Prof. em. Dr. Emanoil Ancuta

Digitisation in the Spheres of Culture and Scholarship: Examples from Romania

Second only to Gutenberg's printing press in terms of its importance to world culture, digitisation will only become more important in the knowledge-based society of the future. Romanian researchers have also finally grasped this reality. For this reason, we are attempting to exploit as rapidly as possible this veritable revolution. In other words, the digitisation of cultural assets in Romania has begun, although, especially because of inadequate funds, it has been delayed.
Digitisation in some key libraries, museums, archives and other repositories of literature and art represents a good start. The conclusion is clear: digitisation in the areas of culture and scholarship in Romania must be accelerated and developed more thoroughly.
To reach this goal, we have to continually develop fruitful international scholarly co-operation, especially with colleagues in Germany. Scholarly co-operation of this nature is very important to us: for this reason, we advocate for a German presence in Romania and a common formulation of the most important projects within the EU's Seventh Research Framework Programme (FP7).