eCulture

Do virtual museums really provide added value to end-users, or do they just contribute to the abundance of images? Does the World Wide Web save endangered cultural heritage, or does it foster a society with less variety? How can information technology help to preserve the diversity of cultures in our fast-changing world? These are the questions that are raised and answered in this book, the result of a long path across the digital heritage landscape.

Alfredo M. Ronchi, Secretary of the EC MEDICI Cooperation Framework, gives a broad overview of eCulture and digital heritage. His presentation is divided into three main sections: the first one devoted to the main issues and general guidelines, the second to technological fundamentals and the main solutions, and the third to applications and services, including a wide range of case studies.

Starting from the basics the reader will be introduced to virtual museums issues and achievements, cataloguing, digitizing, publishing, and sustainable exploitation of cultural content, all exemplified by real-world case studies and applications. Taking into account more than 15 years of experience and results in digital cultural content research, the author provides a comprehensive view on issues and achievements in digital collections and cultural content for "memory institutions", developers of digital content and digital libraries, cultural content managers, publishers, librarians, and museum curators.

• Ambient Intelligence
• Computer
• Content Management
• Digital Content
• Digital Museums
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Hypertext
• Intelligent Interfaces
• Multimedia Information Systems
• Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID)
• Web
• World Wide Web
• communication
• information society
• information technology

“This book … looks at a much neglected side of the digital age and considers what the world wide web provides for our culture. … It provides much information and discussion about e-collections and their relationship with the culture we are familiar with. The book offers a sound introduction to the subject which is very rarely considered in the massive coverage given to all aspects of the digital age as portrayed by users of the world wide web.” D. M. Hutton, Kybernetes, Vol. 39 (2), 2010

"This is an extremely useful book, richly illustrated with examples, with three sections: cultural content, technological framework and exploitation. It is carefully documented and while focussed on European developments, draws on examples from Australia, Canada, China, Japan and the United States. [...]" Kim H. Veltman, Scientific Director, VMMI, Maastricht
- Please find the whole review in the additional information section.-

• HyperMediaGroup, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy

  Alfredo M. Ronchi

Alfredo M. Ronchi is co-founder and coordinator of the Computer Aided Architectural Design Laboratory (1984 - 1990) and founding Director of the HyperMediaGroup Laboratory (1990 - today) at the Politecnico di Milano.

He is currently Secretary of the EC MEDICI Cooperation Framework, a consultant of the Council of Europe, member of the UNESCO OCCAM Mediterranean Programme, Infopoverty, Global Forum, Fondazione Italiana Nuove Comunicazioni, Sacred World Foundation Scientific Committee.

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