996). Since 2001 professor for Information Science (HTW Chur). The main fields of activities/experiences are: Consulting on information management and information markets, Multimedia systems, Providing of information services to sme´s, provision on training in the field of new media.
Person name:	Silke Grossmann
Short CV:	Diploma in Librarianship, Graduated in Information Science. From 01/1998 to date: IMAC. Project Manager / Consultant. Tasks & expertise: 1) Project manager (lead for most of the projects related to Cultural Heritage. 2) Consultant in the field of information and knowledge management 3) Training. Themes: Information delivery in online services; Internet-/Intranet Information systems; Information management methodologies; Information structuring and Knowledge Engineering. Actually she focuses on semantic knowledge organisation, especially in the context of semantic networks and topic maps. She participates in the following projects: building of an online community in Switzerland (Arte 24), Consultation of museums on the application of new media, development of a software system for museums (Museums Access), creating a variety of projects in the area of Online-Services (information needs analyses, conception of information services and systems, evaluation of information services and systems). Conception and realization of different types of electronic markets (needs analysis, definition of a portfolio for an offer, creation of a business plan, project management in the realization and application of a marketing strategy). Participation in EU-Projects: REGNET, NBE-BIS, ETTN, DeMES.

Person name:

Mag. Gerda Koch

Short CV:

Gerda Koch was born in Graz and received a Master of Arts in English with a combination of studies in Economics and Law at the University of Graz, and also received a degree in the advanced academic course on Media Science at the University of Graz (Languages: German, English, Spanish). Since 1991 Mag. Koch is employed at AIT, Applied Information Technique Ltd. Since 1998 Mag. Koch is managing director of AIT Ltd. There she participated in diverse informatics projects as e.g. a production automation system for a window-producing company, or the database publishing production of the yearly published Austrian Statistics on Non-University Education. She also collaborated in the European Union TenTelecom project MOSAIC (Museums Over States And vIrtual Culture) for the Austrian partner of the project. Her work focuses on cultural digital content provisions (e.g for the national project MODOK (Modular Documentation System) for the Austrian Ministry of Science and Traffic and the EU-project COVAX (Contemporary Culture Virtual Archive in XML). From 2001 to 2003 Mrs. Koch was responsible for the financial and administrative coordination of the EU IST-Project REGNET (Cultural Heritage in REGional NETworks), one of the largest European research projects in the cultural heritage field with 23 partners in 12 European states, coordinating also the legal framework for the past project continuation. For the Interreg IIIB project MEDIA.ALP she was mainly contributing to the validation of tools and the business development. Within the eContentplus project DISMARC Ms. Koch is working on the integration of thesaures, the metadata implementation and the technical project management.

Profile of the founding members of CSC Europe.

AIT
AIT ANGEWANDTE INFORMATIONSTECHNIK FORSCHUNGSGESELLSCHAFT MBH (AIT)

AIT is a software and research company which is based since 1983 in Graz, the capital of Styria, Austria (http://www.ait.co.at).

Research

Research work is done primarily in the field of information management (e.g.: distributed databases, collection management, knowledge engineering). This is carried out within EU (e.g. IST, Ten-Telecom) or on national and regional level.

Project examples:

From 1997 to 1998 the company participated in the European Union TEN-Telecom project MOSAIC (Museums Over States and vIrtual Culture).

From 2000 onwards AIT was partner in the EU-funded project COVAX - Contemporary Culture Virtual Archives in XML (EU IST-Programme - Information Society Technologies). The purpose of COVAX was to analyse and draw up the technical solutions required to provide access through the Internet to homogeneously-encoded document descriptions of archive, library and museum collections based in the application of SGML/XML.

From 2001 onwards AIT was project coordinator of the European Union IST-Project REGNET – Cultural Heritage in REGional NETworks. The project included 23 partners from 12 European countries, including Russia, and the overall project budget was above 5 Mio EUR. REGNET aimed to set up a functional network of service centres in Europe which provide IT-services dedicated to Cultural Heritage organisations and worked as an enabler of e-Business activities for CH organizations. The project finished successfully in April 2003 (http://www.regnet.org).

