Report on the Activity of the Institute for Cultural Memory in 2008 30 years of computerized documentation of cultural heritage in Romania

cIMeC – The Institute for Cultural Memory is a non-budgetary public institution subordinated to the Ministry of Culture, Religious Affairs and National Heritage. It was established in 1978 as a national organization for the cultural heritage database management. CIMEC is financed mainly by the Ministry of Culture, Religious Affairs and National Heritage, under the form of contracts.

The main mission of the institute is to investigate, develop and make use of the information and communication technology in the field of cultural heritage.

cIMeC is a member of ICOM (International Council of Museums), SIBMAS (International Association of Libraries, Museums and Performing Arts), ELAG (European Library Automation Group), al HEREIN (European Heritage Network) and the Excellency European Network EPOCH.

In 2008 CIMEC - The Institute for Cultural Memory, a non-budgetary public institution subordinated to the Ministry of Culture, Religious Affairs and National Heritage, had its 30 year anniversary. The core of the current institute is the small computing office, with 20 posts. The central file of the national cultural heritage was founded on 15th of March 1978. It was the first computer science unit in Romania devoted to culture, mainly to the computerized record of the national cultural heritage. In 1981 the institution became an electronic computing centre, with 67 posts (never fully occupied).
After 1990, CIMEC evolved towards a national cultural heritage documentation institute, participating in many national and international projects.

Chronology:

1978 – established on the 15th of March 1978 (as a computing centre), with the goal of implementing the computerization of the national record of the cultural heritage.
1981 – becomes the Computing Centre for Culture, especially for the computerized documentation of the cultural heritage.
1990 – becomes the Centre of Informatics, Cultural Memory and Synthesis (CIMEC), a non-budgetary public institution with a legal status, directly subordinated to the Ministry of Culture;
1996 – inaugurates the Web site of the cultural heritage in Romania, www.cimec.ro (over 200,000 visitors each year)
1998 – changes the name to the Institute for Cultural Memory, keeping the CIMEC abbreviation, already established in this country and abroad.
1998 – changes the name to the Institute for Cultural Memory, keeping the CIMEC abbreviation, already established in this country and abroad.
2008 – the 30 year anniversary from the foundation. Accredited as research institute.

Over the time, CIMEC developed a professional team specialized in cultural documentation and computer science, composed of experts in the documentary heritage (archaeologists, bibliologists, historians, art historians, ethnographers); computer specialists (system engineers, computer programmers, database administrators); assistant computer specialists in data processing. Besides these, in time a team of associates emerged, specialists in various fields of cultural heritage.

Specific activities:

CIMEC digital resources (2008)

CIMEC owns and manages the main information resources on electronic support for the Romanian cultural heritage. These include:

Movable heritage:

Immovable heritage:

Reference resources:

Archives:

The CIMEC website (http://www.cimec.ro, http://www.cultural-heritage.ro), opened in May 1996, is the main portal of the Romanian cultural heritage, including: museums, movable cultural heritage, archaeology, historic monuments, rare books, history, numismatics, ethnography, performing arts, manuscripts and rare books digital library, electronic books, cultural legislation, digital maps, etc.

We offer 24 databases online with over 200,000 records, 32,000 web pages, 65,000 digital images, and a map server for cultural heritage. The site is partially bilingual, in Romanian and English, some pages are also in French, Hungarian and German. In 2008 it had 1.5 million visitors.

2008 Activity Review

In 2008, CIMEC carried on its mission to the benefit of knowledge, for the protection and valorisation of the cultural heritage in Romania. The activity of the institute focused on fulfilling the contracts with the Ministry of culture and Religious Affairs in order to generate, maintain and develop the information resources of national relevance in all the fields:

· movable cultural heritage;
· archaeology;
· performing arts;
· movable and immovable religious heritage;
· the digital library;
· software and maintenance of cultural web sites.

The activity of the institute is funded from the annual contracts to provide services with the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs (on average, seven contracts per year), from research contracts financed by the Ministry of Education and Research (on average, three contracts per year), from European projects (in average two - three projects per year), other services, consulting and sale of publications contracts.

In 2008 the institute took part in:

· three multi-annual research projects funded by the CEEX program of the Ministry of Education and Research (CETERS, DIGIARH and SEISMIST - Fundamental Research of historical seismology and palaeo-seismology needed to assess long-term seismic activity and seismic hazard);
· a cultural project funded by AFCN (An Eneolithic site, Bucşani)
· five European projects (European Landscapes/Culture 2000, EPOCH NoE/ FP6 and EDLNet), HEREIN - European Heritage Network (Council of Europe), EGMUS - European Group for Museum Statistics;
· a regional project (FASTIONLINE / AIAC).

After its accreditation as a research unit, CIMEC signed two more research contracts of the program Partnerships of the Ministry of Education and Research, RECONEX and CHRONOS (2008 – 2011), that will be developed in next years.

The main mission of the institute is to investigate, develop and make use of the information and communication technology in the field of cultural heritage. CIMEC maintains the National Archaeological Record (RAN) and the database of archaeological investigations and publishes every year the archaeological reports (printed volume, CD and on the web). During the last years we expanded the use of non-distructive techniques for the identification, exact location of sites and enrichment of the RAN database as an instrument for documentation, protection and information dissemination regarding the archaeological heritage. During the past three years, we used aerial photography to update the archaeological inventory of the area of south-eastern Romania (the Danube Plain), along the Mostiştea, Neajlov, Argeş and Danube rivers. A mapserver showing the map of Romania scale 1:100,000 (http://map.cimec.ro) is developed as a geographical interface to the archaeological sites, excavations and digital archives.

Main results of 2008:

1. Increase in the quantity and quality of the national databases maintained by CIMEC – especially classified movable cultural property, the National Archaeological Record, archaeological excavations, museums and collections, cultural heritage experts and specialists, places of worship, Romanian rare books, theatrical and musical repertoire, all the databases with an on-line version, frequently updated.

2. Improved public access to the cultural heritage data, by publishing on-line the main databases with information of public interest and their updating weekly or at least monthly, improved access interface and search criteria, as well as better integration with the spatial interface for web access (digital map of Romania), published for the first time on a website the public information on archaeological research permits issued by the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs (2001 to 2008).

3. Heritage information dissemination by publishing some works in conventional and digital format, including: Union Catalogue of Romanian Incunabula, Catalogue of Rare Books at the Bucharest City Museum, Vasile Pârvan Digital Library and a number of web pages dedicated to the main cultural events, archaeological finds, exhibitions.
At the same time, over 800 messages were spread on the correspondence lists maintained by CIMEC: muzee@cimec.ro and arheologie@cimec.ro). Besides, we opened a blog dedicated to the cultural heritage events recommended by CIMEC (http://wordpress.com) that gathered in less than a year over 34,0000 accesses.

4. The web site of the national cultural heritage www.cimec.ro  was constantly updated and drew over 1.5 million visits (on average, 4,500 single visitors per day). Unfortunately, we did not have any resources this year either to make a major reconfiguration of the site, which is very big.

5. In the field of the digital library, we drew up 3,000 records of classified property to contribute to the European digital library (Europeana.eu), officially launched on 15th of November 2008. CIMEC was appointed national aggregator for the digital library through a Government Decision.

6. The DOCPAT program for the museum collections record, carried out by CIMEC was distributed free in a new version (3.3) to over 170 users (museums, DJCCPCN, universities).

Dan Matei