Digitating the Documentary Heritage as a Way to Save It: A World Experience

Abstract

For many countries around the world in the period of rapid development of digital technologies, the problems of creating digital resources, expanding the communication space and ensuring free access to digital documentary heritage, providing a regulatory framework for electronic resource management. The cultural heritage of any country is an important component of world cultural attainment. For decades, projects aimed at pre serving and effectively using cultural heritage as a valuable resource for strategic development of states have been developed and implemented. The solution to these problems lies in digitizing monuments, creating digital copies of them, providing online access to digital collections, long-term maintenance and management of digital resources. In this context, foreign experience in implementing digital initiatives is important. Successful projects to digitize documentary monuments are one of the key imperatives of the cultural policy of many countries around the world. A significant number of artifacts are of honorable age, which makes additional demands on the possibility of their use, including monuments of documentary heritage. The conditions stored in the original documents are in many cases far from ideal. It is unknown how long these priceless monuments may still exist. Paper breaks down, ink disappears and information is lost forever. For these reasons, a significant number of artifacts still remain inaccessible. The implementation of projects for the digitization of cultural heritage is aimed primarily at solving the problems of preservation, accounting, providing access to digital copies of monuments, thus expanding the opportunities for effective use of their strategic potential. The subject of the research is the development and implementation of projects for the digitization of cultural heritage sites abroad. The purpose of the study is to focus attention on the legal and methodological support for the development and implementation of foreign projects on documentary heritage. The aim of the article is to focus on the main stages and features of the development and implementation of foreign projects for the digitization of cultural heritage sites. Objectives of the research: to identify and explore the features of development and implementation of foreign projects to create digital content of documentary heritage; to reveal the main stages of creation of digital resources; highlight the possibilities of providing online access to digital copies (images) of documents; reveal ways to maintain and manage digital resources. The methodological basis of the research is a set of general scientific principles of historical, systematic, objectivity, based on an interdisciplinary approach. The main provisions of this work are based on the convergence of museum, archival, library and information and communication technologies. The use of historical and logical approaches provided an opportunity to consider the process of development and implementation of projects for digitization of documentary heritage abroad, to analyze their transformations and dependence on the development of new information technologies. The method of information modeling provided an opportunity to predict the development of electronic libraries and the corresponding management of digital resources. Among the empirical methods in the study, methods of description and comparison were used to gather information. Information-analytical and source-based methods were also used to analyze the legal framework. From empirical-theoretical methods abstraction, analysis, synthesis, induction, deductions are used – to reveal the stages of development of digitization projects. The purpose of the projects of digitization of cultural heritage is to address current issues in modern documentary communications: expanding access to documentary heritage; virtual reconstruction of scattered funds and collections; providing access to unique materials of archives, museums, libraries; preservation of artifacts, especially those at risk of destruction; support of scientific and educational programs, etc. Problems of preservation and access to digitized cultural heritage on the websites of museums, archives and libraries remain relevant in time, in particular in the context of transparency, accessibility, reactivity, availability of electronic images, feedback from users of the website, the volume of digitized documents, social responsibility and trust in the site. The practice of presenting cultural heritage on the sites of museums, libraries and archives of Ukraine indicates the need to develop a single concept of digitization of cultural heritage and the creation of relevant sites. The research, analysis and use of world experience will contribute not only to the most effective implementation of projects to digitize the cultural heritage of Ukraine, but also to ensure its proper preservation and proper presentation on the Internet for public use.