The project Media.Alp, 2004-2006 - Setting up an integrated communication platform for achieving a cultural community in the Alpine space -, addresses the cultural sector as an economic factor for regional development. The project consists of an integrated set of actions aimed at setting up a common platform enabling the interested actors to enhance the capacity within the alpine space communities to effectively share their information, testing a new and coordinated methodology and instruments thus achieving an actual and effective cultural community along the Alpine arch.

This target will be achieved through a communication system that will:

1. promote networks and contacts among territories of the Alpine Space, finalised at the improvement of mutual knowledge;

2. develop appropriate services and tools for the circulation and spread of information and communication.

AIT is technical partner in the DISMARC project, 2006-2008, an eContentplus project with the aim to develop a virtual database for the culturally-significant, original music audio and music-related material from music archives across Europe. OAI technology and protocols are used to create a common catalogue of distributed archives metadata and integrate it also as an “audio-pillar” into The European Library - TEL framework.

On regional level AIT is providing the technical infrastructure and metadata integration for the DIS project (Dokumentations- und InformationsService), where a virtual content catalogue for museums, archives, libraries and other content institutions is being created based on OAI technology and international standards (Dublin Core).

Furthermore research work focuses on the provision of web services for the cultural heritage domain. These web services are based on the SKOS vocabulary and first implementations concern the provision of vocabulary web services as support process to the primary procedure “Cataloguing”. The thesaurus format is based on ANSI/NISO Z39.19-2005 respectively ISO 2788:1986, which both describe the architecture of monolingual thesauri. The norm is extended in respect of multilinguality according to the ISO-5964 standard for multilingual thesauri.

 

CSC Europe EEIG

Klosterwiesgasse, 32/1

A-8010 GRAZ

AUSTRIA

http://www.csceurope.org

info@csceurope.org

CSC Europe is the international platform for data services, regional cultural service centres, Cultural Heritage Institutions (museums, archives, libraries, etc.) and companies active in the production, archiving and publishing of digital data.

CSC Europe has been established as a consequence of the European IST-project REGNET. In order to start the network at the earliest possible date the EEIG has already been founded with its seat in Graz in June 2002 by AIT, IMAC, TARX and CSC Austria. Several content partners (museums, etc.) and ICT-partners of the REGNET-consortium have joined CSC Europe by a provisional written agreement. The latter leaves open the way those institutions will join CSC Europe in the future (directly or via regional service centres). The legal framework of the CSC Europe EEIG is constituted by internal agreements and the CSC Europe EEIG statutes. The Grouping has been registered in Graz, Austria where it also has to day its central office.

A pool of services is generated through the cooperation of the different regional service centres with the CSC Europe EEIG and the input of the REGNET project. These services might be for instance special knowledge in standards, theme-based research, Topic Map Generation, digitalizing or other.

Person name:

Walter Koch

Short CV:

Dr. W. Koch was born on the 16th of February 1947 in Graz. He received a PhD in Mathematics and Physics from University of Graz in 1970. He is an ao.Univ.-Professor at the University of Graz and a Guest Professor at the University of Krems. Furthermore he is chairperson of the CSC Europe EEIG and head of the Steinbeis Transferzentrum (IMCHI - Information Management and Cultural Heritage Informatics).

Prof. Koch's relevant experience includes:

From 1976 to 1998: Head of different research institutes at JOANNEUM RESEARCH Ltd. In Graz:

Consultant and contractor to different national and international organizations (eg UNESCO, DFG,EC, ESA, Austrian ministries, Graz municipality)

Member of several international and international scientific associations (eg. ICOM, ÖGDI,ONORM, VÖB)

Project experience: bibliographic information, information systems, IT-management, EU Projects (TAP, Raphael, TenTelecom, IST - Information Society Technologies:

COVAX -Contemporary Culture Virtual Archives in XML, OpenHeritage -Enabling the European Culture Economy, CULTIVATE -Cultural Heritage Application Network, REGNET - Cultural Heritage in REGional NETworks (Coordinator)), CIMI, EUREKA - is a pan-European network for market-oriented, industrial R&D, MEDIA.ALP - Interreg IIIB, DISMARC - eContentPlus.

