Med-Mem : Audiovisual Mediterranean Memories

http://www.euromedheritage.net

After 4 years of common work and following the two launch events of the website www.medmem.eu that took place in Marseille in October 2012 and in Rabat in January 2013, the partners and associates of the Med-Mem project met again last 22 of March, on the occasion of COPEAM annual Conference.
Since the EU co-funding (68%) in the framework of Euromed Heritage IV Programme came to an end in January 2013, the meeting of Cagliari mainly concerned the possible future directions for the project sustainability. Apart from the setting up of a steering committee entrusting each partner with well-defined responsibilities fitting their competences, the participants tackled with the issue of the enlargement of the contributors as well as with the analysis of various business plan proposals.
A meeting of the steering committee should be envisaged in the next months, in order to progress in the definition of the best strategy for the website sustainability.

www.medmem.eu

Training « Indexing for Med-Mem» (1/2)
Alexandria (Egypt), October 12th –14th, 2009

The training on indexation, that will take place from 12th to 14th October 2009 at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, will be an opportunity for about twenty archivists from both partner and associate archive-holder organizations to exchange and adopt mutual indexation practices.

From last March , the Med-Mem partners and associates have identified and selected audiovisual documents dealing with six macro themes of the project – Arts and Culture, History and Civilizations, Societies and Lifestyles, Landscape and Environment, Tourism - within their archives. The processing of those documents will allow to offer an image as complete as possible of the Euro-Mediterranean cultural patrimony.
After the collection of these data – more than a 100 documents per archives’ holder – a survey has been made in order to optimize the harmonisation of the methods of selection of the documents between the different partners.

The conclusions of this survey have in particular allowed to design the contents of the training « Indexing for Med-Mem » that will be held at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in October 2009.
The first session of this training that will gather both documentary and editorial components will be devoted to a meeting between the archives’ professionals and researchers specialized in the tackled issues. The other sessions will be made of theoretical contents and of practical applications on documents’ indexation.

Looking forward to going to Alexandria, the partner broadcasters are working on the settlement of their digitization stations that they received very recently, following the « Digitization » training seminar that took place on July 21st at the RAI headquarters in Turin.

Read the press release

Med-Mem : "Digitisation" Training
Torino (Italy), 21 july 2009

Last July 21st, the Med-Mem partners - COPEAM, EPTV, INA, JRTV, RAI, SNRT- met for the Digitisation training that was welcomed and hosted by RAI in Torino and that was a unique occasion of meeting and of sharing between professionals of the Mediterranean.
The goal of such a training consisted in the presentation, the installation and the use of the digitisation station and of the ad-hoc software to the Med-Mem project.
Besides the unilateral transfer of skills, the homogeneity of the profiles and the experience in the computer science field of the attending technicians and archives managers have allowed to begin a mutual reflexion about the digitisation process and about the mutual needs in this field.
The digitisation software for Med-Mem will benefit from these considerations, as it has been designed to answer the demands of the project. Thanks to this high quality exchange that took place in the framework of the training, and on demand of the partners, an adaptation that will make the tool even more efficient will be achieved in the next months.
Hence the Med-Mem project will provide to the consortium members a digitisation station and a software that will answer to the mutual needs of organizations from both the southern and the northern shore of the Mediterranean, and will allow the improvement of the general processing of the audiovisual archives.

Med-Mem: First sharing of the Mediterranean memories
Cairo,18thApril 2009

Only three months after Med-Mem project start up, co-financed by the EU, a preliminary model of the Web site - which will be online in 2011 - was presented at the 16th Conference of COPEAM thanks to the involvement and the effectiveness of its partners.
Only three months after Med-Mem project start up, co-financed by the EU, a preliminary model of the Web site - which will be online in 2011 - was presented at the 16th Conference of COPEAM thanks to the involvement and the effectiveness of its partners.
The pages written for several months regarding the explanations of the many activities of this project have emerged, in an instant, clear, expressive and convincing, on a computer screen. Starting from a quarantine of documents available, it was possible to show the attendants how, in a few months, they would benefit from a guided exploration of the cultural heritage of the Euro-Mediterranean region through the audiovisual archives.
The site, currently under design and construction, will offer various modes of navigation:
- A classic search by keywords;
- An access map where documents will be classified by country;
- A chronological fresco on which some documents will be distributed by year;
- An access by collection that will allow to know the richness and the extent of the funds of each contributor;
- A thematic access which will group the videos according to the six themes identified by the project.¹

Each audiovisual document will be presented together with a documentary notice. The shortest contributions that will contitute the "chronological Fresco", will be presented together with notices of contextualization written by professionals and specialists in the heritage domain. Thematic files made by university lecturers and researchers, will enable a deepening on selections of videos dealing with incontrovertible Mediterranean issues. Since the past provides a better understanding of the present, everyday, a "video of the day" will be chosen so to highlight an important news. Finally, still in order to maintain a close relationship between our memory and our present interests, the Mem-Med site will propose a Mediterranean cultural agenda which will identify the various events around the heritage and culture in the region.

1.The six themes identified by the project are : 1) the cultural sites 2) habits, traditions, jobs and knowledge 3) landscapes and environment 4) the cultural and artistic expressions 5) History 6) Tourism

Med-Mem: Launching meeting
Marseille, 25-27 February 2009

Three work-days - from February 25th to 27th - at the headquarters of INA (project leader) in Marseille have marked the official launch of the Med-Mem project: "Sharing the Mediterranean Audiovisual Memory".
Selected among more than 300 proposals – of which only 12 awarded by the European Commission in the framework of the European Programme Euromed Heritage IV , Med-Mem consists in digitizing, editing and uploading on a dedicated website the Mediterranean audiovisual archives.
The established partnership, grouping 18 organisations from 12 countries of the Euro-Mediterranean zone among which 10 public televisions, will cooperate during the next three years so to get the common objectives of this action: the preservation, the valorisation of the Mediterranean heritage and its widest access by the audiences.
After a preliminary meeting open only to the consortium members - INA, COPEAM, EPTV, RAI, JRTV, SNRT – and focused on the definition of the relevant roles and on the analysis of the operational aspects to be implemented, the second day has recorded the attendance of about 40 professionals from the different INA departments working on such initiative and from the following associated organisations : EBU, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, MMSH, Uninettuno, ERT, ERTU, HRT, IBA for the project activities presentation. The representative of the RMSU, Regional Monitoring and Support Unit of EH IV Programme, have taken part in the meeting as well.
During the last day, the setting up of the website preliminary layout has been envisaged for its presentation during the annual Conference of COPEAM , next April in Cairo, where the partners will meet again.