World Heritage Memory Net

World Heritage Memory Net

Homepage of World Heritage Memory Net (whmnet.org), update August 15, 2011
URL	http://whmnet.org
Slogan	World Cultural Heritage is One Click Away
Commercial?	No
Type of site	International education
Available language(s)	Multilingual - All 6 official UN languages and additionally up to 103 languages
Owner	United States
Created by	Prof. Ching-chih Chen
Launched	April 29, 2011

World Heritage Memory Net (WHMNet), a partnership project with UNESCO World Heritage Centre, is a global digital library of cultural, historical, and heritage multimedia collections related to the current 936 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Of these 936 sites, 725 are cultural sites, 183 natural, and 28 mixed and a few are in danger. WHMNet was officially launched April 29, 2011, and can be thought of as “the world’s heritage at your fingertips.”

The guiding conceptual principle for the development of the World Heritage Memory Net is to construct a framework that allows users to easily see, explore, discover, and visually experience the 936 Heritage Sites first, and then dig in for more detailed and descriptive information about each Site, as graphically shown on the home page. It is directed by Dr. Ching-chih Chen, currently of Global Connection and Collaboration, a nonprofit and tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization; prior to July 2010, Professor Chen directed this project for three years at Simmons College until she became Professor Emeritus.

The goal of WHMNet is to provide an online library of material related to the 936 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and to provide universal access to a worldwide audience. WHMNet provides multimedia and multilingual content and retrieval, videos, timeline, map, as well as links to major resources, such as OCLC, Wikipedia, Internet Archive, Million Books, Google Scholar and Google Books.

All of the collections are available in at least 6 official UN languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. As of 2011, up to 103 languages are supported by WHMNet, as available.

History

Directed by Dr. Ching-chih Chen of the US nonprofit and tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, Global Connection and Collaboration, Inc., and supported until August 2010 by the NSF/International Digital Library Program (IDLP) as a part of her Global Memory Net, WHMNet is the result of a multi-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in November 2006 between the World Heritage Centre and Simmons College, Boston, Massachusetts, USA under the leadership of Dr. Ching-chih Chen, who was then information technology Professor at Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science. The WHMNet project, which began in July 2007, benefits greatly from Dr. Chen's GMNet, an online global image library and gateway to cultural, historical, and heritage images around the world, created with a multi-year grant from the International Digital Library Programme of the US National Science Foundation (NSF). WHMNet leverages GMNet's innovative integrated multimedia content retrieval system (i-M-C-S) with further system development. Dr. Chen became Professor Emeritus of Simmons College in June, 2010 and NSF grant ended in August 2010. Since September 2010 to the present, WHMNet has been supported by GlobalCC until its completion.

The goal is to bring an immersive, seamless, multimedia experience in a multilingual website to citizens, researchers, scholars and students of the world. The former World Heritage Centre Director and current UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Culture, Francesco Bandarin, has stated that the project offers "great potential to enhance the humanities for universal access and enrichment through the use of emerging technologies." It exposes the world’s cultural, natural, and mixed wonders as well as educates global citizens to the dangers of losing these properties through war and environmental factors. It also serves to better promote intercultural understanding during this troubled time.

Collections

WHMNet is a fast, efficient, cutting-edge, online knowledge base which provides universal access to multilingual, multimedia and multiformat resources from museums, archives, libraries, and world bibliographic and Web resources, and includes photographs, videos, 360° Panophotographies, audio clips, and documents. Currently the WHMNet Collection has more than 40,000 images, 27 video tours, many more video documentaries from available sources, and access to more than 250 360° Panophotographies courtesy of Tito Dupret of patrimonium-mundi.org. Detailed descriptive information is presented in multilingual format in at least 6 UNESCO official languages (Arabic Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish) and in many additional languages when available. In total, 103 world languages are represented.

Multilingual multimedia collections of the 936 UNESCO World Heritage Sites are accessible by:

• Geographical regions - such as Africa, Asia, Europe, etc.
• Within each region by country or areas
• Within each country or area, alphabetically by the name of the World Heritage Site
• Alphabetically by World Heritage Site category: Cultural, Natural, Mixed, In Danger
• Timeline, listing type of site, name of site, and a popup with information, an image, and a link to the main page for that World Heritage Site

In addition to basic demographic information and descriptions, each site page includes a sliding image gallery of up to 75 images, and a link to the main image gallery of up to 250 images per site. Further bibliographic information and still images (photographs) of each site are available for both traditional and content-based image retrieval, and when videos, audio clips as well as 360° Panophotographies are available, they are also provided.

