eCHASE: electronic Cultural Heritage made Accessible for Sustainable Exploitation

Project approach

eCHASE has ambitious business goals which are strongly dependent on being able to access, aggregate and exploit multimedia content from multiple sources across Europe. Different technical architectures and business models are required depending on the size and core business of the content holding organisations as well as the different uses for that content. Recognition that there is not a one size fits all solution is a core feature of the project and our business approach is to define, validate, combine, promote and commercially implement a set of different business models.

From a technical point of view the project will augment existing systems and processes to add value to existing content production chains. The project will not attempt wholesale migration of content to a new infrastructure or bulk translation of content to different languages. Instead, legacy information structures will be mapped to a common ontology and indexed according to domain specific, multilingual vocabularies. Filters and rights management will be used to create customised views of the content according to subject area and application context. Graphical presentation will make information navigation much simpler and more intuitive.

Throughout this project, the eChase partners will use content related to the history and culture of the new EU countries from the former Eastern bloc, i.e. Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The partners will also aim to involve public sector partners, particularly those from Eastern Europe.

EChase project aims to create a number of products, including a web site and various online (and potentially print) publications. These will include:

• A report outlining the main barriers to bringing public sector content to market


• Clear guidelines of the ways in which value can be added to cultural heritage content


• A compilation of suggested pan-European media standards, guidelines, and outline contractual agreements for use by public sector content-holders who wish to market their content in a pan-European context, including media standards, guidelines, and outline contractual agreements


• An outline of the various business models that can be used for this purpose


• A model web site that can be used to hold and make accessible public sector content for third-party distributors, producers and publishers

Project Partners

Istituto Geografico De Agostini S.p.A.
www.deagostini.it

University of Southampton:
- IT Innovation Centre
- IAM
www.it-innovation.soton.ac.uk
www.iam.ecs.soton.ac.uk

Fratelli Alinari
www.alinari.com

Giunti Interactive Lab S.r.l.
www.giuntilabs.it

Hewlett Packard
www.hp.com/it

sterreichischer Rundfunk
www.orf.at

System Simulation Ltd
www.ssl.co.uk

Getty Images
www.gettyimages.com