Project management and scientific consulting of the cataloguing and digitising project for cultural heritage in South Tyrol (Bolzano).

Person name:

Vic Haesaerts

Short CV:

Vic Haesaerts was born on 22 June 1948 in Mechelen, Belgium and has a degree in Electronic Engineering. He possesses a large experience in the management of innovative projects in several sectors: Computer manufacturing, Telecommunications, Finance and Cultural Heritage.

Experience from 1970 on:

MBLE; computer manufacturer (UNIDATA)

PHILIPS Data Systems; software integrator

TELINDUS; telecommunications networks integrator

SESA; ICT-project consultancy

Generale Bank (now FORTIS Bank); finance (technological research)

TARX; Cultural Heritage, digitising, publishing, scenarios, themes and knowledge.

His research activities were mainly focused on artificial intelligence techniques, electronic distribution channels, thematic approaches of information resources and knowledge engineering.

As partner in the EU-project REGNET, he was responsible for the thematic and knowledge layer of the content part of the project and for the overall assessment.

At this moment he is managing director of TARX, founding member of CSC Europe EEIG and expert-evaluator (since 1988) for IST-projects of the European Commission.

Person name:

Dr. Josef Herget

Short CV:

Born 16/11/1957 Languages: German, English, Czech

Diploma in Business Administration, MSc in Administration Science, MSc in Information Science, PhD in Information Science in Small and Medium Sized Companies. From 04/1995 to date: Transfer Center Information Markets & Management Consulting / since 1997: IMAC, Constance. Managing director. Tasks & expertise: Managing a research based consultancy in the field of new media and information systems, services and markets. Project leader in several EU and national projects. Member of the international task force on Telematics in the EUREGIO Bodensee. Evaluator for the EU in GD XIII in the field of Telematics and GD XVI in the field of regional information society. Member of the EU research panel on information engineering (1994-1996). Since 2001 professor for Information Science (HTW Chur). The main fields of activities/experiences are: Consulting on information management and information markets, Multimedia systems, Providing of information services to sme´s, provision on training in the field of new media.

Person name:

Silke Grossmann

Short CV:

Diploma in Librarianship, Graduated in Information Science. From 01/1998 to date: IMAC. Project Manager / Consultant. Tasks & expertise: 1) Project manager (lead for most of the projects related to Cultural Heritage. 2) Consultant in the field of information and knowledge management 3) Training. Themes: Information delivery in online services; Internet-/Intranet Information systems; Information management methodologies; Information structuring and Knowledge Engineering. Actually she focuses on semantic knowledge organisation, especially in the context of semantic networks and topic maps. She participates in the following projects: building of an online community in Switzerland (Arte 24), Consultation of museums on the application of new media, development of a software system for museums (Museums Access), creating a variety of projects in the area of Online-Services (information needs analyses, conception of information services and systems, evaluation of information services and systems). Conception and realization of different types of electronic markets (needs analysis, definition of a portfolio for an offer, creation of a business plan, project management in the realization and application of a marketing strategy). Participation in EU-Projects: REGNET, NBE-BIS, ETTN, DeMES.

Person name:

Mag. Gerda Koch

Short CV:

Gerda Koch was born in Graz and received a Master of Arts in English with a combination of studies in Economics and Law at the University of Graz, and also received a degree in the advanced academic course on Media Science at the University of Graz (Languages: German, English, Spanish). Since 1991 Mag. Koch is employed at AIT, Applied Information Technique Ltd. Since 1998 Mag. Koch is managing director of AIT Ltd. There she participated in diverse informatics projects as e.g. a production automation system for a window-producing company, or the database publishing production of the yearly published Austrian Statistics on Non-University Education. She also collaborated in the European Union TenTelecom project MOSAIC (Museums Over States And vIrtual Culture) for the Austrian partner of the project. Her work focuses on cultural digital content provisions (e.g for the national project MODOK (Modular Documentation System) for the Austrian Ministry of Science and Traffic and the EU-project COVAX (Contemporary Culture Virtual Archive in XML). From 2001 to 2003 Mrs. Koch was responsible for the financial and administrative coordination of the EU IST-Project REGNET (Cultural Heritage in REGional NETworks), one of the largest European research projects in the cultural heritage field with 23 partners in 12 European states, coordinating also the legal framework for the past project continuation. For the Interreg IIIB project MEDIA.ALP she was mainly contributing to the validation of tools and the business development. Within the eContentplus project DISMARC Ms. Koch is working on the integration of thesaures, the metadata implementation and the technical project management.

