Open Data on the Academy of Athens' Cultural and Scientific Archives (GR0083)

Brief Description of the Commitment

The Academy of Athens intends to contribute to the collaborative preparation of the 5th National Action Plan for Greece's participation in the Open Government Partnership, in the OGP themes "Natural Resources" and "Access to Information". In this context, the Academy of Athens proposes the following mature action concerning, among other things, the availability of High Value open data from the Academy's collections in areas of cultural and scientific interest. This specific action is part of Invitation 118 "Creation, Promotion and Utilization of Digital Cultural Stock" of the Ministry of Development and Investments" and concerns the organization, documentation, digitization, management and promotion of the cultural and scientific content available to the Academy of Athens. The digitization and documentation are of central cultural importance, as in this way it will be possible to rescue, exploit and display the relevant archives of the Academy of Athens.

Problem Definition

1. What problem does the commitment aim to address? The objective of the act is the organization, documentation, digitization, management and promotion of the cultural and scientific content available to the Academy of Athens. The already existing digitized and documented material is relatively limited. Therefore, the digitization and documentation of all the centers of the Academy of Athens is of central scientific and cultural importance. In this way it will be possible to rescue, utilize and display the relevant archives held by the Academy.

2. What are the causes of the problem? The limited digitization of the archives belonging to the Academy of Athens is mainly due to the lack of sufficient funding until now for supporting relative actions.

Commitment Description

1. What has been done so far to solve the problem? Earlier efforts at limited scale have been made for different Research Centers of the Academy of Athens. However, the vast wealth of the Academy collections requires more coordinated action.

2. What solution are you proposing? The Innovative Actions for the utilization and promotion of the Cultural and Scientific Archives of the Academy of Athens concern the development of electronic services and applications of augmented and virtual reality with the aim of making the material available to specialists as well as to the public. The central objective of the act is to maximize the extroversion, the educational role, and the social contribution of the Academy of Athens. It concerns the digitization of mobile monuments of important cultural heritage of the various departments, such as the Library, the Research Center for Atmospheric Physics and Climatology, the Hellenic Folklore Research Center, the Research Center for Modern Greek Dialects and Idioms and the Center Research of Antiquity.

3. What results do we want to achieve by implementing this commitment? The produced material and related databases will be able to support international content sharing services, while the entire cultural stock will be sent for deposit at http://www.openarchives.gr/ and http://www.searchculture. gr/ which is the largest online search and navigation portal for reputable Greek digital science and culture content. The act contributes to increase the awareness of the general public in relation to the collections and data of the Academy of Athens and to promote the use of accessible material and related metadata for innovative purposes in full respect of intellectual property rights.

Commitment Analysis

1. How will the commitment promote transparency? The Innovative Actions for the utilization and promotion of the Cultural and Scientific Archives of the Academy of Athens contributes to the development of digital applications in the field of culture and science so that there is access to information of historical and scientific interest including open data of e-culture, digital libraries, econtent and historical records. The use of all applications will be provided free of charge.

2. How will the commitment help foster accountability? Ν/Α

3. How will the commitment improve citizen participation in defining, implementing, and monitoring solutions? The Action will improve citizen participation in different categories of beneficiaries. Visitors of general interest will be informed about the history of the Academy, its Centers, the Library and will identify within the exhibition similarities or differences with their own local tradition or origin. Children and school groups will locate in the entire collection elements and knowledge they already learned at school, while gaining some additional knowledge through an entertaining and informative environment. Donors of the Academy will feel proud and emotionally involved in their country's history and history-making, since their donation will play an important role in documenting or enriching the historical narrative. Tourists of special interest (specialists, students, etc.) will be able to locate the scientific information necessary for them within the entire collection. Foreign visitors in general, will be able to approach a piece of Greek history through the repository.

Commitment Planning (Milestones | Expected Outputs)

Open Access to data at the Library of the Academy of Athens | The digitization and documentation of books (15,000 pages) of the Academy of Athens include: Publications of the Academy approximately 30 books as well as 70 books from the AA collection, digitization, recording and documentation of the Archives: Roidis, Andreadis, Papadopoulos, Stergiopoulos, Rota, Korai, Stamouli (Thracian), digitization and documentation of the Academy's own architectural plans, digitization and documentation of maps, digitization of Palaiologos Chrysobulon, 3D scanning and documentation of 5 statues for use within applications, virtual tour and augmented reality applications (e.g. application for tablet use with Kostis Palamas in the office) etc.

Open Access data at the Research Center for Atmospheric Physics and Climatology | Digitization of the archives of the Atmospheric Physics and Climatology Research Center of the Academy of Athens. Examples include the design of the Center's specialized website, the development of an interactive cartographic atlas and chronology, with the changes over time in atmospheric and climatic measurements, the documentation of records of the previous century from the Stations of Andros, Naxos, Skopelos, Milos, Thira, Syros and Crete, the digitization and documentation of monthly observations from 19th and 20th century as well as manuscripts, writings and observations of the late D. Aeginitis and H. Mariolopoulos and of travelers who traveled to the eastern Mediterranean and recorded atmospheric and climatic measurements in the previous centuries.

Open Access data at the Hellenic Folklore Research Center | Provision of open data of folklore and ethnographic material from all over Greece, originating from the digitization of the Archives and Collections of the Research Center of Greek Folklore of the Academy of Athens: Digitization-documentation of the Manuscript Archive, development of new catalog and management system for the Manuscript Archive (approx. 5,500 records), digitization and documentation of film recordings on moving image cassettes VHS, mini cassettes and mini DVDs, digitization, documentation, philological curation of archives of proverbs and folk traditions (narratives), digitization (photography) and documentation of museum collection, transfer of existing digitized archives and thematic repositories to G-Cloud, digital chronology application with the life and work of Nikolaos Politis, etc.

Open Access to data at the Research Center for Modern Greek Dialects and Idioms | Digitization of the archive of manuscript collections of dialectal data, which constitutes the largest dialectical archive in Greece, and contains unknown and valuable linguistic material from all regions of the Greek-speaking world inside and outside of Greece, since the middle of the 19th century. Digitization of the audio archive of the Center, including recordings of live dialect speech from the 1960s. Annotation of the archive so that it can be accessed with advanced electronic search capabilities for any interested researcher of the Greek language.

Open Access to data at the Center Research of Antiquity | Design of the Center’s website including 3 databases, different for each collection (TIR, CVA, CSIR), digitization of the data (texts, drawings, photographs) of the three collections, documentation and introduction to the databases, digital map of Greece connected to the databases with complete georeferencing / geocoding of their data (archaeological sites, objects, photographs, drawings, entries , comments)

Action Plan Review

Commitment 1. Innovate actions to utilize and promote cultural and scientific archives