Regional cooperatin

1

Bulgarian participation in FP7/ICT Technologies
for digital content Prof. Galia Angelova,
IICT-BAS, Nat. Contact Person FP7 ICT Totka
Chernaeva, IT Department, MTITC, Nat.
representative FP7 ICT Programme Committee
2
Outline

1. Overview of the Bulgarian participation in FP7
   theme ICT (Information and Communication
   Technologies), Objective Digital Libraries and
   Content
2. Main Bulgarian players
3. Success stories in Digital Libraries
4. What can be done to support the participation of
   Bulgarian cultural institutions in FP7/ICT

3
ICT FP7 main EU instrument for funding RTD with
EU impact in Information Communication Techn.

• 7th Framework Programme for RD 2007-2013
• ICT - the largest research theme provides a
  total of 9.1 billion for RTD projects in 9
  areas (challenges)
• Challenge 4 Digital Libraries and Content
• 2007-2008 Digital Libraries and Content
• 2009-2010 Digital Libraries and Content
• 2011-2012 Technologies for Digital Content and
  Languages
• More applied trends funded in further programmes
  like eContent, eContentPlus, PSP etc.

4
2007-2008 Digital Libraries and Content

• 3 calls Call 1, Call 3 // total budget of 102
  mln
• Digital Libraries (DL)
• Innovative access services that support
  communiti-es of practice in the creation,
  interpretation and use of cultural and scientific
  content, incl. multi-format and multi-source
  digital objects
• Radically new approaches to digital preservation
• Technology-enhanced learning (TEL)
• Intelligent Content and Semantics (ICS)

5
2007-2008 Retained with BG-participation

• Call 1
• TEL LTfLL (Language Technologies for Life-long
  Learning) - IICT-BAS
• ICS LarKC (the Large Knowledge Collider), Sirma
  Ontotext and SMARTMUSEUM (Cultural heritage
  knowledge exchange platform) Webgate
• Call 3
• TEL DynaLearn (Engaging and informed tools for
  learning conceptual system knowledge) IBEI-BAS
  and KEEP (Keep-ing Emulation Environments
  Portable) - Nucleus Systems Ltd
• ICS INSEMTIVES (Incentives for Semantics) and
  NoTube (Networks and Ontologies for the
  Transformation and Unification of Broadcasting
  and the Internet, Making Television More
  Personal), Sirma Ontotext

6
2009-2010 Digital Libraries and Content

• Call 6 Dig. Libraries, Preservation (DLP) 69
  mln
• Scalable preservation methods of digital content
• Advanced preservation scenarios
• Innovation in assembling multimedia DL
• Adaptive cultural experiences
• Interdisciplinary networks models, KR, graphics
  
• Call 5 TEL 69 mln
• Call 5 Int. Inform. Management (IIM) 70 mln
• Call 5 Extension of Running projects 10 mln

7
2009-2010 Retained with BG-participation

• Call 5
• IIM CUBIST (Combining and Uniting Business
  Intelligence and Semantic Technologies), RENDER
  (Reflecting Knowledge Diversity) and KHRESMOI
  (Knowledge Helper for Medical and Other
  Information users) Ontotext
• an Extension of a DL-project IMPACT (Improving
  Access to Texts), IICT-BAS and the Nat. Library
  St.St. Cyril and Methodius
• Call 6
• DL, DP Cultura (CULTivating Understanding and
  Research through Adaptivity) Sofia University
  St. Kl. Ohridski, Faculty of Maths and
  Informatics and Commetric EOOD 

8
2010-2011 Technologies for Digital Content and
Languages

• SME Initiative on Digital Content and Languages
• Call 7 Language Technologies (LT) 50 mln
• Call 8 Intelligent Inf. Management 50 mln
• Call 9 Digital Preservation (DP) 30 mln
• More reliable and secure preservation
  technologies and methods
• Intelligent management of preservation
• Research networks, uptake of DP research

9
2011 Retained with BG-participation

• SME initiative Ontotext one successful project
• Call 7 Ontotext has one successful project
  (TrendMiner, Portable open-source real-time
  methods for cross-lingual mining and
  summarisation of large-scale stream media)
• Call 8 under evaluation
• Call 9 closes 17 April 2012

10
Main Bulgarian players

• With more than one funded project
• Ontotext in Semantic Technologies and Intelligent
  Information Management
• IICT-BAS in Technology-Enhanced Learning and
  Digital Libraries (Technologies for automatic
  correction of scanning errors)

11
Success Rates for BG in Challenge 4

• Call 1, DLTEL 1 retained, 36 submitted 2,8
  (6 AT - above threshold)
• Call 1, ICS 2 retained, 20 submitted 10 (3
  AT)
• Call 3, DLTEL 2 retained, 38 submitted 5 (6
  AT)
• Call 3, ICS 2 retained, 18 submitted 11 (7
  AT)
• Call 5, TEL 0 retained, 18 submitted 0 (4 AT)
• Call 5, IIM 3 retained, 11 submitted 27 (0
  AT)
• Call 6, DLDP 1 retained, 5 submitted 20 (0
  AT)
• Call 7, LT 1 retained, 8 submitted 12,5 (0
  AT)
• Average for BG about
  11 vs 13.5 FP7

12
Bulgarian Proposers in Challenge 4

• TEL mostly academic units, many companies
• ICS, IIM mostly companies, few academic units
• LT academic units and companies
• DL, DP academic units, companies and 30
• 4 Regional administrative units
• The National Library St.St. Cyril and Methodius
• The Central Library BAS
• 3 Community centers, libraries/cultural clubs
• 5-6 NGOs associations, foundations
• Fixed academic players but new companies/NGOs

13
Success stories in DL

• IMPACT extension of a running large project
• The extension was funded for 18 months IICT
  Nat. Library
• Automatic correction of scanning errors in
  historic Cyrillic texts, created dictionaries and
  prototypes
• Fine Reader (Russian software) for Cyrillic texts
  
• CULTURA - http//www.cultura-strep.eu/home
• Language processing, which normalises ambiguities
  in noisy historical texts
• Highlights the key individuals, events, dates and
  other entities and relationships within
  unstructured text
• Supports the users to investigate, comprehend and
  contribute to digital cultural collections
• Tested on medieval English texts (Coordinator
  Trinity College)
• FAILURE perhaps the fact that no Bulgarian
  cultural unit is successful independently on
  related techno-partners

14
What can be done at national level?

• Taking part in ICT/FP7 is important because one
  learns to do innovative services (e.g. CULTURA)
• There are a lot of active companies with
  expertise in digital content (Ontotext is an
  EU-leader in the field)
• Many cultural institutions have already started
  their own digitalisation initiatives
• Planning funding via the Structural Funds
  2014-2020
• Coordination of efforts (Roadmap)

15
Thanks a lot for your attention!