Digital Preservation and Access to Cultural and Scientific Heritage: Presentation of the KT-DigiCult-BG Project

The fast development and wide application of digital methods, combined with broadened access to the Internet and falling computing costs, have created intense interest in electronic presentation and access to cultural and scientific heritage resources. Information technologies have offered cultural institutions new opportunities for the presentation of their holdings, which are now made accessible not only to the specialists, but also to the citizens and interested parties worldwide. The paper presents an overview of the Bulgarian experience in the field of digital preservation and access and on-going work on the project “Knowledge Transfer for the Digitisation of Scientific and Cultural Heritage to Bulgaria” (MTKD-CT-2004-509754) supported by the Marie Curie programme of the FP6 of the EC.

Digital Preservation and Web Access to the Konkoly Observatory Schmidt Telescope Plate Archive

ACM Computing Classification System (1998): J.2.

Digital Collections in Regional Public Library “P. R. Slaveikov” – Veliko Tarnovo in the Context of the National Program for Preservation and Promotion of Literary Heritage

Nowadays the great public libraries in Bulgaria are gaining the appearance of digital centers which provide new informational resources and services in the digital space. The digital conversion as a way of preservation is one of the important priorities of Regional Public Library in Veliko Tarnovo. In the last few years we persistently search for possible ways of financing by national and foreign programs in this direction. In the beginning the strategy was oriented to digitalization of the funds with most urgent conversion – these of the local studies periodicals from 1878 till 1944 year. The digitalization of funds will create conditions of laying the basement of full text database of Bulgarian periodical publications. The technology that is offered gives opportunities for including other libraries in the Unified index, which can develop it into a National Unified index of periodical publications. The integrated informational environment that is created is an attractive, comfortable and useful place for work in home or at work for researchers, historians, art experts, bibliographers. The library readers use very actively all informational services of the library internet page and work competently with the on-line indexes provided there, they find the necessary title, which can be demanded later for usage in home or in the library, using electronic means again.

3D Laser Scanning for Digital Preservation and Dissemination of Cultural Heritage Main scanned objects - Four Temples of Different Religions in Sofia

The project demonstrates the use of modern technologies for preservation and presentation of the cultural and historical heritage. The idea is a database of cultural and historical heritage sites to be created applying three dimensional laser scanning technology and a combination of geodetic and photogrammetric methods and shooting techniques. For the purposes of carrying out this project, we have focused on some heritage sites in the central part of Sofia. We decided to include these particular buildings because of the fact that there is hardly another city in the world where within a radius of 400 m are located four temples of different religions - Jewish, Muslim, Orthodox and Catholic. In the recent years, preservation of cultural heritage has been increasingly linked to objectives of sustainable development. Today, it has become clear that cultural heritage is also an economic resource that should be used for further economic development (through compulsory preservation of its authentic cultural values). There has been a more active public debate on the role of cultural heritage, regarding the following topics: improving the quality of life through development of cultural tourism, leading to an increase of the employment rate, constantly improving the business climate, etc. Cultural heritage preservation is becoming one of the priority objectives of the urban development policy. The focus has been shifted to new ways of preservation, mainly combinations of sophisticated technological solutions and their application for the purposes of preservation and dissemination of the cultural heritage.

Virtual Encyclopaedia of the Bulgarian Iconography

East-Christian icon art is recognised as one of the most significant areas of the art of painting. Regrettably, it is still being neglected in the digital documentation and the registry of the art of painting. The accessibility to that large part of mankind's cultural and historical ancestry would be enhanced greatly if icons of all possible kinds and origins were digitised, classified, and „exhibited“ in the Internet. That would allow the preservation and even the future digital restoration of a large number of rare specimens of the East-Christian art of painting. This article aims to introduce how modern techniques from the area of digital libraries can be used for implementing the demonstrative multimedia library “Virtual encyclopaedia of the Bulgarian iconography ” 4, containing a large number of Bulgarian iconic art masterpieces and iconography of various authors, periods and schools.

Partner Projects of “Ivan Vazov” Public Library – Plovdiv on Digitization of Cultural and Historical Heritage

Digitization offers excellent opportunities for the preservation and safe-keeping of valuable library collections. The article recounts the first coordinated attempts of “Ivan Vazov” Public Library – Plovdiv at digitizing some of its treasured collections such as manuscripts, early printed books and archives through partner projects and revealing them to the world community.

Modern Training Tools for Binding Design and Paper Conservation of Antique Books, Albums and Documents (BBINDING)

Report published in the Proceedings of the National Conference on "Education in the Information Society", Plovdiv, May, 2013

Towards Wider Sharing of Iconographical Art Content

Information and multimedia technologies that have been developed during the past couple of years provided new e-tools to memory institutions (viz. museum, libraries, galleries, etc.), reviving the valuable treasure made by generation of people. Digital libraries (DLs) are such powerful contemporary tools for cultural heritage presentation, preservation and archiving. However, DLs power will in-crease significantly if they use mechanisms for ubiquitous sharing of their e-artefacts and they distribute attractive content in the social networks, reflecting community demands and needs. This paper presents a service for automatic sharing of iconographical artefacts and full collections from the Bulgarian Iconographical Digital Library to selected Facebook communities. In this case the service will be used for widely promotion of knowledge about East-Christian Iconographical Art and Culture, but I could be used not only for this and not only in this domain.