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The main objective of the Deliverable is to present an overview on standards, procedures and protocols to Cultural Heritage (CH) digitization, based on a critical review of the State-of-the-Art in data capturing, data processing and data storage/access within the overall framework of Heritage Documentation.

This report describes the results of Task T1.1 concerning European experiences and best practices in Conservation, Preservation and Valorisation of monuments and sites, and of Task T1.3 concerning the state of the art in relevant technologies.

CARARE is a best practice network funded by the EU ICT Policy Support Programme. It is aimed at establishing a best practice network of heritage agencies, archaeological organisations and research institutions to establish an aggregation service for Europeana for archaeological and architectural digital content, including images, texts and 3D objects. CARARE is particularly focused on recommendations for metadata schemas dedicated to archaeological and architectural heritage and on solutions for the publication of 3D and Virtual Reality content. This paper describes the recommendations which have been made by the project for publishing 3D objects online in easily accessible formats such as 3D PDF with the metadata necessary for discovery in Europeana. It is illustrated by the contribution of the Scuola Normale Superiore and its work in preparing 3D representations of Pompeii monuments for publication through Europeana.

The Archaeology Data Service (ADS) is funded by JISC and AHRB to support research, learning and teaching with high quality and dependable digital resources. Since its foundation in 1996, the ADS has made available online a whole range of digital data sets that have been used within research and teaching. The diverse and growing catalogue of data sets includes the National Monuments Record of Scotland, back‐runs of the Council for British Archaeology Research Reports and the Archway Table of Contents and Journal Locator tools. It includes discrete but extensive archives from archaeological fieldwork and research.

User-centered design and evaluation of a system to improve information access and assist the wider information activities of users in cultural heritage digital collections is described. Extending beyond simple, standalone information seeking and retrieval tasks, the system aims to enhance content ‘findability’ and to support users’ cognitive processes of sensemaking, learning and creativity, by embedding tools for information use at the point of access. A generalized user interaction model derived from requirements analysis is shown to be compatible with models of exploratory interaction and information seeking support, illustrating potential for a single system that can adapt to diverse use case scenarios. Controlled laboratory evaluations, whilst demonstrating support for a variety of information tasks, also reveal variance in information seeking behavior by task type and user profile, indicating a need for a system that lets users select their preferred interaction mode in context. Interactions with the path creation functionality highlight potential for sensemaking and creativity support tools to be embedded within digital library collections.

Current Information Retrieval systems for digital cultural heritage support only the actual search aspect of the information seeking process. This demonstration presents the second PATHS system which provides the exploration, analysis, and sense-making features to support the full information seeking process.

Large amounts of digital cultural heritage (CH) information have become available over the past years, requiring more powerful exploration systems than just a search box. The PATHS system aims to provide an environment in which users can successfully explore a large, unknown collection through two modalities: following existing paths to learn about what is available and then freely exploring.

This paper presents a new metadata aggregation approach based on a mediating repository that intends to ensure the integrity, authenticity and semantic enrichment of metadata provided to Europeana by heterogeneous collections. Primary metadata are mapped to CARARE schema, a schema suitable for describing archaeological and architectural heritage assets, digital resources, collections, as well as events associated with them. The paper specifies the proposed schema and discusses the overall architecture of the proposed approach.

CARARE is a best practice network funded by the European Commission's ICT Policy Support Programme. The network brings together heritage agencies, organisations, archaeological museums, research institutions and specialist digital archives to establish a service that will make digital content for Europe's unique archaeological monuments and historic sites interoperable with Europeana. As well as bringing 2D images and text documents to Europeana, CARARE will bring a mass of geo-referenced content to Europeana and adds 3D and Virtual Reality as new content types. This paper looks at the activities of the CARARE project in establishing and aggregation service for the archaeology/architecture domain including work to mediate the rich metadata held by the domain for presentation in the Europeana Data Model, the use of semantic web technologies such as SKOS, and work on the documentation and preparation of 3D and VR content for online publication and discovery via the Europeana search service.

This article is a reflection on the problems, challenges and strengths of network-based distance learning in archaeology. Based on the experience of one project - the PATOIS (Publications and Archives Teaching with Online Information Systems) Project - it looks at how archaeologists might best respond (and by implication how they ought not to respond) to the use of information technology in teaching. The PATOIS project is an attempt on behalf of a consortium of UK higher education institutions and allied research bodies to tell students about the information tools that are emerging in archaeology, and which are changing the culture of scholarship. Funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and led by the Archaeology Data Service (ADS), PATOIS presents students with these new research tools and novel forms of academic literacy by direct exposure to 'primary' datasets. The PATOIS project is producing a set of Internet-based tutorials that lead students through different datasets and show how they may be deployed in research. This article describes the institutional and intellectual background to the project, and reports on the content of the tutorials themselves. Perhaps more importantly, it looks at the process through which PATOIS was developed, reviewing the challenges and constraints that the development team faced. Thereafter, we turn to the implementation of PATOIS in real teaching scenarios and look at how and when these have been successful as well as the challenges that remain unanswered. The project is not yet complete, so at this stage we can come to no firm conclusions about the long-term impact of PATOIS in facilitating change in undergraduate research training. Nonetheless, from the perspective of development work, the project has largely been completed, so those conclusions that may be drawn are most appropriately addressed to developers hoping or planning to undertake similar work in the future, or academics looking to develop research skills among their students. Reflecting the experience of one computer-based learning project, this article provides thoughtful guidance and advice that will be relevant to anyone interested in developing online teaching and learning resources.