Descripción del proyecto
ARCOMEM is about memory institutions like archives, museums, and libraries in the age of theSocial Web. Memory institutions are more important now than ever: as we face greatereconomic and environmental challenges we need our understanding of the past to help usnavigate to a sustainable future. This is a core function of democracies, but this function facesstiff new challenges in face of the Social Web, and of the radical changes in informationcreation, communication and citizen involvement that currently characterise our informationsociety (e.g., there are now more social network hits than Google searches). Social media arebecoming more and more pervasive in all areas of life. In the UK, for example, it is now notunknown for a government minister to answer a parliamentary question using Twitter, and thismaterial is both ephemeral and highly contextualised, making it increasingly difficult for apolitical archivist to decide what to preserve.This new world challenges the relevance and power of our memory institutions. To answer thesechallenges, ARCOMEM's aim is to:· help transform archives into collective memories that are more tightly integrated withtheir community of users· exploit Social Web and the wisdom of crowds to make Web archiving a more selectiveand meaning-based processTo do this we will provide innovative tools for archivists to help exploit the new media andmake our organisational memories richer and more relevant. We will do this in three ways:· first we will show how social media can help archivists select material for inclusion,providing content appraisal via the social web· second we will show how social media mining can enrich archives, moving towardsstructured preservation around semantic categories· third we will look at social, community and user-based archive creation methodsAs results of this activity the outcomes of the ARCOMEM project will include:· innovative models and tools for Social Web driven content appraisal and selection, andintelligent content acquisition· novel methods for Social Web analysis, Web crawling and mining, event and topicdetection and consolidation, and multimedia content mining· reusable components for archive enrichment and contextualization· two complementary example applications, the first for media-related Web archives andthe second for political archives· a standards-oriented ARCOMEM demonstration systemThe impact of these outcomes will be to a) reduce the risk of losing irreplaceable ephemeral webinformation, b) facilitate cost-efficient and effective archive creation, and c) support the creationof more valuable archives. In this way we hope to strengthen our democracies' understanding ofthe past, in order to better direct our present towards viable and sustainable modes of living, andthus to make a contribution to the future of Europe and beyond.