Six issues to deal with

The London Charter1 provides a very complete and well structured framework to carry out documented 3D visualization of complex cultural heritage (CH) objects, such as objects of art, man-made structures and historical landscapes. When focusing, however, on the practical implementation of the preservation of such digital visualizations, we need to deal with six major issues, which are:

• 1 lack of methodology for documenting and exchanging 3D CH objects

• 2 lack of communication methodology

• 3 lack of stimuli to document and preserve

• 4 lack of long-term storage and digital preservation strategies

• 5 lack of business models for re-use and exchange

• 6 lack of updating methodology.

Lack of methodology for documenting and exchanging 3D CH objects

The first issue is still very basic: we still do not have any traditional or adopted methodology or standards for how we document the creation of a 3D visualization. Although the London Charter outlines the principles very well, we need a more practical methodology that can be adopted by the majority of people involved in 3D visualization. There are already some initial guidelines, for example on implementing heritage visualization in Second Life or on general documentation of interpretation processes (paradata) in 3D visualization developed within the EPOCH European Network of Excellence in Open Cultural Heritage.But we need more good examples and best practices on how to take on such documentation activity, on what tools to use, on the workflow to follow. We need major involvement by the community to reach consensus that 3D visualization and its documentation is a normal part of cultural heritage practice.

But these guidelines need to deal not only with the lonely researcher who creates such 3D visualizations of complex cultural heritage, but also with teams, multidisciplinary and geographically distributed. In other words, exchange of such documentation and methodology to collaborate are essential elements in the practical implementation of a documentation and preservation strategy.This is clearly linked to the capabilities of the tools used. The InMan methodology6 as developed within EPOCH used a wiki as medium for the documentation process, because of its discussion and versioning capabilities.