Cultural and natural heritage in digital Slovenia

But what about cultural and natural heritage? How is digitalisation helping to protect and promote Slovenia’s rich heritage?

Two Slovenian regions, Prekmurje and Gorenjska, showcase the impact of digitalisation in enhancing access to their cultural and natural resources. Through digital tools and platforms, these regions have not only improved public access but also strengthened efforts to preserve their heritage. This progress has been made possible through collaborative partnerships with other European countries in Interreg projects funded by the European Union.

Slovenia's cultural heritage: a living tapestry of history and identity

Slovenia's cultural heritage is a reflection of its rich history and diverse influences, resulting in a unique blend of traditions, languages, and artistic expressions. The country also prides itself on its literary legacy, with prominent writers and poets contributing to its cultural landscape. 

In the past, exploring this heritage meant visiting local public libraries and browsing through books by relevant authors. Today, while we have access to a vast amount of information online, full access to entire books remains limited. Additionally, these valuable resources face the risk of deterioration over time, posing a challenge to their preservation for future generations. This is where digital innovation plays a crucial role, offering new ways to safeguard and share this heritage.

Preserving Slovenia's heritage: the vital role of digitisation in cultural conservation

Digitisation is essential for the preservation of artifacts, literature, and oral stories that might otherwise be overlooked or forgotten. By converting physical materials into digital formats, a wide audience can access those resources. Moreover, digitisation not only preserves and archives cultural treasures but also fosters engagement and education by making cultural and historical resources more accessible to a broader audience. These digitized materials can be integrated into educational platforms, enriching learning opportunities for students, researchers, and the general public. This ensures that both current and future generations can connect with and appreciate Slovenia’s or any other country’s rich cultural heritage.

Rakičan's digitisation efforts for cultural heritage preservation

Rakičan, a village in the Municipality of Murska Sobota within Slovenia's Prekmurje region, places a strong emphasis on the protection and preservation of its natural and cultural heritage. The community is guided by the principles of sustainable conservation and development, recognizing the importance of creating sustainable facilities for the local population. However, significant cultural materials face risks from environmental factors such as humidity and inadequate archival space.

To address these challenges, the Interreg ADRINETBOOK project has provided a vital solution through digitisation. The project, which pulls together Universities and cultural centres across the Adriatic-Ionian region,aims to enhance and conserve specific cultural properties, particularly books, making the digitized heritage accessible to a broader audience, including local residents, students, young professionals, and experts. A key partner in this project is the Research and Educational Centre Mansion Rakičan, a public institution of regional importance established by the Municipality of Murska Sobota. Thanks to the project, 809 units of materials from the regional library in Murska Sobota were successfully digitized. These materials, including historic newspapers, magazines, and poems, where further stored in the Slovenian national archive. Additionally, they were submitted to the Europeana collection, which is a platform giving access to Europe’s digital cultural heritage. This journey, from the local level to the national and beyond, ensures that Slovenia’s cultural heritage now reaches a much broader audience both nationally and across Europe. All digitised materials are available online at the Digital Library of Slovenia - ADRION Cultural HeritageCollections Network.

Advancing cultural heritage preservation through digital innovation

Nina Biro, project manager at the Research and Educational Centre Mansion Rakičan, highlights, 'Through the project, our organisation has made concrete steps for the development of sustainable solutions for the conservation of our cultural heritage with the added value of connecting the Research Centre with other regional and national libraries in Slovenia.' Thanks to the project, the Murska Sobota library equipped itself with a professional scanner needed to process the digitisation of all paper materials. Now, the resources are available from the internet to everybody local public, students, young professionals, and experts within Slovenia actively use now the digitized material, further enhancing engagement with the region’s rich cultural heritage». Jure Lang, director of Emparta IT Studio d.o.o., an external expert involved in the project, highlights the importance of using specialized scanning devices for archival materials. 'These devices allow us to digitize documents of various ages and dimensions while minimizing potential damage,' he notes.

