Mnemosyne – Connecting and Sharing Memories and Cultural Experiences

Yesterday was an important day for many European researchers as yesterday ended Call 1 on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the 7th Research Framework Programme (FP7). I co-ordinated and submitted the project proposal “Mnemosyne”, initiated by Cédric Mesnage and myself. The proposed project addresses Challenge 4: Digital Libraries and Content. Here is the abstract of the proposal:

Mnemosyne aims at enhancing the way citizens access, contribute to and navigate cultural heritage information, create and communicate experiences, share memories, thus leveraging the structure of the whole cultural heritage digital sphere. Mnemosyne brings together museum experts and visitors, social scientists, designers, computer scientists, web engineers and Semantic Web researchers to explore the possibilities of the digital sphere to enhance the cultural experiences of European citizens. The Web 2.0 trend reveals the success of systems involving the user, enhancing the content and the navigation by means of their contribution. The Semantic Web eases interoperability between applications by creating a web of data. Mnemosyne explores these success stories in the information field of cultural heritage, on the web and outside the web towards a ubiquitous and serendipitous access of cultural information.

Mnemosyne will comprise a set of technical and methodological solutions for:

• the support for sharing of cultural experiences by means of semantically structured and unstructured annotation allowing for many-to-many communications and semantic search in the field of cultural heritage.
• the development of enhanced navigation systems based on semantics and user contributed knowledge.
• the management of personal knowledge through user-centric inter-operable applications.

Mnemosyne realises an open-source service that provides a platform for the development of new type of applications involving users. The service distributed through cultural organisations will provide access to abundant semantic information and distribute the load of user contribution, thus enhancing the navigation and application possibilities of cultural organisations web applications at low-cost and effectively.

I was, of course, not alone in this endeavour. I was supported in the best way by the following consortium:

• core technology partners: DFKI and Universitá della Svizzera Italiana (USI, Switzerland);
• technology transfer partners: Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden) and PRC Group, The Management House SA (Greece)
• application partners: Centre Georges Pompidou (France), Istituto Beni Culturali per la Regione Emilia Romagna (Italy) , and Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (Greece)

Now we have to wait for the evaluation report scheduled for mid-July.

Cross your fingers!

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