EMC in collaboration with the Foundation of the Hellenic World have joined forces to present “EUCLIDES - The EMC Information Heritage Initiative in Greece”. This is a unique project, aiming to preserve and promote cultural heritage through the use of new technologies. The "EUCLIDES" project aims to identify and promote programs that use technology to foster and promote the Greek cultural heritage, by making this material available to a wider public.

Information Systems EMC Hellas S.A., an affiliate of EMC Corporation, the world leader in information infrastructure solutions together with the Foundation of the Hellenic World, Greece’s unique institution that has undertaken the development of programs focused at the preservation, dissemination and promotion of Hellenic culture and history, have joined forces to initiate "EUCLIDES". This cooperation will reward the project that in the opinion of the “EUCLIDES” committee, most clearly showcases how technology supports the preservation and promotion of Greek cultural heritage.

The “EUCLIDES” project is supported by Alpha Bank, Cisco and Uni Systems.

This EMC initiative has emerged from the fundamental recognition that the past represents a key reference point for shaping both the present and the future. The "EUCLIDES" project aims to identify and promote programs that, by the use of technology, will foster and promote the cultural heritage of each country, by making this material available to a wider public. Greece is the first country to bring this project into life, marking the significance and historical contribution of the country in global civilization.

The submission of proposals to participate in the project is from February 12th until March 12th 2010. They will be evaluated by a special committee, comprising of: Mr George Mavrakis, Country Director EMC Greece, Cyprus and Malta, Ioannis Hatzikomnou, Publisher of Erevnites, Efstathios Kakoyiannis, Title Alpha Bank, Ioannis Loumakis, Managing Director Uni Systems, Alexandros Bechrakis, Regional Sales and Marketing Manager, Cisco Greece, Cyprus and Malta.

The winning project will be awarded a grant of 20.000 Euros for its implementation.

The Foundation of the Hellenic World will overview and collect the submissions together with the Committee.

The winner will be announced in April and the grant will be awarded in a special ceremony due to be implemented in May.

The Foundation of the Hellenic World (FHW), which was envisioned, founded and funded by the family of Lazaros Efraimoglou in 1993, is a privately funded not-for-profit cultural institution based in Athens. FHW's mission is the preservation of Hellenic history and tradition, the creation of an awareness of the universal dimension of Hellenism and the promotion of its contribution to cultural evolution. FHW is conducting a very important historical and archeological research, it creates sites about Greek History and Culture, while at its Cultural Centre Hellenic Cosmos, numerous activities are presented by means of state-of-the-art technology, which include Virtual Reality programmes, permanent and temporary exhibitions, educational programmes and documentaries.

Get more information about FHW and its projects at Hellenic Cosmos at our websites: www.fhw.gr and www.hellenic-cosmos.gr.

• Chios
• Chronos
• Encyclopaedia of the Hellenic World
• The Collection of Coins of the Foundation of the Hellenic World
• Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation

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Two areas of Chios have special cultural attributes thanks to their economic specialization, to their zoning plan and to their distinct built environment.

The first area

The Kampos contains a broad plain with citrus cultivations, especially a local variety of tangerine, well known as Chian tangerine. The farms are organized as big gardens with high stone fences, villas, open water tanks with irrigation mechanisms, and numerous churches, which used to belong to specific families or guilds.

The second area

The Masticochora (Mastic Villages) consists of 21 villages. The population was specialized in the production of the world wide unique mastic gum. The western villages of the area, which was not ruined by the disastrous 1881 earthquake, preserve their initial form, their internal space organization and some important buildings, (towers, houses, churches and wells). Their environment encompasses mastic-tree crops, monasteries and churches, ancient temples, as well as castles and watchtowers which developed an effective control, safety and observation system. From another point of view, both areas present a high degree of family continuity, which can be documented by numerous historical sources and monuments. In both areas people retain their social memory through foundation myths and family histories, which contribute meaning and content to the environment and to the built environment.

The project intends to develop an internet application, which will locate the cultural character of the areas on a digital geographic background with a cartographic terrain and satellite outlook. The presentation of the built environment will be combined with the intangible heritage of each place. At the same time, the visitor will have the option to move to alternative information levels, which will represent distinct periods of the local history.

The visitor will be guided in a network of selected knots (places), which will be denoted on the map as 3D images. The visitor will have the following options:

• To obtain information about the history, the technical features and the present state of each monument.
• To understand how the monument is connected with the other monuments or significant places through visible and conceptual networks.
• To watch photographs and drawings from the history of the monument.
• To learn about the history of the families, groups or communities, which created or possessed the monument.
• To watch videos with accounts and narrations dealing with the monument, or with folk songs and happenings from each village.
• To be guided to nearby places for hosting, dining and entertainment.

