DIOPTRA at the XXV Annual ICOMON Meeting

Dioptra and the project "Cypriot Medieval Coins: History and Culture" participated at the XXV Annual ICOMON Meeting dedicated to the future-proofing numismatics in museums: issues of conservation and collections management addressing current issues of conservation, preservation, management and care of numismatic collections. Dioptra presented a paper "Building a Digital Platform for Numismatic Collections at the Cyprus Institute."

Abstract:

Cypriot Medieval Coins: History and Cultureis a novel digital library dedicated to the study, promotion, and dissemination of the history of Medieval Cypriot Coinage (12th-16th centuries). The project was developed in the context of collaboration between the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation and the Science and Technology in Archaeology Research Center (STARC) of The Cyprus Institute in Nicosia, Cyprus. The digital platform offers an interactive exploration of the medieval collection with the innovative implementation of Reflectance Transformation Imaging[1], complemented with text descriptions, essays, links to other collections and repositories that contribute context as well as alternative ways to study and access the material.

The above-mentioned project is only a first example of the numerous possibilities for the development and management of digital numismatic collections in the context of flexible platforms for broader digital libraries. Spearheading CyI’s contribution to the rich cultural heritage of Cyprus, the creation of the digital library ofDioptra: The Edmée Leventis Digital Library for Cypriot Culture provides the necessary advanced technological framework to support the management and international dissemination of an array of projects, collaborations, and initiatives including those concerning coin collections.


The framework of Dioptra offers an innovative merge of digital imaging and data management systems that offer great new opportunities for research and dissemination of numismatic knowledge online. Dioptra supports the digital documentation of coinage collections and also can host digital numismatic libraries. The digital documentation of coins through innovative imaging applicationscan provide advanced visual analysis that will certainly facilitate their study as well as their conservation. For the creation of the digital library, the use of the flexible content management system based on a web-based platform can promote the proper dissemination of the coin collection to the international audience.Furthermore,digital data is mapped to a semantically aware framework (CIDOC-CRM) and OpeNumisma.


[1] Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) developed at STARC in collaboration with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Southern California.