The 8th International Conference EVA 2005 Moscow
2005-02-12 (Moscow)
The 8th International Conference EVA 2005 Moscow was held November 28 – December 2, 2005 in Moscow, Russian Federation. This year the conference’s theme was ‘Information for All: Culture and Information Society Technologies’.
EVA Moscow is one of a series of annual conferences having been held since 1990 in Florence, London, Edinburgh, Berlin, Prague, Warsaw, Kiev, Harvard, Gifu, Beijing and other cities. EVA 2005 Moscow is the 75th conference of the EVA series since 1990.
With the help of EVA conferences cultural institutions, museums, libraries and archives revise their mission in information society and knowledge society. Centers of public access to the socially-significant information in heritage institutions, new types of resources production, preservation and access, new forms of presentations and publications are actualization of the right for universal access to information.
One of the main topics at EVA Moscow conferences since 1998 is international co-operation and participation of Russian cultural institutions in EC programmes and projects on ICT in culture, art and education. There is some progress in this direction as Russian institutions may become full partners in FP6 projects and some Russian cultural institutions are participating in ongoing FP6 projects.
Digitization of cultural and scientific heritage, universal access to cultural and scientific information, digital heritage preservation, IPR issues, multilingualism, cultural diversity became strategic in the XXI century. That is why presentations of EC programmes and projects and participation of Russian cultural institutions in them are so important.
Starting from 2000 EVA Moscow is organized and held in close co-operation with the UNESCO Information for All Programme National Committee of Russia and UNESCO Moscow Office. An important International Conference ‘UNESCO Between Two Rounds of the WSIS’ was organized in St.-Petersburg in May, 2005. This conference and the final document influenced the UNESCO position and the position of the Russian delegation at WSIS in Tunis. A number of presentations of EVA 2005 Moscow were devoted to the results of the Tunis phase of WSIS.
ICT in culture of Russian regions has become a traditional topic of EVA Moscow. This year Smolensk and Smolensk Region was presented by 15 papers. The Smolensk delegation was headed by the Deputy Governor Alexander Abramenkov who presented the regional activities at the plenary session. This shows that the regional Government pays special attention to ICT issues. The role of ICT in culture for regional development was discussed at a special session.
One of the main priorities of EVA Moscow is co-operation of museums, libraries, archives. Historically museum community participates in EVA Moscow the most actively. This year is not an exception. Museum sections were organised in co-operation with ADIT (Museum Association on Documentation and IT). In 2005 the section ‘IT in archives’ was held for the first time. The Digital Libraries section was also very effective.
Linguistic Technologies for multilingual access to information is becoming a ‘hot topic’. Two important papers from the University of Helsinki, project MICHAEL presented by Kate Fernie (MLA, UK), a paper from Sheffield University, UK at the BRICKS session and a special Russian-language section were devoted to this topic.
Information society theory and practice, legal issues, co-operation of culture and education areas were also presented and discussed at the conference sessions.
765 participants of the EVA-2005 Moscow conference and exhibition are registered on the web-site and the geography is rather wide. The delegates are from 19 countries (Austria, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, France, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Moldova, Slovenia, Ukraine, UK and Uzbekistan), Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and 50 cities and regions of Russia. The program of the conference includes 175 papers and presentation, plenary sessions, sections and round table discussions.
The main organizers of the conference are European Commission, Federal Agency on Culture and Cinematography, Centre on the Problems of Informatisation in the sphere of Culture, All-Russia State Library of Foreign Literature and EVA Conferences International. The conference is supported by the UNESCO IFAP Russian Committee, Russian Branch of ICOMOS, Moscow Committee on Cultural heritage, Russian State Art Library and the number of companies, including Activision and Xerox.
There was a number of Special Events during the conference:
The 5th International Conference ECHOLOT-2005: IST and Audiovisual Heritage;
The 5th International Conference Information Resources and Technologies for Heritage Preservation;
Presentation of the Smolensk and Smolensk Region Area experience in ‘ICT for Culture’ sphere;
Exhibition ‘Multimedia in Culture, Art and Education’;
10th Festival of Creative Interactive Multimedia ‘Content – 2005’;
First contest of the Library Internet sites ‘New Era’;
A session in the State Polytechnic Museum ‘Pocket Computers in Museums’.