The information will be accessible through Internet or through local networks, in info-kiosks in transportation means stations and on the ships to Chios. The visitor will be able to access the information through hot-spots in Campos and Mastichochora, at distinct places near the monuments, in local museums as the Citrus Museum, and through mobile Internet and i-phone applications, which can be obtained on line.

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Object

Creation of an Internet portal for oral history, collective memory, micro-history and genealogy. The portal will be based on FHW’s productions and projects and by material that will be sent by interested private individuals and institutions, which will accept its terms of operation. In addition, the portal will lead, through links, to FHW’s relevant projects but also to web sites of other institutions that study history and culture, which possess or process material of respective character.

Objective

The project’s objective is through a simple, everyday and “playful” way:

• to familiarize the wider public with the “small” aspects of history, on and individual, family and local level, aspects that frequently play a more important role in the shaping the behavior of the historical agents than macro historic structures and developments, and
• to urge the public to become active and undertake actions towards the preservation and promotion of relevant historical documents (relics, photographs, narrations, testimonies).

Format

The home page of the portal will reproduce the image and partly the structure of a newspaper with constant columns and content which is renewed continuously. The content will consist of texts, tables, genealogy charts, references to bibliography and webliography, photographs, maps, video, sound files and other multimedia applications. The management of the material will take place through an advanced system of incorporation, promotion, archiving and search.

Presentation

Like in a traditional newspaper, the material of the portal will not be characterized by multiformity. The columns will present the best spectrum of historical documentation, texts and presentations. In this framework, we will seek continuity regarding the place that will be occupied by the types of material, specifying special columns for video (interviews and presentations), photographs, analysis texts which will come from professional historiography, for references to national “anniversaries” etc. Each column will have a thorough reference, which can be accompanied by texts, multimedia and “libraries” that explain, enrich and provide meaning to the material under presentation. In this way, each text is going to have a flexible structure of presentation and of linking it to other sources on the internet.

Themes

Themes will be related to microhistory, oral history, collective memory and genealogy. There will be presented texts, images and multimedia applications that have to do with small social groups (family, community, professional groups etc) or even specific people and draw information from historical relics (photographs, memorabilia, narrations), from the testimonies of actual experiences (testimonies, presentation videos) and from archive and bibliographic research.

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Description

From its first days FHW set as a priority, the promotion of Hellenic history through the Internet. Therefore, it created historical web sites dedicated to all the different periods starting from the Stone Age to 2000. These websites also cover special issues (people, cities, events). This project lasted for three years and is available on the Internet in two languages. It is a unique project of this type and that is why it was received enthusiastically by the public, both Greek and foreign, mainly by High School but also university students.

Problematic

However, this project is technologically outdated, as well as on a content point of view. the level of information has remained in the 1990’s, given that content management is almost impossible. At the same time, we cannot have a total search, since intertextuality is problematic, while in addition FHW possess an even greater volume of information which would make the sites more interesting.

Objective

FHW aims to incorporate the material in a database, to amend and enrich the content, in order to provide an upgraded form to the public.

Encyclopaedia of the Hellenic World (EHW).

As part of the project, the study and preparation of data migration will determine the type and volume of information that exist in FHW’s legacy system and that can be transferred to the existing system of the Encyclopaedia of the Hellenic World (EHW). EHW is original in its conception, as well as in the design, organization and operation. It incorporates a series of relevant projects to Hellenic culture (databases, electronic files of texts, sounds and images, multimedia applications, links to web sites of service and information provision). The structure of the work is determined, at the first stage, by the following three main categories:

1. Database of entries: Presentation and organization of historical and cultural information in the form of encyclopedic entries, that are accompanied by photographic documentation.
2. Audiovisual applications: Visualization of historical events, processes and phenomena, 3D reconstructions, digital models of cities, music and video To complete the information appearing in the entries.
3. Bibliographic database: Inclusion of all the bibliography of the entries that will be gradually enriched independently of the entries themselves.

The EWH fully uses the assets of new digital technologies such as easy to use methods to incorporate, structure and manage the large volume of texts and audiovisual material. The applications that have been developed as part of its design emerge from general methodologies regarding the electronic and multimedia presentation of historical and cultural information. Therefore the applications can be used in processing other projects with similar subject matter, like the one of Hellenic history.

Apart from the technical part of the project, a group of historians will deal with the data migration, the shaping and enrichment of the documents, both in information and audiovisual material.