Profile of the founding members of CSC Europe.

AIT

AIT ANGEWANDTE INFORMATIONSTECHNIK FORSCHUNGSGESELLSCHAFT MBH (AIT)

AIT is a software and research company which is based since 1983 in Graz, the capital of Styria, Austria (http://www.ait.co.at).

Research

Research work is done primarily in the field of information management (e.g.: distributed databases, collection management, knowledge engineering). This is carried out within EU (e.g. IST, Ten-Telecom) or on national and regional level.

Project examples:

From 1997 to 1998 the company participated in the European Union TEN-Telecom project MOSAIC (Museums Over States and vIrtual Culture).

From 2000 onwards AIT was partner in the EU-funded project COVAX - Contemporary Culture Virtual Archives in XML (EU IST-Programme - Information Society Technologies). The purpose of COVAX was to analyse and draw up the technical solutions required to provide access through the Internet to homogeneously-encoded document descriptions of archive, library and museum collections based in the application of SGML/XML.

From 2001 onwards AIT was project coordinator of the European Union IST-Project REGNET - Cultural Heritage in REGional NETworks. The project included 23 partners from 12 European countries, including Russia, and the overall project budget was above 5 Mio EUR. REGNET aimed to set up a functional network of service centres in Europe which provide IT-services dedicated to Cultural Heritage organisations and worked as an enabler of e-Business activities for CH organizations. The project finished successfully in April 2003 (http://www.regnet.org).

The project Media.Alp, 2004-2006 - Setting up an integrated communication platform for achieving a cultural community in the Alpine space -, addresses the cultural sector as an economic factor for regional development. The project consists of an integrated set of actions aimed at setting up a common platform enabling the interested actors to enhance the capacity within the alpine space communities to effectively share their information, testing a new and coordinated methodology and instruments thus achieving an actual and effective cultural community along the Alpine arch.

This target will be achieved through a communication system that will:

1. promote networks and contacts among territories of the Alpine Space, finalised at the improvement of mutual knowledge;

2. develop appropriate services and tools for the circulation and spread of information and communication.

AIT is technical partner in the DISMARC project, 2006-2008, an eContentplus project with the aim to develop a virtual database for the culturally-significant, original music audio and music-related material from music archives across Europe. OAI technology and protocols are used to create a common catalogue of distributed archives metadata and integrate it also as an "audio-pillar" into The European Library - TEL framework.

On regional level AIT is providing the technical infrastructure and metadata integration for the DIS project (Dokumentations- und InformationsService), where a virtual content catalogue for museums, archives, libraries and other content institutions is being created based on OAI technology and international standards (Dublin Core).

Furthermore research work focuses on the provision of web services for the cultural heritage domain. These web services are based on the SKOS vocabulary and first implementations concern the provision of vocabulary web services as support process to the primary procedure "Cataloguing". The thesaurus format is based on ANSI/NISO Z39.19-2005 respectively ISO 2788:1986, which both describe the architecture of monolingual thesauri. The norm is extended in respect of multilinguality according to the ISO-5964 standard for multilingual thesauri.

On the information services side AIT works closely together with the Graz-based Content Service Centre Austria. Here we provided the technical infrastructure and know-how for another series of well-know European projects like CULTIVATE EU, CULTIVATE CEE or OpenHeritage.

Industry

The company is specialized in information engineering and development of information systems tailored to the complex environments for clients in very different markets. We developed automation systems for numerous projects in the fields of public administration and industry management applications. Due to our comprehensive experience we also successfully carried out change management of IT-environments.

Our customer base comes from the industry as well as from the public administration.

Industry projects include for example the automation of the production process of a window producing company, sawmills or automation of the administration of sales departments at a newspaper company, a record distributor or a jeweller's shop.

TARX

Established in 1993.

