As mentioned in the January 1995 Newsletter, ACT has proposed a Canada/Europe consortium to collaborate in research and development initiatives. Since January a project plan has been developed and funding proposals have been submitted in Canada and in Europe. The name chosen for the project is Virtual Museums International, reflecting the nature of the project and the participation of a number of cultural institutions.
The proposed project will focus on the development of software products for cultural applications and consists of a number of activities in three main areas; infrastructure, development of software products and tools, and the deployment of cultural content.
The first project area is the establishment of the networking infrastructure required to implement the proposed applications. This involves interconnecting the Canadian CANARIE Research Testbed Network with similar high-speed networks under development in Europe using a recently completed trans-Atlantic fibre optic link. The network will be ATM-based.
The second aspect of the project is the development and refinement of software products and tools for the storage, retrieval, and presentation of multimedia data over high-speed network links. There will be a number of individual projects in this area. ACT will be working on several of these projects. One will involve the integration of the Cinemage Billing Server into a Photo CD jukebox archiving system. Another will deal with methods of providing multilingual access to multimedia museum data. This is of particular interest to us in Canada because of the bilingual nature of the country. Another ACT project will involve the development of client software capable of interacting with several different sever platforms which may be running different server software. Other participants in the project will be working in other areas including further development of Photo CD jukebox technology to include such things as faster access to images and the ability to deal with very large images (that may span more than one CD). Other partners will be working in the area of technical image analysis, specifically in the area of analysis and digital restoration of works of art.
The final aspect of the project proposes to explore the cross cultural exchange of heritage image data. The collections in Canada feature principally images of native culture or primal Canadian landscape. Those in Europe feature the cultural heritage of the principal social communities that founded the modern culture of Canada. Traversing one third the circumference of the earth, the high speed infrastructure will provide almost instantaneous access to formerly mutually inaccessible heritage resources.
ACT will act as the coordinating partner in Canada. Other Canadian participants include Teleglobe Canada and Newbridge Networks Corporation who will be providing infrastructure support, and the UBC Museum of Anthropology who will be providing content. Other members of the Vancouver Virtual Museum (mentioned elsewhere in this issue) may also participate. The coordinating partner in Europe is DeTeBerkom, the research arm of the German National telephone company. Other European participants include NSM Jukebox, world leaders in the development of Photo CD jukeboxes, Thomson Broadcast Systems, developers of high-speed networks, and The National Gallery of London, who are doing extensive research in technical image analysis. Content will be provided by the Louvre in Paris, Birkbeck College in London, the University of Caen in France, and the University of Bergen in Norway.
Funding for the project is being sought through the CANARIE program in Canada and the ACTS program in Europe. The two programs have very similar goals, objectives, and timeframes. Canada and the European Union have negotiated an agreement whereby Canadian and European companies can form a partnership or project consortium under these funding programs.