ABOUT
The international cultural heritage project A World of Diamond: Diamond Workers in The Netherlands, Belgium and France, 1895-2000 will collect, describe and disseminate the dispersed heritage of the international diamond workers during the twentieth century and beyond. A consortium will be created bringing together partners from The Netherlands, Belgium and France. The project will study and testpilotstrategies to digitally aggregate, improve and disseminate the digitized documents, images and testimonies of the worlds of diamond workers.
A world union of diamond
On 23 May 1905, building on the international solidarity supporting an Antwerp diamond strike, the trade unions of The Netherlands, Belgium and France joined forces to found the Alliance Universelle des Ouvriers Diamantaires. The historical heritage of the AUOD is a powerful testimony of the lives and struggles of the diamond workers. The world of diamond, with all its glamour and prestige, is in more than one way a world apart and the cradle of some of the major social reforms of the twentieth century.
Amsab-ISH has a long standing tradition of working on the history and the heritage of the diamond industry, and has participated in several projects on the digitization and disclosing of diamond heritage, in co-operation with our partners and the communities of diamond workers and diamond industry leaders of Antwerp and Amsterdam.
Launched in October 2018, A World of Diamond aims to take the results of these earlier projects to the next level by filling some of the gaps in the history of the world industry of diamond.
Collecting and complementing the available diamond heritage
We aim to document and inventory the scattered international heritage of the diamond industry, both on paper and in digital form. The various heritage collections and inventories are listed in a brief overview, which is made available to both the diamond communities and researchers. This overview will also allow us to identify the gaps in the preserved heritage.
We propose to add to the digital collections by presenting the heritage to the diamond communities in Amsterdam, Antwerp and Saint-Claude and by recording their comments and testimonies. Consequently, we aim to add oral histories to the digital diamond collections, transcribed and available online.
Testing of improved automatic text recognition
'A World Of Diamond' has access to a large amount of digitized heritage: member files, handwritten documents and annotated text documents from previous digitization projects. Due to its historical character, this digitized heritage is not always optimally accessible.
With the help of new techniques and tools for automated text recognition, we explore new pilot strategies based on OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and HTR (Handwritten Text Recognition) in order to convert handwritten text and structured data to a digital format. By gathering knowledge and experiences, and documenting the process in a best practices wiki, we hope to strengthen the Flemish cultural heritage field.
Testing of online and automated dissemination of heritage
Although the digital files of the diamond heritage can be accessed online, the technology used offers limited possibilities. A recent development in this area is the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF), an international network that has met regularly since 2011. Of the many standards that the IIIF offers, we are particularly interested in strategies of access via an API that offers linked data, and via advanced viewer applications.
First of all we want to create a test platform for an IIIF compatible image server that works with the IIIF image API. Next we want to use this platform to performe tests with metadata records that have been converted to an RDF linked data format compatible with the IIIF presentation API. This should allow websites and databases to automatically extract content from our servers.
We also want users who retrieve PDF files and images from our catalogues to have more options than they do at present. It should be possible to annotate, zoom, rotate, etcetera. To this end, we want to test powerful viewer services such as Mirador, OpenSeadragon and Universal Viewer.
As with the automatic text recognition pilot strategies, the knowledge and experience gained through these IIIF tests is documented in a best practices wiki. Any code developed as part of this project will be made available on GitHub as open source.
Involving the community
Building on our previous experiences with crowdsourcing, we organize events as a way to reach out to the communities of diamond workers. These so-called transcrib-a-thons are an essential part of the project, where we aim to make contact with the communities that produced the diamond heritage.
At these events, participants are presented with the diamond heritage collected and documented in the first phase of the project. In addition, they are invited to add to this heritage themselves: they can manually correct or complete automated transcriptions, and they have the opportunity to testify about their own past experiences in the diamond industry.
The process of organizing a transcrib-a-thon is documented in a script: how best to organise such an event, what are the pros and cons, ... ? This information will be made available online, to benefit other heritage institutions.
All this is eventually presented at the end of the project, in a workshop aimed at Flemish and international heritage institutions and universities. The project and the ensuing results are showcased and discussed, and several experts share their experiences with similar projects. In a moderated discussion, the experts will engage in a dialogue with each other and the public.
PARTNERS
The project A World of Diamond will be led by Amsab-ISH with the participation and contribution of the IISH-International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam and La Fraternelle in Saint-Claude (Fr.).
We will also contact several expert institutions such as:
- Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities
- PACKED
- Archiefbank Vlaanderen
- Briljante Kempen
- DIVA
- Diamantmuseum Brugge
- Stadsarchief Diksmuide
- ETWIE
- WIE
- Kazarne Dossin
- Burcht van Berlage
- Europeana: Europe at Work
- Meemoo
- and many more ...
A World of Diamond will complement and open up a world of heritage to the public in Flanders and abroad and will teach us new powerful and innovating ways of serving our target audiences. The events planned in the project foresee a further involvement of cultural heritage actors.
EVENTS
In the course of A World of Diamond a number of public events will be organized. The project will engage the wide community of diamond heritage stakeholders in a series of international meetings with hands-on exchange of historical objects, life stories and expert knowledge.
Crowdsourcing Meeting 8 June 2019 at DIVA Antwerp
On 8 june we organised the first crowdsourcing day at DIVA Antwerp in collaboration with the local urban and rural communities of diamond workers and our partners Briljante Kempen and DIVA. The day consisted out of a presentation about the project and a crowdsourcing moment in which we asked the community to share their personal histories about diamond working. An elaborate report, pictures about the event can be found here.
Crowdsourcing Meeting 13 October 2019 at La Fraternelle Saint-Claude (France)
This historical partnership between Amsab-ISH and La Fraternelle continued on a crowdsourcing day at La Fraternelle in Saint-Claude. Pictures and a report can be found here.
Crowdsourcing Meeting 1 December 2019 at De Burcht Amsterdam
Celebrating 125 year of the historical People’s House De Burcht of Berlage, historical headquarters of the ANDB in Amsterdam, A World of Diamond, joins the festivities with a project day sourcing the local diamond community for oral history. A report and pictures can be found here.
Webinar Collecting and Connecting Data: Nieuwe technologieën voor historische databanken: Handwritten Text Recognition, IIIF en Linked Open Data
As closing event of A World of Diamond we hosted an webinar to share the results and findings of this project to culture heritage professionals. We presented the experiences, difficulties and successes of setting up an OCR/HTR-technology on the digitized heritage as well as the results of the crowdsourcing days, and the testing results of our cases with IIIF and Linked Open Data. A debate on collecting and connecting data with digital heritage experts was organised. Recorings of the webinar can be found here.
Other results will include the dissemination of project results such as the launch of an international Guide of Archives on cultural heritage of the world of diamond labour, a Best Practices Wiki, test reports on the technological pilot strategies and so on. Check the list of events for further information.
RESULTS
- HTR-rapport (draft)
- Archiefgids Diamantair Erfgoed
- Oral History Diamond Heritage - interviews
- Projectverslag eerste fase
- Webinar Connecting and Collecting Data, 23 October 2020
CONTACT
If you are interested in further details on the project A World of Diamond or if you want to share your memories or objects on the cultural heritage of diamond labour, please send an e-mail to Sofie Veramme (
A World of Diamond
International Heritage Project of the Flemish Community 2018-2020
c/o Amsab-ISH
Bagattenstraat 174
B 9000 Ghent (Belgium)
http://www.amsab.be/diamond
NEWS
Webinar Collecting and Connecting Data on 23 October 2020: Recordings availabe (in Dutch)
Archival Guide to Diamond Heritage Online (in Dutch)
Start of task on IIIF (in Dutch)
Report First Phase of the Project Online (in Dutch)
Start Second Phase of the Project (in Dutch)
Third Crowdsourcing in Amsterdam on 1 December 2019 (in Dutch)
Second Crowdsourcing in Saint-Claude (Fr.) on 11 October 2019 (in Dutch)
Third Crowdsourcing Day in Amsterdam (Nl.) on 1 December 2019 (in Dutch)
Second Crowdsourcing Day in Saint-Claude (Fr.) on 11 October 2019 (in Dutch)
First Crowdsourcing Day in Antwerp on 8 June 2019 (in Dutch)
Heritage Meeting Day on Diamond: "Briljante ontmoeting" on 18 may 2019 (in Dutch)
First Crowdsourcing Day in Antwerp on 8 June 2019 (in Dutch)
