CEO 2012 - International Symposium on Strategies for digitizing ethnographical collections and their presentation on the internet

International Symposium on Strategies for digitizing ethnographical collections
and their presentation on the internet
By now projects of digitization rank among everyday business in cultural
sciences, but so far there are no substantial experiences in digitizing large
collections and their efficient utilization on the internet. Special problems
arise with digitization of handwritten ethnographical collections based on the
results of vast field research activities. These huge amounts of documents are
barely manageable and often in danger of decay. They need to be long-term
preserved, digitized, and sustainably made accessible online by intelligent and
efficient content management and retrieval techniques.
The theme of the international symposium, which will be held at the University
of Rostock between September 26 and 28, 2012, includes strategies for
digitization and presenta- tion of cultural --- especially ethnographical ---
collections and their online presentation. In the context of the project
"WossiDiA", funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the symposium's
hosts are currently preparing the archive of Richard Wossidlo (1859-1939) for
it's complete online presentation. The Wossidlo archive consists of historical
documents about folk culture and the dialect of Mecklenburg, including more
than two million handwritten notes which are highly interconnected with each
other in a complex filing system.
The symposium is meant to offer a forum for discussion and exchange of
experiences with other projects facing similar challenges. It attempts to
bring together archives, libraries, and museums with the computer science and
the disciplines of cultural sciences, such as Cultural Anthropology, Ethnology,
Volkskunde/European Ethnology, Linguistics/Dialectology, and Regional History.
Moreover the symposium is intended to promote digitization efforts for cultural
collections and their online publication.
The symposium focuses on the following topics:
*Concept and Design*
-- Analog and digital long-term preservation as well as sustainability of
digital archives: problems, solutions, guidelines and standards
-- Planning of digitization projects and development of digital archives
-- Interface between cultural sciences on the one hand and software and data
engineering on the other hand for digitization projects
-- Digitization: in-house versus external contractor
-- Integration of diverse kinds of documents and objects (manuscripts and
letters, prints, photographs, objects, maps, etc.)
-- Challenges in and solutions for design and implementation of digitization
workflows
*Implementation*
-- Use of existing digital archive and library systems vs. domain specific
implementations
-- Interconnectivity between and within digitized collections of archives,
libraries, and museums
-- Integration of distributed archive systems and web portals, as well as
perspectives for Europeana, the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, and similar
initiatives in other countries
-- Metadata and structural data: standards, modification techniques, highly
interconnected metadata, classification, thesauri, indexing, and the use of
ontologies incl. their dynamics
*Usage*
-- Techniques for retrieval, evaluation and presentation of online collections
-- Visualization strategies and interaction paradigms for working with online
archives
-- Usage scenarios for digital archives; using of roles (annotator, editor,
contemporary witness, contributor, etc.)
-- A critical analysis of the behavior of users in online and offline archives
-- Rights of use for contents of digital archives: Open Access vs. Digital
Rights Management
-- Digital Collaboration: Use of Web 2.0 technologies to enhance metadata
Interested parties are invited to submit their proposals for presentation.
Please send an abstract of no more than one page in length in English or German
not later than March 15, 2012 to: cfp-AT-wossidia.de.
Furthermore you will have the opportunity to present your project in a poster
session. Notification of acceptance for submitted proposals will be sent by
April 10, 2012. The contributions for the symposium will be published
promptly.
*Program committee*
University of Rostock
Dr. Christoph Schmitt
Dept. of Volkskunde/European Ethnology
Am Reifergraben 4
18055 Rostock, Germany
http://www.volkskunde.uni-rostock.de/
E-Mail: Christoph.Schmitt-AT-uni-rostock.de
Dr. Holger Meyer
Dept. of Computer Science
Database Research Group
Albert-Einstein-Str. 22
18059 Rostock, Germany
http://dbis.informatik.uni-rostock.de/
E-Mail: Holger.Meyer-AT-uni-rostock.de
Robert Zepf
Director of library
University Library
Albert-Einstein-Str. 6
18059 Rostock, Germany
http://www.ub.uni-rostock.de/
E-Mail: Robert.Zepf-AT-uni-rostock.de
*Contact*
Dr. Stefanie Janssen
Institut f?r Volkskunde (Wossidlo-Archiv)
CEO-Symposium
Am Reifergraben 4, 18055 Rostock, Germany
Tel.: +49 381 498 1056
Fax: +49 381 498 118 1053
E-Mail: Stefanie.Janssen-AT-uni-rostock.de
In context of the "WossiDiA" project supported by the German Research Foundation.

Submission deadline (abstract): March 15 2012
Date of acceptance: April 10 2012
Submission of abstract (1 page): mailto:cfp-AT-wossidia.de
Conference date: September 26--28 2012
Symposiums website: http://www.wossidia.de/?q=ceo