MaDiH: Mapping Digital Cultural Heritage in Jordan Policy White Paper – English and Arabic
May 2021
James Smithies, Fadi Bala’awi, Pascal Flohr, Shatha Mubaideen, Alessandra Esposito, Sahar Idwan, Carol Palmer, Issa Mahasneh, Shaher Rababeh.
Available at Zenodo, English https://zenodo.org/record/4866975#.YQpBmkQzY2w
Available at Zenodo, Arabic https://zenodo.org/record/4868571#.YQpBwUQzY2w
This white paper reports on the findings of the MaDiH (مديح): Mapping Digital Cultural Heritage in Jordan project. It is complemented by a technical white paper. MaDiH (مديح) is a collaborative project between King’s Digital Lab (KDL) at King’s College London, the Hashemite University, the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), the Department of Antiquities of Jordan (DoA), the Jordan Open Source Association (JOSA), and the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project. The project ran for two years, from February 2019 – April 2021.
The goal of the project was to contribute to the long-term sustainable development of Jordan’s digital cultural heritage by identifying key systems, datasets, standards, and policies, and aligning them to government digital infrastructure capabilities and strategies. This policy white paper focuses on alignment to national and international policies and standards and makes recommendations for future action. The technical white paper provides more detailed technical descriptions of standards, datasets, data repositories and other assets, and defines requirements for future activity. Each section of the white papers lists associated challenges and opportunities, which are summarised in appendices. Taken together, the intention is for the white papers to define the current state of digital cultural heritage (DCH) in Jordan, inform and align to Jordanian government policy, and inform planning and technical design processes that can enable the future development of Jordanian DCH.
MaDiH’s (مديح) policy goals aimed to ensure any technical work or analysis undertaken in the project were aligned to government policies and international best practices in cultural heritage management, digital cultural heritage, and research software engineering. Practical prototyping was used to ensure analysis and lessons learned are cost-effective and aligned to real-world scenarios, and a series of workshops with stakeholders from the cultural heritage, research, government, and technology sectors built a sense of community, facilitated knowledge exchange, and ensured the project fulfilled the needs of the local community. A hackathon, led by the Jordan Open Source Association, ensured analysis and lessons learned were aligned to educational and commercial opportunities.
To ensure alignment between its policy and technical goals and to provide real-world evidence of its findings, MaDiH (مديح) produced a range of digital outputs including a publicly available prototype data catalogue, a website to communicate project activity, and Twitter and Facebook accounts, for public communication. Although intended as short-term research assets, used to build a sense of community and inform the production of the white papers, efforts have been made to sustain those assets for future use. The MaDiH (مديح) CKAN catalogue is of particular importance, as it fills an urgent need for a holistic view of cultural heritage datasets held across and outside Jordan. It also aggregates metadata and content that could provide the basis for future system design, data aggregation and integration (including the ability to cross-search existing databases), and product development.
MaDiH: Mapping Digital Cultural Heritage in Jordan Technical White Paper – English and Arabic
May 2021
James Smithies, Fadi Bala’awi, Pascal Flohr, Shatha Mubaideen, Alessandra Esposito, Sahar Idwan, Carol Palmer, Issa Mahasneh, Shaher Rababeh.
Available at Zenodo, English https://zenodo.org/record/4867531#.YQpBO0QzY2x
Available at Zenodo, Arabic https://zenodo.org/record/4880407#.YQpBaEQzY2w
This white paper reports on the findings of the MaDiH: Mapping Digital Cultural Heritage in Jordan project. It is complemented by a policy white paper. Its goal is to report on technical matters related to the project and provide advice and recommendations for future technical activity. We hope the paper is of interest to a broad audience, although it is primarily tailored to the Jordanian cultural heritage and technology communities.
MaDiH (مديح) is a collaborative UK-Jordanian project between King’s Digital Lab (KDL) at King’s College London, the Hashemite University (HU), the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), the Department of Antiquities of Jordan (DoA), the Jordanian Open Source Association (JOSA), and the Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project. The project ran for just over two years, from February 2019 to April 2021.
The goal of the project was to contribute to the long-term sustainable development of Jordan’s digital cultural heritage by identifying key systems, datasets, standards, and policies, and aligning them to government digital infrastructure capabilities and strategies. This technical white paper describes the current state of standards, datasets, data repositories and other assets, and defines requirements for future activity. The MaDiH (مديح) Policy White Paper focuses on alignment to national and international policies and standards and makes recommendations for future action. Each section of the white papers lists associated challenges and recommendations, which are summarised in appendices. Taken together, the intention is for the white papers to define the current state of digital cultural heritage (DCH) in Jordan, inform and align to Jordanian government policy, and inform planning and technical design processes that can enable the future development of Jordanian DCH.