The digitisation process begins with the meticulous preparation of materials, followed by the actual digitisation using specialised equipment. In Slovenia, many of the materials date back to the 20th century, with some even from the 19th century, which requires careful handling. The digitisation process also includes generating metadata and final aggregation of the scans. After digitisation, the materials undergo secondary processing to ensure they are digitally accessible. In the case of Rakičan, collaboration with both national and international aggregators facilitates the integration of digitised content into publicly accessible databases.

Ultimately, digitisation not only aids in the preservation of historical documents but also enhances public access, allowing individuals to explore these materials freely online. This initiative plays a crucial role in safeguarding the cultural heritage of Prekmurje and Slovenia, ensuring that this rich history is readily available to anyone with an interest.

Digital Gorenjska: from European inspiration to local strategies

Gorenjska region also has a lot of natural, cultural and historical heritage sites. However, not everyone can reach them to appreciate their beauty. Many of the valuable natural and cultural sights are in unique places, far from each other. That makes it hard for people to see them in one go or at all.

The Regional Development Agency of Gorenjska decided to change this. They looked for innovative solutions to make the heritage more accessible to everyone. They improved their regional strategies and plans to organise the management and exploitation of natural and cultural heritage better using digital technologies.

The Agency joined a cooperation project with partners from seven European countries to find out what innovative solutions exist elsewhere. In the Interreg Europe CD-ETA project, the Agency found inspiration on how to use digitalisation to ensure both conservation and promotion and further development of their heritage.

The inspiring ideas were found in Bulgaria and Italy. In Bulgaria, the IWALK project uses digitisation, virtual reality and augmented reality to present cultural and historical sites, museums, cultural monuments and other valuable objects and jewels to tourists and students on a geographic map in a mobile application. In Italy, the ‘See for Me’ project is a context-aware audio guide available on a smartphone which uses microphone, camera and accelerometers to identify an artwork in a museum and provide the visitor who’s looking at it with information about that piece of art. CD-ETA partners from Bulgaria and Italy shared these two ideas with their colleagues from Slovenia.

The Slovenian Agency brought relevant people and stakeholders together around the topic of digitalisation of heritage. People from museums, libraries, the Institute of the Republic of Slovenia for Nature Conservation, the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia, the Slovene Association of Historic Towns, local tourism organisations, municipalities, development agencies, the Ministry of Culture, and IT experts took part in the project's regional meetings. Thanks to the CD-ETA project, they recognised the importance of digitalisation of natural and cultural heritage and incorporated it in the Regional Development Program of Gorenjska 2021–2027, the region’s most important development document.

Digitalising theme trails in the Gorenjska mountains

There are more than 100 different theme trails dedicated to natural and cultural heritage in the Gorenjska region. Most of them have not provided guided tours by a professional or local guide. The visitors were left on their own with the information provided on the information panels. Theme trails were not sufficiently integrated into local school’s programme and local societies.

With the new strategies, local engagement and funding, Gorenjska region developed several digitalised thematic routes. People can select their walking route and find out more about the sites and history when they used to be travelled by pilgrims or vendors of iron and other precious materials. A great example is the digitisation of the "Romuald Path" by the Municipality of Škofja Loka and local Tourist Board.

In March 2022, the Slovenian Ministry of Economy, Development and Technology opened a call funded from the National Plan for Recovery and Resilience. The call was for projects working on sustainable restoration and revitalisation of cultural monuments owned by municipalities. It included cultural experiences in Slovenian tourism, counting in also activities for connecting and enhancing the tourist offer using ICT for the digital promotion and interpretation of cultural heritage.

Thanks also to the CD-ETA project, the regional stakeholders were ready with their project proposals in Bled – Mrakova domačija (Mrak Homestead), in Škofja Loka – Castle, in Radovljica – Klinarjeva hiša v Kropi (Klinar House in Kropa), and in Jesenice - Bucelleni Ruardova graščina (Bucelleni Ruard Mansion).

Internet makes content and services easily accessible and it is fundamentally changing the way modern society works. Digitalisation of natural and cultural heritage is an opportunity for its better protection, better access to different target groups, and greater compliance with international standards. Digitalisation helps to include Slovenian cultural and natural heritage in the European context.