February 2013

Instituto Latinamericano de Museos signed an agreement with CulturalHeritage.cc Foundation to distribute the CHF museum Collection Management System in Latin America and the Caribbean.

(zie ook persbericht Nederlands)

Innovative 'Made in Holland' software tool finds its way towards international implementation through its use in the fight against 'illicit traffic'.

Art theft, illegal export of archeological findings, religious artifacts and the like, are the victim of international operating criminal networks. A serious threat against the preservation of National and/or Local appointed Cultural Heritage of importance.

To halt this process an initiative of the Getty trust in 1993 resulted - in cooperation with Interpol, Unesco, and insurance companies - in a 'basic' description standard called the "Object ID", presently housed by ICOM.

The CulturalHeritage.cc Foundation, initiated in 1999 to develop a handsome and affordable web based Collection Management System (CMS), presented its CMS at the ICOM conference in 2001 in Barcelona. Ever since, the program - the digital representation of the Getty Object ID standards checklist - found its way in several countries in and outside of Europe and is being used by museums in (among others) Africa, Cuba, India and the Russian Republic. A large group of users that makes 'interoperability' of data immediately possible.

Distribution and trainings were mostly funded by regional Dutch Embassies, UNESCO, Robben Island Training Program (RITP) and sponsors such as PWC.

Fight in Progress

The set back in the fight against illicit traffic is mainly caused by the fact that more then 125 individual databases of 'stolen art' are presently available on the internet.

This decentralized storage of relevant information makes this fight nearly impossible. Originally meant as public available information and database to be - among others - consulted by police, custom, art dealers and the Art Loss Register, this wide variety of databases makes searching by the average Sherlock - not being trained as Art Historian - nearly impossible if not undoable.

New Era

Since january, 2013 this situation will be changed drastically.

The ILAM network (Instituto Latinamericano de Museos) signed an agreement with CHF to distribute its museum Collection Management System in Latin America and the Caribbean.

CHF is one of the first users of the unique and repeatedly awarded software 'application platform' as invented and developed by Dutch based CrossmarX software company. The agreement and implementation will be the first step to a regionally and - far more important - continental based platform on the internet where objects marked and indicated as target of  'illicit traffic' are published in a Central Database by ILAM RED.

Relations of ILAM are to be provided with private used CMS, based on the same Object ID standard with the export and synch function with the ILAM RED central database.

The result is envisioned as a large Central database providing public access to the Latin American and Carribean culture.

This 'continental' based approach will most likely result in a limited set of databases of 'stolen art' on other Continents.

In addition, the Spin-off of the ILAM RED 'Illicit Traffic' project results in a wide support for cultural tourism and education in a sustainable and ethical way, consequently supporting regional and local communities to protect their cultural heritage and to augment opportunities to generate income.

December 2012

Important message to all users of our Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), provided by CulturalHeritage.cc since its official opening at the ICOM conference in Barcelona in 2002:

Saturday 15 and Sunday 16 December 2012, our service and website may be temporarely closed due to change of servers.

Our SaaS will be moved from our private server to Cloud Virtual Private Servers.

May 2012

Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Orgeldokumentation (IAOD)

Floris Guntenaar - representing the CulturalHeritage.cc Foundation - joined the working group Pipe organ database initiated by the Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Orgeldokumentation (IAOD)

Die Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Orgeldokumentation (IAOD) dient der Förderung der Wissenschaft durch die Erforschung von Orgeln aus verschiedenen Epochen.

March 12, 2012

Russian Museums Association

Floris Guntenaar, executive director of CulturalHeritage.cc was one of the key note speakers at the International Scientific Conference on research, restauration and cooperation in Moskou, Koeskovo, 12 -14 March, 2012.

January 2012

Europeana.eu

Europeana.eu and CulturalHeritage.cc Foundation have both signed the agreement stating the Aggregators role of our Foundation for the Europeana.eu portal.

Collection items from participants using our web service, may now be published on the Europeana.eu portal if the digitized information has 'European born' relevancy.

Also, our private built applications, such as the NiVO (National Institute of the Organ Art), have that feature.

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