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Electronic publication – Electronic Database

In November 2007 the Foundation of the Hellenic World purchased a coin collection, which belonged to a German private collector and includes approximately 13,600 coins and small objects. The main volume of the collection consists of bronze coins of the Roman Period from Asia Minor. However, it also includes coins from nearly all the areas of the ancient Mediterranean world, as well as a small number of Byzantine and Artuqid coins. The collection, which was originally in Sudetenland, was created gradually, mainly in the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, by a family of German merchants who were active in the area of Asia Minor. Later the collection was transferred to Leipzig and after World War II to the area of the Palatinate.

One of the most important collections

The most acclaimed numismatists, who know about it, consider it as one of the four greatest and most important collections in the world regarding coins of Greek cities of Asia Minor, after the ones in London (British Museum), Berlin (Museum of Berlin) and Paris (Collection of Medals and Coins of the National Library of France). Another peculiarity of the collection is the fact that it contains several unique coins, which can be found nowhere else in the world, and which prove the existence of ancient unknown cities so far to historical research, and not testified by other sources. The coins of the Roman Period, and particularly those of Asia Minor, are characterized by unusual iconographic and epigraphic wealth. The representations and the inscriptions on the coins bring to light a great deal of information about the deities and cults, celebrations, rituals and athletic events, church architecture and the art of that period. At the same time they inform us about the economic and political institutions and offices, about the relationship between local and central authority, about taxation and the beneficial or military activity of local rulers and emperors. The collection is undoubtedly of unique importance and is the last coin collection of this size that was maintained as a whole, in contrast to other collections that, although smaller in number of coins, were sold gradually in various auctions. A small part of the collection has already been published in the international scientific series about ancient Greek coins Syllogae Numorum Graecorum. The Foundation of the Hellenic World, in cooperation with the Academy of Athens, is going to continue with the study and the publication of the rest of the coins in the respective volumes.

Eectronic database for electronic publication

However, independently from the printed publication, an electronic publication of the coins collections is going to be carried out, similarly to the publications of the great collections abroad (http://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/coins/; http://www.smb.museum/ikmk/index.php?lang=en). For this purpose a database should be designed with the proper interface and search fields. Finally, the digitization of the collection should be carried out. This is the proposed project: the creation and operation of such a database.

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The Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation possesses, together with the natural objects collections, an important body of archive material. The wealth of its archive complements the collections of natural objects, enlightening and “interpreting” the function and the role of the objects in each specific social and historical environment. These collections result of an effort of many years. Their creation are based on the methodology of ethnography and anthropology and constitute a valuable source of information, since they record the developments of the folklore culture of Greece in the 20th century. In addition, they represent an original preservation, recording and classification of the immaterial cultural heritage, which is necessary for the commentary, interpretation, but also the museological approach of the material culture.

The archive collections of the Peloponnesian Folklore Foundation consist of:

• The Photographic Archive, which includes slides and photos from field researches throughout Greece approximately from 1955 to 1985.
• The Sound and Film Archive, which covers customs, costumes, music, dancing and “group” games.
• The Takis Mavros Historical Archive, which deals with copies of the contracts by the notaries Elaionos and Papakyriakou.
• The Giannis Metsis Archive, which includes costumes, music scores, choreographies and other.
• The Personal Archive of Ms I. Papantoniou, which includes mainly photo albums and memorabilia from 1936 to 1966.
• The National Archive of Greek Traditional Costume, which includes informative material from field research, photographs, costume designs, newspapers clippings, articles and glossaries relevant to this subject matter.
• The Archive of On-the-spot field Research, which includes additional manuscripts

The project:

The most urgent is the digitization of the sound and film archiving. This digitization will allow the presentation and use of the material in a unified form resulting in the public’s and the researchers’ easier access to information. Due to the sensitivity of the supporting material of visual and acoustical recordings, as well as the difficulty in reproducing and distributing the material which would require the revival of conventional technical media of previous decades. The folklore and wider cultural content of the audiovisual archive can be accessible to the public through the internet as a unified metadata database and multimedia content. Furthermore, it can be promoted in relation to the thematic classifications that could be compatible and inter-linked with the rest of the Museum’s collections, as well as with the geographic location of the recording in areas of Greece that are interesting in the framework of cultural tourism.

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Dimitris Efraimoglou, Director of Foundation of the Hellenic World said, "The Foundation of the Hellenic World (FHW) considers important recognition and confirmation of the more than 17-years work that EMC, a global leader in the field of new technologies, has chosen to become a strategic partner for the implementation of the innovative "EUCLIDES" project. FHW, while aiming to be at the forefront of developments in the most advanced technologies and their application for the enhancement of cultural content, hopes that through the "EUCLIDES" project, which is implemented for the first time in Greece, will highlight innovative projects that preserve and underline the cultural heritage in the most modern and intimate way for the future generations."

Efstathios Kakogiannis, Chief Operating Officer of the Information Technology Division of Alpha Bank said, "The initiative of EMC is a valuable exercise which combines technological means with cultural heritage. In the new Society of Information, Alpha Bank stands as an assistant in every effort aiming to promote culture and the use of new technological, data."

Alexandros Bechrakis, Regional Sales and Marketing Manager of Cisco in Greece, Cyprus and Malta said, " At Cisco we believe that innovation is the driving force fro positive change of the way people work, live have fun and learn. We are proud to support such an initiative with our trusted partners, because, in order for Innovation to flourish, there is a need for solid foundations. The Greek heritage provides these bases in abundance.

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Yiannis Loumakis, CEO of Uni Systems said, "Uni Systems, as a strategic partner of EMC, welcomed the "EUCLIDES" project, from which Uni Systems could not have abstained, since it is proven in practice our commitment in innovation. As a company, which has met critical and unique projects, related to culture, we comprehend the importance of creating a new virtual reality for FHW. We hope that with our participation in this project, we will support significantly this ambitious effort and that we will set new goals that will bring culture closer to the vision of E-Government."

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EMC Corporation, the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, today announced that the “THE COLLECTION OF COINS OF THE FOUNDATION OF THE HELLENIC WORLD” has won the first ever EUCLIDES Project, which aims to highlight how technology supports the preservation and promotion of Greek cultural heritage and, in particular, to show the historical significance of the coins collection and to emphasize their rarity. “THE COLLECTION OF COINS OF THE FOUNDATION OF THE HELLENIC WORLD” was implemented by EMC Hellas and the Foundation of the Hellenic World, with the strong support of the companies Alpha Bank, Cisco and Uni Systems.

Specifically, in November 2007 the Foundation of the Hellenic World purchased a coin collection, which belonged to a German private collector and includes approximately 13,600 coins and small objects. The main volume of the collection consists of bronze coins of the Roman Period from Asia Minor. The collection is considered by renowned numismatists to be possibly the greatest and most important collections of coins of Greek cities of Asia Minor, after the ones in London (British Museum), Berlin (Museum of Berlin) and Paris (Collection of Medals and Coins of the National Library of France).

“The Collection of Coins of the Foundation of the Hellenic World” was chosen by the committee based on various criteria, including: the proposal’s completeness, innovation, creativity, the project “maturity”, relevancy, the sophistication and the perennity of the project, the usage of new technologies as well as the profile of the candidate, in terms cultural credibility and “expertise”.

The submission of the proposals to participate in the "EUCLIDES" project was completed on March 12, 2010 and the winning project was awarded a grant of 20.000 Euros. The proposals were evaluated by: George Mavrakis, Country Director EMC Greece, Cyprus and Malta, Yiannis Chatzikomnou, Editor of “EREVNITES”, Robert J.Goglis CISM, CISSP Division Information Security Officer of Alpha Bank, Antonis Kassano, Infrastructure Technology Solutions Division Manager of Uni Systems & Fotis Ioannidis, Systems Engineering Manager for CISCO for Greece, Cyprus & Malta.

George Mavrakis, Country Director for EMC, Greece, Cyprus & Malta said “We are very pleased that the selected proposal was The Collection of Coins of the Foundation of the Hellenic World. The achievement demonstrates in the best way how technology can support the preservation and promotion of the Greek cultural heritage. In the effort of our company to add value to current and future undertakings, we also pay close attention to the preservation of valuable items from the past, creating and providing appropriate technological infrastructure and solutions. The "Euclides” project is the practical demonstration of how alive the past is in the present, staying on top of technology."

Dimitris Efraimoglou, Director of Foundation of the Hellenic World, said: “Three years ago, the Foundation of the Hellenic World had the opportunity to purchase a coin collection that belonged to a German private collector and included 13,625 coins from Asia Minor, mainly of the Roman period, and a small number of Byzantine and Artugid. The collector, like his ancestors, is an admirer of the ancient Greek culture and therefore, he made efforts to bring the whole collection in Greece, considering the fact that it belongs here. Once the proposal was made to the Foundation, it was assumed that the coins should come to Greece at all costs and even more in an institution with such goals as ours. Afterwards, of course, we learned that the collection is considered by the most acclaimed numismatists, one of the four largest coin collections of Greek cities, following those in London, Berlin and Paris. Today, EMC Hellas, in the framework of Euclides competition, distinguishes, elevates and awards the digitization of our coin collection in order to spread it to the public via the global modern communication tool, the Internet.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to expand the hard work we already have in such a difficult time period and we hope that other companies operating in our country will undertake similar initiatives”