Avgoustinos Avgousti

This article focuses on the aggregation of Cypriot archaeological datasets, digitally archived in local repositories, into the ARIADNE portal. It considers, in particular, the development of an application profile for inscriptions and presents the integration of two collections, consisting of ancient coins and inscriptions carved on stones. It highlights the tools and ontologies developed for the aggregation and management of these digital resources, as well as the related pipeline and activities. The issues encountered are also presented, plus the solutions adopted and the successful results in the data aggregation of these collections into the infrastructure. Currently, thanks to the pipeline, and the semantic tools developed and used in ARIADNE, a collection of Cypriot medieval coins and a corpus of Ancient Greek inscriptions are now more widely accessible to the archaeological community.

This article focuses on the problematic democratization of small museum collections online in Cyprus. While the web has enabled cultural heritage organizations to democratize information to diverse audiences, numerous small museums do not enjoy the fruits of this digital revolution; many of them cannot democratize their collections online. The current literature provides insight into small and large museums’ challenges worldwide. However, we do not have any knowledge concerning small Cypriot museums. This article aims to fulfill this gap by raising the following research question: What is the current state of small museum collections online in Cyprus, and what challenges do they face in democratizing their collections online? We present our empirical results from the interview summaries gathered from six small museums.

This paper describes OpeNumisma; a reusable web-based platform focused on digital numismatic collections. The platform provides an innovative merge of digital imaging and data management systems that offer great new opportunities for research and the dissemination of numismatic knowledge online. A unique feature of the platform is the application of Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), a computational photographic method that offers tremendous image analysis and possibilities for numismatic research. This computational photography technique allows the user to observe on browser minor details, unseen with the naked eye just by holding the computer mouse rather than the actual object. The first successful implementation of OpeNumisma has been the creation of a digital library for the medieval coins from the collection of the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation.

Digital technologies are an increasingly pervasive medium for zooarchaeological scholarship, providing a means to document and preserve fragile zooarchaeological specimens, share primary data, address methodological questions, and spread the information to the wider public. During the last decade, a broad array of digital technologies has been widely applied for the creation of three-dimensional images of animal bones, with a number of freely accessible collections being developed and published online. To be beneficial for academic and non-academic audiences, the creation of these collections requires careful planning, and more attention is needed in order to ensure their longevity in the web as well as their future usability. Drawing on an online workshop, organised by the Science and Technology in Archaeology and Culture Research Center of The Cyprus Institute, titled "Zooarchaeology in the Digital Era", this article aims to provide a snapshot of the current state of art, and the methods and digital tools being employed in the digitisation of animal remains. The article also raises some of the challenges that the international zooarchaeological community is facing in the era of Linked Open Data, including management, archiving, curation, storage, dissemination and communication of digital data to the scientific world and the wider public. In addition, the paper highlights the need for a stronger collaboration between archaeologists and researchers from the Digital Humanities' sector in order to stimulate an innovative discourse and create fertile ground for the production of new scientific knowledge.

The World Heritage Convention, drawn by various international bodies in 1972, was designed to protect cultural or natural places of outstanding universal value so that future generations may be able to enjoy them. Responding to these principles as well as to the Charter on the Preservation of Digital heritage (Vancouver, 2003), this multidisciplinary project, which involves archaeologists, art historians, conservators and computer scientists, aims to create an open access, 3D interactive online geo-database of endangered architectural and archaeological heritage in the South Eastern Mediterranean basin; a region of tremendous cultural importance whose rech heritage is unfortunately threatened by both natural and human factors. A wide range of 3D modelling and topographic techniques have been applied to create accurate reconstructions of heritage sites, enriched by a extensive array of metadata.