Contact: Bordekensstraat, 30 Tel +32 15 621405

1981 Hofstade Fax +32 15 620335

Belgium E-mail info@tarx.be

Technological products and services with added value to Cultural Heritage related issues constitute the main activity of TARX. The major part of the offerings belongs to the domain of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and more specifically to the fields of:

Information and Content Engineering

Knowledge Engineering

Electronic Publishing

Bridging the gap between end-user communities and new technologies (social aspects, technical guidance, implementation, test, assessment, feedback) constitutes an important part of the related activities.

Information and Content Engineering pertains to the thematic approach of information resources in a multilingual and multilevel environment for different target audiences and multiple consultation channels and end user equipment.

The most frequently used paradigm in Knowledge Engineering projects is "Topic Maps" and more precisely XTM, the XML Topic Map Standard. "Topics" can be defined together with their "Associations", forming the knowledge layer on top of a set of information resources, i.e. "Occurrences", which can be connected to the "Topics". Topic Maps form an ideal deterministic navigational aid for Cultural Heritage themes.

Electronic Publishing implies solutions for public terminals, CD/DVD and the Internet, all focussed on Cultural Heritage. For these purposes, the authoring tool "Macromedia Director" is a key component for the interactive multimedia productions.

Multilingual script- and scenario writing are two very important supporting services to the main activity lines. TARX possesses also a rich experience in searching and applying the right music theme corresponding with a specific topic or event.

TARX participated in a European Information Society Technologies project REGNET, Regional Networks. The main objective of the project was the creation and deployment of tools and services for letting Cultural Heritage Institutions enter the digital era. This was realised through the establishment of a European Cultural Service Centre (CSC Europe EEIG) as an umbrella for a series of regional CSCs, Cultural Heritage Institutions and companies.

For many years, key personal of TARX is taking part in the evaluation and review processes of the IST-programmes of the European Commission.

Key persons of TARX are highly experienced in co-ordinating medium to large, multidisciplinary projects (e.g. electronic distribution channels and dealing rooms in the financial world), important work packages of European IST-projects in the cultural sector and individual multimedia projects.

Some references:

Manufactuur De Wit nv e-Publication project

Sint-Angela Instituut multimedia events

TEIN nv script writing

Verbruikersunie cv consultancy

Museum Tervuren project evaluation

Belgian Art & Antique Dealers software package evaluation

European Commission proposal and project evaluation

Municipal Museums Mechelen e-Publication project, consultancy

Archives of Brugge consultancy

Own research: Database on Flemish Heritage Tracks in South East England

Study of appropriate thesauri concerning art, architecture and culture

Music themes database

Studies Archives of Colchester, Norwich, Canterbury and Maidstone UK

IMAC

IMAC was founded in March 1995 as a Steinbeis Transfer Center - with the purpose to promote a direct knowledge transfer of science in organisations of the information economy. In 1998 the transformation in an independent partnership under the direction of Dr. Josef Herget took place. Today IMAC employs approximately 6 co-workers (employees, freelancers, trainees) at 2 locations in Germany: Constance and Berlin. For the Swiss activities around the take-over of the "Datenbank Schweizerischer Kulturgüter" (DSK) and the development and application of new media services for art and culture the subsidiary Art & Media Consulting (AMC) was founded in 1998.

The following subjects characterise the main activity of the company: Internet Services - E-Commerce - Information Management - Knowledge Management - Knowledge Transfer (Training). Global know-how in different application fields, which is constantly extended in numerous projects of national and international adjustment, was united in a broad service spectrum. Consultation, conception of web sites and online communities (e. g. www.arte24.ch for the cultural community), Web Design and are part of the Internet-based services. The Consulting area is specialised on information and documentation topics (e. g. information systems for libraries, information and knowledge management and engineering, knowledge organisation). Economical, technological and methodical knowledge enables us to develop suitable strategies for the introduction of information and knowledge management, to support the evaluation and selection of new information systems (library systems, content management systems, knowledge management systems) and to handle technical problems.

