Digital holistic documentation of cultural heritage: Challenges and risks, towards shaping the future

Abstract

This paper presents the results of the Horizon 2020 ERA Chair in Digital Cultural Heritage: ĝ€ Mnemosyne' project, which aims to achieve excellence in research and innovation in the holistic documentation of the past. The project's research agenda includes six broad thematic areas, which encompass data acquisition, processing, semantic data modelling, knowledge management, data long-Term preservation, and data use and reuse. The paper focuses on the key results of the project during which several researchers have been training, some of whom propose presenting their experience in three out of the total seventeen heritage-documentation case studies chosen to be studied and digitized. The paper illustrates the significant results of the case studies and how they can fulfil the needs of the multidisciplinary community of experts. Mnemosyne's research team has developed useful research methodologies for the holistic documentation and digitization of tangible cultural heritage objects, monuments, and sites, as well as novel research approaches regarding their embedded intangible aspects and features.