| 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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UNESCO supported standardization process for Ethiopic scripts as a precondition for local content development in languages in Ethiopia like Tigrina, Afar, Amharic and others (Part of UNESCO?s Initiative B@bel with support of UNECA and the Ministry of Capacity Building)
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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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Using the more traditional technology of radio to reach large audiences in innovative and engaging ways, the Silk Road Radio Project in Tajikistan-Uzbekistan highlights contemporary issues and priorities through a twice-weekly radio drama series, produced and transmitted in both Uzbek and Tajik languages. Building on a centuries? old tradition of story-telling in the region, the themes dealt with in the radio dramas can be grouped in three categories in accordance with the priority areas of the main funding agencies: family and reproductive health, agricultural themes, and contemporary national issues such as humane and considerate treatment of displaced and underprivileged groups in society, ethnic harmony and tolerance in society and the trafficking of women.
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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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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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Improved data transfer and a wide-range of computer applications in Nepali language are the main results of a UNESCO supported project to normalize Nepali ?Devanagari? as the standard font for local language computing that was implemented by ?Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya?, a non-governmental organization based in Lalitpur, in Nepal.
In Nepal the Nepali Devanagari font (language) was utilized by some organizations while others used fonts such as ?Preeti?, ?Kantipur? and ?Fontasy Himali?. The various agencies had customized the software for their own institutions and there were no common standard in the country. The lack of standardization limited the transfer of data and information from one font to another because various fonts had to be downloaded and kept on each and every computer in order to open any document.
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The project "Harnessing ICTs for the audiovisual industry and public service broadcasting in developing countries" aims to advise developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America in the potentials of ICT-enhanced broadcasting, both in their audiovisual industry and public service broadcasting. Member States are supported in their international commitments and national policies in the audiovisual field and ICTs, by analysing current trends in broadcasting and formulating recommendations to the various partners involved. A second component of the project contributes to bridging the knowledge gap between developed and developing countries by providing capacity-building in broadcasting and audiovisual policy and encouraging pilot innovative solutions. The third component concerns content development on major societal and development issues.
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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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As no adequate ICT tools exist to process and publish texts in Mongolian script, the National University of Mongolia joined efforts with the Mongolian University of Science and Technology to implement the project promoting the use of the traditional Mongolian script by text processing and web publishing tools.
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Media
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UNESCO's programme in support of creativity and innovation in local content production in radio, television and new media
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?Africa Animated!? is a UNESCO initiative that assembles resources and expertise for the production of children?s animated cartoons in Africa children?s programmes in Africa and in particular computer-animated cartoons are mostly imported from abroad, despite efforts by regional broadcasters and the audiovisual community in Africa to address the lack of local content production.
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Preserving indigenous peoples? cultural resources by fostering access to ICT, thus contributing to narrowing the digital divide is the aim of a project entitled "ICTs for Intercultural Dialogue: Developing communication capacities of indigenous peoples (ICT4ID)", which UNESCO has recently launched as the direct result of the International Forum on Local Cultural Expression and Communication held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic on 3-6 November 2003.
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Project funding of the capital, training and 1st year?s operating costs for the transfer of Samoan television programs to the Internet.
The project is aimed to bolster the Samoan language and culture, both in Samoa and to Samoans abroad. It is also aimed to increase Samoan?s IT literacy
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Asia and Pacific: Timor-Leste
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Thousands of computers in libraries, schools and universities in Portuguese-speaking Africa (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique and Sao Tome and Principe) and Timor-Leste will have access to some 20,000 titles of Portuguese-language books and periodicals from all over the world, as well as periodicals in English and Spanish, published by more than 150 publishers, including UNESCO, according to an agreement concluded by the Brazilian government and the Ebrary / E-libro web portal.
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Europe and North America: Finland
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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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Europe and North America: Russian Federation
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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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Global
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The "UNESCO Charter on the Preservation of the Digital Heritage" that was adopted by UNESCO's General Conference at its 32nd session (30 September ? 17 October 2003), provides a policy framework to take up the challnge that more and more of the world's cultural and educational resources are being produced, distributed and accessed in digital form rather than on paper. Born-digital heritage available on-line, including electronic journals, World Wide Web pages or on-line databases, is now part of the world?s cultural heritage. However, digital information is subject to technical obsolescence and physical decay.
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UNESCO's Audiovisual E-Platform, a multicultural, audiovisual online catalogue for independent producers and broadcasters, provides global on-line contact between filmmakers, broadcasters and distribution outlets, enhancing the promotion and distribution of culturally diverse audiovisual content. The Platform contains recently produced, innovative documentaries, short films and tv-magazines, original in form and content, going beyond conventional forms of filmmaking, providing a genuine expression of different cultures, and all ready for on-line, full-length screening.
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UNESCO encourages its Member States to develop strong policies which promote and facilitate language diversity on the Internet, create widely-available online tools and applications (such as terminologies, automatic translators, dictionaries) for content in local languages and encourage the sharing of best practices and information. Initiative B@bel and the "Recommendation on the promotion of multilingualism and universal access to Cyberspace" are both examples of UNESCO?s efforts to promote multilingualism and an equitable, culturally diverse and harmonious Cyberspace.
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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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Reel Intercultural Dialogue is a series of five short fiction films produced by UNESCO in collaboration with cinema and television schools in Burkina Faso, India, Israel, Mexico and Romania aiming at increasing intercultural understanding and sensitising young people to tolerance, dialogue and peace. While providing a reflection on the sources of conflict between communities and cultures, the films present alternatives to violence and cultural domination.
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This site prrovides access to national copyright and related rights legislation of UNESCO Member States. The collection currently comprises about 100 laws and is constantly being updated and completed.
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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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Latin America and the Caribbean: Belize
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The project "Youth Poverty Alleviation through Tourism and Heritage? (Youth PATH), is a UNESCO initiative designed to enable young people ages 15 to 25 to utilize innovative skills for sustainable employment in the area of Heritage Tourism and preservation of Heritage Sites. More than 15 young people are trained in Punta Gorda in areas such as tour guiding, diving, marketing of community cultural and heritage sites, entrepreneurial skills and ICT. Belize is one of the three new countries that joined this programme in 2004. The others being Dominica and Suriname where indigenous groups are also benefiting from the programme.
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