In addition to WHMNet's own image resources and UNESCO/WHC's images (approximately 5% of the total, used with permission), relevant open source images are identified, selected, and provided. These include those from websites such as Wikimedia Commons and Flickr. Video sources from WHC's partner, NHK World Heritage 100 series, are linked, as well as 360° Panophotographies of some sites.

System and Usage

Under Prof. Chen's conceptual guidance and new web interface design and development, World Heritage Memory Net (WHMNet) continues to use the in-house LINUX/MySQL/PHP-based i-M-C-S which was developed with substantial contributions from international visiting researchers for Global Memory Net (GMNet). To accommodate WHMNet’s needs, much modification and enhancement of the i-M-C-S system was made, and some new features were added. The system for both WHMNet and GMNet was developed at Simmons College under the sponsorship of the US National Science Foundation between 2001 and August 2010. Since September 2010 until the completion of this project, the system development and modification has been supported by Global Connection and Collaboration. This system allows users to perform searches using a variety of search methods in addition to commonly known traditional methods.

Search Methods

• Search Terms: Each page includes an open search box for traditional search by search field (such as title, date, location, keyword, source, etc.), in multiple languages. Advanced Search with additional Boolean Operators is available for both sites and images by language and by multiple fields.

• Content-based Image Retrieval (CBIR): Like its sister project, Global Memory Net, WHMNet offers Random and Similar search methods. These methods provide access to a wider audience than traditional metadata retrieval methods like Title, Keyword, or Browse, though these are also offered. When a Random search is requested, the computer randomly selects files to display. The user may then choose their search path based on his or her visual or contextual interest. The Similar search function uses CBIR which was developed by James Z. Wang at Pennsylvania State University but modified in-house. The Random and Similar search methods allow users to browse the collections without requiring knowledge of the language used to describe the records. Thus, the information in WHMNet is retrieved not only by the previous and existing conventional way of searching by country, region, name of site, etc., but also by enhanced search methods including freely browsing, randomly looking for images of interest, finding similar images, zooming for details, and obtaining appropriate annotations. This enables users to quickly retrieve, view and experience a cross-country, cross-cultural collection of images of similar color and shape, such as cathedrals, palaces, temples, archaeological sites, etc., and to access all information associated with those images.

• Geographical Search: Heritage Sites are accessible through listings by region, countries, and sites, and are additionally accessible through the use of a Google Map widget. Users may scan the map for locations of interest and are directed to the appropriate WHMNet page when a Site is chosen.

• Temporal Search: All historical or cultural Sites (excluding natural locations), are listed on a sliding timeline that ranges from 10,000 B.C. to the current date, and which links to individual site pages. Users can scroll through the centuries viewing all relevant Sites related to the time period of interest.

Linked Data

WHMNet links to outside data sources to provide more additional information resources to the user. These resources include OCLC, Internet Archive, Million Books, Google Scholar and Google Books, Wikipedia, and Flickr.

WHM Lecture Series

WHMNet and GMNet have been widely exposed through numerous invited, keynote and plenary speaking engagements in over a dozen countries. Beginning in January 2011, a specific lecture series has started entitled World Cultural Heritage is One Click Away: Lecture Series. This series of talks has been given in many locations in Taiwan; the National Agricultural Library in Silver Springs, MD; through a Digital Video Conference to the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan; ACRL/IRC Convention in Washington, DC; and many others.

Partners and Collaborators

• Partnership with UNESCO World Heritage Centre

• Tito Dupret and patrimonium-mundi.org for permission to use his 360° Panophotographies.

• Global Memory Net

• Additional content providers for materials relevant to the World Heritage Memory Net can be found in the content development page of World Heritage Memory Net.

Related Projects

• National Tsing Hua University Memory Net (Launched on April 23, 2011, NTHU Memory Net was developed jointly by NTHU and Global Connection and Collaboration to create an online multimedia and multilingual knowledge base celebrating Tsing Hua’s Centennial Anniversary. NTHU Memory Net is based on the same conceptual framework and uses the i-M-C-S system which was developed for GMNet, and enhanced for WHMNet.

• Global Memory Net (World Heritage Memory Net’s system is modified and expanded from that of GMNet)

• PROJECT EMPEROR-I (1985–1994)

References

• "Exploring Your Amazing World Heritage at A Simple Click of the Mouse", Ching-chih Chen's keynote speech delivered at the ACRL/IRC Meeting at the American Library Association Meeting in Washington DC, June 26, 2010.
• UNESCO World Heritage Center. (2007). “World Heritage Memory Net” is coming soon! News and Events in UNESCO.org. Retrieved from http://whc.unesco.org/en/news/326