Sustainability in Cultural Heritage (CH) is a complex question that needs to be addressed by a group of experts tackling the different issues. In this light, the present work wishes to provide a multi-level analysis of the sustainability in CH, using as an example a recent European H2020 project (CrossCult) and the lessons learnt from its design, implementation and evaluation. The sustainability of CH has qualitatively changed over the last few years, under the developments in digital technology that seems to affect the very nature of the cultural experience. We discuss sustainability in venues using digital technologies, covering a span of needs of small/unknown and large/popular venues, which try to enhance the visitor experience, attract visitors, form venue networks, etc. Moreover, we explore issues of sustainability of digital content and its re usability through holistic design. Aspects of technology, human networks and data sustainability are also presented, and we conclude with the arguments concerning the sustainability of visitor reflection, the interpretation of social and historical phenomena and the creation of meaning.

This paper describes a working example of semantically modelling cultural heritage information and data from the National Gallery collection in London. The paper discusses the process of semantically representing and enriching the available cultural heritage data, and reveals the challenges of semantically expressing interrelations and groupings among the physical items, the venue and the available digital resources. The paper also highlights the challenges in the creation of the conceptual model of the National Gallery as a Venue, which aims to i) describe and understand the correlation between the parts of a building and the whole; ii) to record and express the semantic relationships among the building components with the building as a whole; and iii) to be able to record the accurate location of objects within space and capture their provenance in terms of changes of location. The outcome of this research is the CrossCult venue ontology, a fully International Committee for Documentation Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC-CRM) compliant structure developed in the context of the CrossCult project. The proposed ontology attempts to model the spatial arrangements of the different types of cultural heritage venues considered in the project: from small museums to open air archaeological sites and whole cities.

The modern advances of digital technologies provide a wider access to information, enabling new ways of interacting with and understanding cultural heritage information, facilitating its presentation, access and reinterpretation. The paper presents a working example of connecting and mapping cultural heritage information and data from cultural heritage institutions and venues through the open technological platform of the CrossCult project. The process of semantically representing and enriching the available cultural heritage data is discussed, and the challenges of semantically expressing interrelations and groupings among physical items, venues, digital resources, and ideas are revealed. The paper also highlights the challenges in the creation of a knowledge base resource which aggregates a set of Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS): a carefully selected subset of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model, a set of application ontologies and an optimised classification scheme based on domain vocabularies.

The “Practical applications of IIIF: as a building block towards a digital National Collection”, part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council's (AHRC) funded Towards a National Collection Programme, aims to highlight and demonstrate the opportunities and benefits that the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) standard offers to a wide audience of heritage institutions and researchers looking to share, present and re-use high quality images and media on the web. This Zenodo repository presents the documents, videos, and files associated with the second “Practical application of IIIF” webinar - “IIIF Services and Tools“. Following on from our first webinar which showcased the ways in which IIIF was used by institutions and members of the community, this webinar instead focused more on the services, tools and implementations utilised in varying environments from individual researchers and small projects to national collaborations. Broken into two sections, the webinar began with an initial set of presentations intended to introduce attendees to the ways, manners and difficulties faced in implementing IIIF, this was followed by an interactive panel discussion featuring experts from across the IIIF and digital humanities landscape. In the description below each video from the webinar is hyperlinked to YouTube, but as noted this data set also includes all the documents and files associated with the webinar, namely pdfs of the slides, where available, compiled by each speaker, the video presentations, transcripts of the videos, and the chat file that accompanied the webinar. There is also the option to download a zipped file that contains all the videos, transcripts, slide decks, and webinar chat. Session 1 – Implementing IIIF Introduction and Welcome (J. Padfield) IIIF for all the things - What goes into providing IIIF for millions of items? Or even a National Collection? Tom Crane looks at large-scale IIIF implementation, with particular focus on Wellcome Collection. Co-creating Archival Spaces with IIIF – Abira Hussein will be exploring the challenges faced, and the potential for IIIF to support more independent community-based archives to exist digitally and sustainability online. “Could it help us to…?”: The Royal Collection and IIIF – Andrew Davis will present a paper centred around how focusing on small-scale, tangible benefits set The Royal Collection Trust on the path to IIIF adoption. IIIF, Linked Open Data, and Crowdsourcing a the National Library of Wales – Jason Evans will present details of how IIIF has facilitated larger endeavours at the National Library of Wales. Session 2 – Panel Discussion Following short introductions from each of the panellists, we will open discussion to the floor. In advance of this session panellists have been asked to reflect upon a series of issues surrounding the role and place of IIIF within production and research workflows, presentation and dissemination, as well as the future of IIIF. Questions from the audience are actively encouraged. Introduction (A McLaughlin) Davy Verbeke (University of Ghent) Andrew Prescott (University of Glasgow) Mary-Ann Constantine (University of Wales) Pia Eckhart (University of Freiburg) Ben Bakelaar (Human Experience Systems LLC) Mia Ridge (British Library Session 2 Full Discussion (Panel)