Archaeology – Page 2 – ARK4 – Digital Heritage Library Project

ARK4 is a digital heritage project that explores the role of technology in disseminating information in a way that reaches a wider public . Workshops, games, 3D environments are all tools in the new and diverse archivist kit. The relationship between the public and digital content is among the core issues the project works on. In its new phase, the project attempts to re-use digital content from the Cultural Heritage sector, mainly deriving from Europeana and other libraries to reach a wider audience through knowledge testing games.

Games in English

1. Children’s Literature is the first of a series of knowledge testing games that will be produced in this context. Launched on March 3, 2016 on the occasion of the World Book Day, it is a joyful topic that aims to travel its users back to their childhood and test what they have been reading and remember from then. Among the questions, the users can have a look at beautiful visual records lying currently within Europeana. –

See more at Europeana Research.

2. Children at Granma(coming shortly)

3. Lost cultures.

Games in Norwegian

1. Flora Danica for touch screen.

2. Norwegian Deaf Museum web-quiz.

3. Women`s history web-quiz.

4. Rødøy history and archaeology

Methodology: ARK4 applies user-centred methods and collects new narratives, to be shared by the national and regional community of libraries, schools and archives through surveys and interviews.

Collaborators

ARK4 is a cooperation project between four Trondheim institutions and an international collaborator financed by the National Library of Oslo.

Lost cultures and gaming!

Niniveh by H. Layard, picture by Åge Høyem

Ark4 a digital heritage library, started in 2014 by NTNU University library and is exploring new ways to approach culture and heritage and attempts to re-use digital content from the Cultural Heritage sector, mainly deriving from Europeana and other libraries and museums to reach a wider audience through knowledge games. We also aim in creating engagement and educational activities in the immediate academic community, among colleagues and university students in the investigation of approaching the past from different angles.

Our main partner in this phase is Athena the Digital Curation unit and we collaborate with three archaeologists and IT experts.

We use visual material from old archives and create games with questions about endangered sites, Palmyra, Niniveh and Nimrud with the purpose to spread knowledge about past cultures that are now destroyed or even threatened.

Archaeologists have been playing a role in informing on the atrocities committed as a result of war and ethnic or nationalistic turmoil but there is always a demand for an approach that is not only theoretical but it contains actions and proactive protection. Such initiatives have been collaborating with Unesco and Icomos that are commited to protect sites in danger, either that is done through documentation or projects as CYARK500 or New Palmyra or through social media as Archaeology in Syria Facebook group , where professionals archaeologists from USA Europe and middle East participate in letting information about the destructions happening as they happen.

I believe that we as academics, have an obligation to keep these memories alive and not let them slide in oblivion. It is not a secret anymore that antiquities that are stolen from these countries are sold to the western countries and the money goes to finance weapons for the ones actually stealing and destroying those countries and its heritage. In Syria when the war started, there were armed groups that would destroy sites to lift up mosaics from the floors and sell them.

ARK4 is not providing a solution to all that but intends to create engagement and spread knowledge about those sites through educational workshops and gaming tools.