Dr. Julian Richards, workshop Thursday, 15 February

As part of Dr. Julian Richards’ visit to the SF Bay Area, he will give a workshop open to professionals in cultural heritage management

TIME: Thursday, Feb 15, 1-4 pm. PLACE: Officers Club, SF Presidio

Co-sponsored by the Presidio Trust, UC Berkeley and Cultural Heritage Imaging

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Please put aside this time to join an informative discussion about Cultural Heritage and Digital Preservation with a leading international scholar – Julian Richards from the United Kingdom. He will be visiting and lecturing at UC Berkeley and has generously made time to visit with us at the Presidio. This is the beginning of a project from UC Berkeley in cooperation with the Presidio Trust to create a guide for the best practices in digital preservation for cultural heritage sites – using the Presidio as a case study.

Dr. Richards is Head of the Department of Archaeology at the University of York and is a leading expert on computer applications in historic preservation. He is Director of the Archaeology Data Service, the national digital data archive for archaeological research in the UK, which supports research, learning and teaching with high quality and dependable digital resources. It does this by preserving digital data in the long term, and by promoting and disseminating a broad range of data. He is a partner in the European Commons-funded CHIRON and EPOCH networks.

Workshop Details (pdf)

Workshop Title: Standards of practice and practicing standards: Preserving Cultural Heritage, one bit at a time

Introduction:
With the move from paper to pixels, a gap exists between cultural and digital heritage stewardship. We would like to offer a discussion forum and workshop on this important topic – from assessment to archive. This workshop will take a holistic approach to comprehensive workflows that integrate best practices of standards in digital preservation with the diverse standards of practice for documenting cultural heritage sites.

Part 1: Discuss and debate decision-making principles for digital informatics in cultural heritage preservation. What standards of practice mind both sides of the cultural/digital gap? Where are the decision-points in preservation workflows and what are the alternatives? What technological solutions are of lowest risk and highest impact for heritage documentation? We will point to real-world standards in practice that are effective and will seek from the workshop participants other examples and resources in this critical domain.

Part 2: Frameworks for defining the digital universe of technologies/practices already in use in heritage. While best practices and standards are useful when followed, the majority of legacy information for cultural heritage is squirreled away in hard drives, outdated software applications and outmoded methodologies. We raise this issue for discussion and offer an action plan for collecting a comprehensive list of risk areas and solutions for the digital deluge that is already upon us. We will outline mitigation, migration, archiving and repository strategies, and push for contributions from all participants.

Part 3: Empirical provenance and ‘process history’. Documenting the decision-steps in archaeological fieldwork and digital informatics – from photography, lab work, scanning, modeling, etc – are essential to building context, evaluating reliability and accuracy, as well as providing transparency and scientific replicability. Documenting documentation is rarely done to a sufficient level, for it is time consuming and the perceived, present value is minimal. We will demonstrate the phenomenal value of this approach to field and lab recording, and offer up solutions that make this documentation painless and immediately valuable.

Conclusion: Sharing our Digital Heritage. We will end our discussion with some time dedicated to digital dissemination, from Powerpoint and email to weblogs and websites.

Outcomes: Participants will come away with strategies for coping with their own digital deluges, as well as key opportunities to contribute to a growing network of digital heritage informatics professionals who are dedicated to the long term sustainability of our cultural past and digital future. We will work to integrate the outcomes from this workshop into existing working groups as well as form a new working community to carry on these particular subject areas.

Who should attend: Anyone interested in digital preservation strategies for cultural heritage are encouraged to attend. We welcome input and contributions from the Presidio community at large on these vital topics.

Contact: Ruth Tringham or Michael Ashley