MaDiH (مديح)’s technical goals focused on the definition of a robust technical and operational architecture for DCH to assist, among others, the Department of Antiquities in their planning processes. Analysis also aimed to identify infrastructural gaps and opportunities for further development including system development, data aggregation, and online learning; help product development teams develop their systems; facilitate the aggregation of valuable datasets held in disparate repositories, and ensure data generated from research activity is properly stored and widely accessible. Practical prototyping was used to ensure analysis and lessons learned are cost-effective and aligned to real-world scenarios. To ensure alignment between its technical and policy goals and to provide real-world evidence of its findings, MaDiH (مديح) produced a range of digital outputs including a publicly available prototype (meta)data catalogue, a website to communicate project activity, and Twitter and Facebook accounts for public communication. Although intended as short-term research assets, used to build a sense of community and informed inform the production of the white papers, efforts have been made to sustain those assets for future use. The MaDiH (مديح) CKAN (Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network) catalogue, is of particular importance, as it fills an urgent need for a holistic view of cultural heritage datasets held across and outside Jordan. It also collects data and content that could provide the basis for future system design, data aggregation and integration (including the ability to cross-search existing databases), and product development.
The MaDiH data collection form – English and Arabic
November 2020
The MaDiH Team
Available at Zenodo, https://zenodo.org/record/4289919#.X74g4mgzY2w
The data collection form shows the structure and content of the MaDiH CKAN repository and used by the team during the data collection phase, (https://madih-data.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/).
– MaDiH (مديح) Mapping the Digital Cultural Heritage in Jordan Project. Datasets Identification and Publication Protocol – Arabic – Version 2
October 2020
Alessandra Esposito; Shatha Mubaideen; Pascal Flohr; James Smithies; Fadi Bala’awi; Arzaq Yousef.
Available at Zenodo, https://zenodo.org/record/4146760#.X70L-mgzY2x
The document details the approaches and processes employed by the MaDiH (مديح) Mapping the Digital Cultural Heritage in Jordan Project Team for the identification and collection of datasets recorded in the project CKAN instance (https://madih-data.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/).
– MaDiH (مديح) Mapping the Digital Cultural Heritage in Jordan Project. Datasets Identification and Publication Protocol – English – Version 2
October 2020
Alessandra Esposito; Shatha Mubaideen; Pascal Flohr; James Smithies; Fadi Bala’awi.
Available at Zenodo, https://zenodo.org/record/4146756#.X70KWWgzY2w
The document details the approaches and processes employed by the MaDiH (مديح) Mapping the Digital Cultural Heritage in Jordan Project Team for the identification and collection of datasets recorded in the project CKAN instance (https://madih-data.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/).
– MaDiH (مديح) Instance on CKAN: User Guide – English – Version 2
October 2020
Shatha Mubaideen; Alessandra Esposito; Arzaq Yousef; Pascal Flohr
Available at Zenodo, https://zenodo.org/record/4139199#.X70JT2gzY2x
This is the second version of a document that offers guidance to the users of the MaDiH (مديح) repository at https://madih-data.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/
– MaDiH (مديح) Instance on CKAN: User Guide – Arabic – Version 2
October 2020
Shatha Mubaideen; Alessandra Esposito; Arzaq Yousef; Pascal Flohr
Available at Zenodo, https://zenodo.org/record/4146716#.X70IwmgzY2y
This is the second version of a document that offers guidance to the users of the MaDiH (مديح) repository at https://madih-data.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/
– MaDiH (مديح) Mapping the Digital Cultural Heritage in Jordan Vocabulary – English and Arabic
September 2020
The MaDiH Team
Available at Figshare, https://figshare.com/articles/online_resource/MaDiH_Vocabulary_English_and_Arabic_Sep_2020_xlsx/12950879
The MaDiH (مديح) Datasets Identification and Publication team (Alessandra Esposito, Shatha Mubaideen and Arzaq Yousef) supported by Pascal Flohr, MaDiH (مديح) consultant based at EAMENA, University of Oxford, and Arianna Ciula, the KDL Deputy Director. James Smithies (UK PI), Fadi Bala’awi (Jordan PI) and Carol Palmer (CBRL Director) have provided strategic guidance.
The MaDiH Vocabulary document (English and Arabic) illustrates the template for the data collection during the project whereas the basic CKAN template has been customised.
– MaDiH (مديح) Instance on CKAN: User Guide – English – Version 1
March 2020
Shatha Mubaideen; Alessandra Esposito; Arzaq Yousef
Available at Zenodo, https://zenodo.org/record/3727102#.XyESU54zY2w
Available at ICOMOS Open Archive, https://openarchive.icomos.org/2360/
This document offers guidance to the users of the MaDiH (مديح) repository at https://madih-data.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/
– MaDiH (مديح) Instance on CKAN: User Guide – Arabic – Version 1
March 2020
Shatha Mubaideen; Alessandra Esposito; Arzaq Yousef
Available at Zenodo, https://zenodo.org/record/3727110#.XyEWap4zY2w
Available at ICOMOS Open Archive, https://openarchive.icomos.org/2359/
This document offers guidance to the users of the MaDiH (مديح) repository at https://madih-data.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/
– MaDiH (مديح) Mapping the Digital Cultural Heritage in Jordan Project. Datasets Identification and Publication Protocol – English – Version 1
February 2020
Alessandra Esposito; Shatha Mubaideen; James Smithies; Fadi Bala’awi; Pascal Flohr
Available at Zenodo, https://zenodo.org/record/3673318#.XyENTJ4zY2z
Available at ICOMOS Open Archive, https://openarchive.icomos.org/2357/
The document details the approaches and processes employed by the MaDiH (مديح) Mapping the Digital Cultural Heritage in Jordan Project Team for the identification and collection of datasets recorded in the project CKAN instance (https://madih-data.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/).
