| Cultural and Linguistic Diversity, Local Content
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The Digital Silk Roads Initiative Framework is an international collaborative framework functioning in interdisciplinary domains of activities with a far-reaching mandate to promote effective digital storage, restoration and exchanges of cultural heritage residing in the Silk Roads region that aims to enhance international cooperation in building Digital Silk Roads, underlining the deep interaction among cultures and civilizations which took place throughout history, thus highlighting cultural diversity in the region concerned
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To commemorate the 1600th anniversary of the creation of the Armenian alphabet, UNESCO, through its project Initiative B@bel, and the Matenadaran Institute in Yerevan have launched a project to enhance access to information in the digital environment for the Armenian language.
The project will develop a Unicode compatible font to overcome some current constraints in the use of the Armenian language in fields such as modern print and digital publishing.
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DigiArts is a UNESCO web project promoting interdisciplinary fields of researches, activities related to digital cultural practices. In line with UNESCO?s contribution to implementing the WSIS Plan of Action, it especially aims at promoting training and human resource development in the use of ICTs and supporting cultural diversity and dialogue among cultures within a digital environment.
Young Digital Creators Programme empowers young people to construct, through a collaborative process and creative digital tools, a deeper understanding of each other's cultural values and shared perspectives related to global issues;
Masterclass modules in Art, Design and Technology in the Arab States demonstrates the importance of addressing ICT and digital creativity within existing curricula by strengthening learning opportunities through access to specific regional contents;
DigiArts Africa promotes the sustainability of creative content based on local resources and suited to the geo-cultural context with a firm support to ICT-based work in creative cultural industries.
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The Slave Trade Archives Project set up by UNESCO and funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) (1999-2005) ailed at improving the conservation and accessibility of slave trade records. It dealt with original documentary sources bearing witness to the trade, mainly in the form of written documents. Digitization of these sources, particularly those at risk from deterioration, has helped to establish a collective memory of this part of history. The project was based on a desire to guarantee the protection and accessibility of documents with universal value through digitization. It did not aim to restore or reconstitute the original collections themselves. The project main goal was to improve access to and use of documents related to the slave trade and its various forms, in order to highlight its impact and lasting consequences. An access strategy has been outlined with a view to establishing on-line access through the UNESCO website and other sites devoted to the slave trade, as well as publishing multimedia CD-ROMs on the slave trade, acts of resistance to slavery, etc.
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?A Society of Virtual Literatures? (Helsinki, 20/21 May 2005) is an International conference on the Internet as new space for the dissemination and promotion of literary translation. Literary translation is an invaluable tool for linguistic and cultural diversification within the international book market. But without joint support and promotion measures, literary translation runs the risk of serving the expansion of limited number tongues and literary expressions. To provide this kind of support, there are today in the world some one hundred public and private organisations. The international conference ?A Society of Virtual Literatures? will gather some forty experts and managers of support programmes to analyse and measure how the Internet is changing their work, and where.
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UNESCO organized a three-day expert meeting on "Cultural Diversity in Knowledge Societies" in St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, from 17 to 19 May 2005. The event took place in the framework of the conference "UNESCO between the two phases of the World Summit on the Information Society" organized by the Russian authorities.
The meeting was one of UNESCO?s thematic meetings in preparation for the second meeting of the World Summit on the Information Society (Tunis, Tunisia, 16-18 November 2005).
The purpose of this meeting was to measure sustainability of cultural diversity through the opportunities offered by ICT for future knowledge societies.
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Africa: Mali
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UNESCO in partnership with the Académie Africaine des Langues (ACALAN), the Agence intergouvernementale de la Francophonie (AIF) and the Government of Mali, is organising a Conference on ?Multilingualism for Cultural Diversity and Participation of All in Cyberspace? in Bamako, Mali, from 6 to 7 May 2005. The event is one of UNESCO?s thematic meetings in preparation for the second meeting of the World Summit on the Information Society (Tunis, Tunisia; 16-18 November 2005).
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Arab States: Lebanon
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As part of its support to Youth and Community, the UNESCO office in Beirut teams up with the Ministry of Tourism, municipalities, international and local NGOs and the private sector to ?Promote Rural Tourism using ICT?. This pilot project started by selecting five regions in Lebanon (Bchari, Niha, Hasbayya, Saida and Kfardibian) and to train people in the use of ICTs for promoting tourism. So far, more than twenty college graduates were trained on project management to be able to assist their community to improve and enhance tourism services.. The activity is planned to be up-scaled to all parts of Lebanon and to other sectors beyond tourism.
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Asia and Pacific: China
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The project ?Digitization of Recordings of Traditional Chinese Music? is aimed at making field recordings of Chinese music held by the Music Research Institute (MRI) of the Chinese Academy of Arts in Beijing digitally available. The collections which have has been included in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 1997, contain unique field recordings from the 1950s onward, which are in frequent demand.
The project included the purchase and installation of equipment, the digitization itself and the creation of a website to provide access to the digitised collections. Basic equipment includes a stand-alone, high quality analogue-to-digital converter and a PC with a high clock frequency and adequate amount of memory to serve as the digital audio workstation. For intermediary storage of the digitised signals a SCSI hard disk of highest available storage capacity is being used.
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Asia and Pacific: Kazakhstan
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The project covers the digitization of parts of the rare books collections of the National Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan (NLRK) - some of them are included in UNESCO? Memory of the World Register. The project is being sponsored by IBM and the "Kus Zholy" Foundation of Kazkommertzbank which provide hard- and software and support a series of training for NLRK staff.. NLRK?s rare book and manuscript collections include more than 25,000 titles in Kazakh, Russian, and other Eastern and European languages from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Among them are 400 manuscripts in Persian, Arabic, Chagatai, Old Slavic, and Korean languages.
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