Project Overview        

ISTHMUS has a vision for the future of the multimedia digital library which radically transforms access to underutilised content in cultural heritage digital libraries and archives.

It will develop highly innovative solutions to searching, retrieving and linking cultural heritage data content using the concept of linked data, supported and enhanced by flexible, highly usable working environments designed to meet the needs of cultural heritage professionals and other end users.

In particular ISTHMUS will focus on the challenge of how to identify and link information relating to specific sites (e.g. buildings or streets) and the people and events associated with them over the past eight hundred years or more, going far beyond current solutions for spatio-temporal referencing and providing users with the next level of granularity.

In order to realise this vision, ISTHMUS establishes a ground breaking multidisciplinary collaboration across 12 countries, led by partners from both the ICT and the cultural heritage sector, and including commercial and local government partners in the fields of cultural heritage and tourism.

The consortium combines diverse expertise in HCI, history, in the semantic, spatial, temporal and linguistic analysis of multimedia digital archival data spanning twelve centuries together with leading members of the European Historic Towns Atlas project. The ISTHMUS exploitation and dissemination plan will ensure the sustainability of the outputs beyond the end of the project.

Creating the ability to establish multiple new links between the spatial and temporal content of digital libraries will vastly increase their value and use into the future. Structured into 7 well integrated subprojects covering user requirements, data modelling, semantic reasoning, integration, user interfaces and validation, ISTHMUS solutions will expand public awareness, understanding and use of multimedia cultural heritage resources in all communities across Europe.

Project Partners

The University of York, UK

52° North, DE

Frauenhofer Institute of Technology, DE

Austrian Institute of Technology, AT

Universiteit Antwerpen, BE

Hyperborea, Italy

Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e

Computadores Investigação e Desenvolvimento

em Lisboa, PT

Institut za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje, HR

Università degli Studi di Macerata, IT

Universität Münster, DE

University of the Aegean, G

Royal Irish Academy, IE

City of York Council, UK

Queens University Belfast, UK