The following are some examples for projects in which IMAC was involved in the past years:

REGNET (2001-2003) Cultural Heritage in Regional Networks

User requirement analysis. Methodologies for data structuring (standards) and coordination of content production. Market Engineering (Business Model, generic marketing strategies). System validation (Lead). Knowledge Engineering: Design of topic maps, test and requirement definition for topic maps authoring & visualisation tools.

NBE (1997-98) / NBE-BIS (1998 - 2000) New Book Economy / Building of the Information Society

Analysis of user demands according to electronic publishing products. Development of a market study for the online market. Execution of a Delphi study in order to forecast the development of the content industry. Conception of co-operation models between key players of the publishing industry and new players on the market (e. g. content providers and service providers).

ETTN - European Technology Transfer Network (1999) - Execution of a market study for the planned ETTN in co-operation with the institute TNO-STB, Delft, Netherlands on behalf of the EU. DeMes, Development of Media Services (1998). E. g. Analysis of the demand for intelligent tools for the orientation of users in complex media markets.

A special project to be emphasised is Arte 24 (a project of the Swiss subsidiary Art & Media Consulting). In continuation of the ideas and objectives of the "Datenbank Schweizerischer Kulturgüter" new media are made an integrative part of a new approach in order to support the preservation and availability (search) of cultural properties. Museums of all kinds and size are merged into an Internet-based network, a central database in the Internet. Other project related to Cultural Heritage is e. g. the Habsburg Project - concepting and realizing a thematic trail in the Internet.

CSC Austria

The concept for the culture service centres, as information and technology suppliers for cultural heritage organizations was developed within the European Union project MOSAIC, Museum Over States and vIrtual Culture, in 1998. In June 1998 the first culture service centre, Cultural Service Centre Austria or CSC Austria, was established as a non-profit association. Taking into account the extension of services in the past years CSC Austria changed its names into Content Service Centre Austria in summer 2004. The association's main objectives are the development of concepts, electronic services and products for a custom-made and easy-to-use application of new information technologies in archives, museums, libraries and similarly heritage institutions.

Numerous organizations do have valuable contents (like e.g. catalogue data, texts or media objects) but due to the lack of resources, and the uncertainty regarding the best long-term preservation of digital objects these contents have not yet been processed electronically. This often prevents a publication of the data on the Internet, or the cooperation within international networks for research, education and tourism. In this field CSC Austria offers its services: On basis of our long-term experience with documentation issues and cultural heritage, and our knowledge gained within various international European Union projects CSC Austria can offer a profound expertise in web-based data base solutions and digitisation projects.

Our service:

Up-to-date technical consulting (for cultural heritage institutions and other content providers: structure of search & retrieval in several data bases, structure of electronic catalogues, Web presence and e-Business, information services like electronic forum, mailing list, news, news type character):

integration of international standards (in cultural database solutions)

long-term usability and portability (realisation of sustainable solutions: producing meta data, cooperative structure of thesauri and Topic maps, long-term preservation of digital data)

adaptation of individual solutions (integration of legacy systems: import of existing electronic data)

experienced project management (on national and international level: support - workshops - meetings - seminars)

technical infrastructure provision (Database hosting for libraries, museums and archives)

Information is an important factor of production today. We offer our support in establishing the right concept and structure for a perfectly customized solution.

Current project references:

Cataloguing the cultural heritage of South Tyrol

Within a region-wide cataloguing initiative of the local government of South Tyrol the heterogeneous and historically grown collection documentation of all cultural heritage institutions of South Tyrol was analysed. On the basis of the findings of the actual state inquiry a target concept for the comprehensive and standardized cataloguing was developed. The final outcome of the project will be a virtual, multilingual catalogue of all cultural heritage objects of South Tyrol.

The virtual catalogue will have different user categories (public, scientific, administration etc.) and will offer functions like database access and distributed search, cooperative thesaurus management, knowledge presentation via topic maps, virtual exhibitions and museum shops, mailing lists and discussion fora and more. Of course, this virtual catalogue will be multilingual and will be based on international standards.

The whole project started in January 2003 and shall be finished end of 2006.

EUROCARE2000 2002-2006

Since January 2002 CSC Austria is partner of the EUREKA umbrella project EUROCARE2000. The project conducts a study on industrial products, processes and technologies, for the preservation and restoration of objects and monuments.