PACKED, CENTRE OF EXPERTISE IN DIGITAL HERITAGE

PACKED vzw is a non-profit organisation that has grown from a platform organisation for the archiving and preservation of audiovisual arts into a centre of expertise for digital cultural heritage, supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Flemish Community.

PACKED plays a key role in Flanders and Brussels in developing and disseminating expertise in digitisation and digital archiving. PACKED aims at improving and safeguarding the quality and efficiency of actions with regard to digitisation and digitalarchiving within the broader field of cultural heritage, but still has a strong interest in the preservation of digital media art.

PACKED is not only active in Flanders and Belgium, but also on a European and international level. PACKED is actively involved in the family of projects surrounding Europeana, such as Digitising Contemporary Art, AthenaPlus and EuropeanaSpace.

Relevant projects: CEST [http://www.projectcest.be], a toolbox of standards and guidelines for digitisation and digital archiving; Scoremodel Digital Sustainability [http://www.scoremodel.org/en/home], a self-evaluation tool for memory institutions mapping the risks and threats when using and storing their digital collections; SCART [http://www.scart.be/?q=en/], a knowledge base on the preservation of media art; VIAA [http://viaa.be/en/], coordination mass-digitisation of audiovisual content from Flemish cultural heritage collections; Open Culture Data [http://opencultuurdata.be/, endorsing open access to collection data of Flemish cultural heritage collections; a participation in EU funded projects: DCA - Digitising Contemporary Art [http://www.digitisingcontemporaryart.eu/] - as Coordinator; ATHENA - Access to Cultural Heritage Networks across Europe - as WP leader; Linked Heritage - Coordination of Standards and Technologies for the Enrichment of Europeana - as partner; AthenaPlus – as WP leader; EuropeanaSpace – as WP leader.

Website: www.packed.be/en/

ROLE IN THE PROJECT

PACKED leads WP2 and will support the use the PREFORMA tools in the assessment and normalisation of digital collections prior to acquisition by memory institutions.

KEY PERSONS

Rony Vissers is the executive director of PACKED, and project leader of the DCA project. His previous professional experience ranges from collection manager at argos – centre for art and media (Brussels) to being a creator, producer and distributor of various media art projects. He also worked as a curator of film, video and music at the art centre STUC (Leuven). He holds master‘s degrees in information and library science, library and documentation science and communication sciences.

Bert Lemmens is involved in the CEST project. Bert has worked a.o. for the ArchiAfrika foundation as a researcher, for the NAI - Netherlands Architecture Institute as a collection registrar, and for Amsab (Institute for Social History, Ghent) as researcher in the European project HOPE, for MovE (cultural heritage aggregator of theprovince of East-Flanders). Bert holds a master’s degree in art history and a master’s degree in conservation.

Barbara Dierickx is actively involved in multiple PACKED-projects. She was co-WPleader on IPR issues in the European ATHENA project and led the partner coordination in the Digitising Contemporary Art project. She is currently involved in the AthenaPlus project. Barbara holds master’s degrees in Cultural and Communication sciences.