Launch of the ECHOLOT project: Enabling the creation, provision and reuse of high-quality, semantically rich, interoperable cultural data
The ECHOLOT consortium – “European Cultural Heritage Optimised Linked Open Tools” – is proud to announce the launch of this innovative project, funded by the European Research Executive Agency (REA) under the powers delegated by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe Research and Innovation programme.
ECHOLOT revolutionizes the provision and reuse of high-quality, interoperable Cultural Heritage data with AI-powered enrichment, integrating seamlessly in the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH) and empowering the research and creative sectors. Bringing together major initiatives, such as Europeana and the Wikimedia movement, alongside key EU-infrastructure projects, including ECHOES, EOSC, and the Data Space for Cultural Heritage (DS4CH), ECHOLOT contributes innovative, easy-to-use and accessible technical solutions and collaboration models.
The activities and goals of ECHOLOT are based on four main pillars:
- Integration and interoperability: Development of the software and interoperability models to be seamlessly integrated as a service in the Cultural Heritage Cloud infrastructure.
- Workflows & Enrichment: Development of hybrid curation workflows based on AI-enhanced processing and human input.
- Innovation & Sustainability: Development of innovative collaboration and business models driving the necessary long-term social and organisational changes.
- Collaboration & Communities: Validation and engagement with diverse CHIs across Europe through a series of five distinct case studies, in addition to capacity building activities and training modules.
Five case studies to test and validate ECHOLOT’s technical system and collaboration model
ECHOLOT is validated through five real-world case studies, each of which addresses a different cultural heritage-related challenge and demonstrates the project’s impact across the sector.
1. Basque Cultural Heritage Data: Establishing the first comprehensive collection of entity identifiers relevant in Basque cultural heritage and beyond. Enabling the creation, provision and reuse of high-quality, semantically
rich, interoperable cultural data
2. European Literary Bibliography: Transformation and enrichment of multilingual European literary bibliographic data through the use of relevant Linked Open Data resources.
3. Connecting Media Art Collections: Collaborative harmonisation and enrichment of diverse media art collections, connecting previously dispersed artworks and artists.
4. Flemish Fine Arts and Performing Arts Collections: Making the publication of museum data to Wikimedia Commons and Europeana more efficient through a single, integrated workflow, with a particular focus on the Flemish context.
5. Publishing and Round-Tripping GLAM data: Wikimedia Sweden, together with several Swedish GLAM partners, will test the enrichment and multi-output publishing modules of ECHOLOT, especially focusing on workflows for reintegrating (round-tripping) enriched data back into the source databases.
Although the ECHOLOT consortium has only been operational for three months, it has already held two meetings, demonstrating its enthusiasm for shaping the future of cultural heritage data in Europe. The kick-off meeting, which took place online in January, provided an opportunity to review all the work packages and draw up the project’s roadmap for its 36-month duration. The consortium’s second meeting was held in person in Bilbao, Spain, in early March. In addition to addressing all outstanding issues to enable effective work to begin, the meeting was conceived as a requirements gathering workshop co-organised and hosted by the University of the Basque Country. Focusing on gathering input from the case study third-party participants, the workshop included user-centered design activities such as co-designing user personas, user stories and journey maps.
ECHOLOT is a multidisciplinary project bringing together 15 partners from 12 countries who are experts in arts and culture, media studies, information and library science, knowledge engineering, computer science, design and prototyping, management and communication.
DARIAH participates in the project together with the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OEAW). While OEAW will contribute to the requirements engineering and system design, DARIAH will oversee the evaluation phase ahead of the final release of the ECHOLOT software.
Learn more about ECHOLOT:
