From the Editor

The second issue of Preservation, Digital Technology & Culture in 2023 presents three articles, dealing respectively with the new concept of archival bond influenced by the changing world of present information paradigm and digitalization of recordkeeping, video mapping technologies used within the artistic practice to provide new ways of spatial augmented reality, and, finally, different strategies, solutions, tools of communication, and data management about Covid-19 that governments provided through digital public awareness platforms during the pandemic. The diversity of topics shows various scientific interests of authors from all over the world, and at the same time their research curiosity to address contemporary issues in cultural heritage, digitalization, artistic practice, records, and data management. The PDT&C Editorial Board encourages scholars in all scientific fields to send their original articles to be published in the journal, including research papers, book reviews, conferences, and workshop reports clearly connected with the thematic scope of the journal.

In our first feature of this issue, From the Archival Bond to the Informational Bond, by André Pacheco and Carlos Guardado da Silva (University of Lisbon), the authors discuss the relationships between the archival bond, which is one of the key principles in the archival profession, and the novel concept of the informational bond, which is introduced to capture the context of digital information more accurately. While the archival bond represents the embodiment of the relationships shared amongst records generated during the same activity, by the same creator, it is the concept of an analog worldview of archives in which creators, activities, and fonds are easily delimited constructs. In the age of digital information and digitalization of archival records these constructs can not be delimited so easily, and in fact they are more fluid processes that recombine information across systems and classification schemes. At the heart of the article lies an effort to revisit the concept of archival bond within the context of digital information and digitalization, so that trustworthiness of archival information will be preserved and reinforced. The informational bond therefore could serve as an expansion or amplification of the traditional notion of the archival bond. As the archival theory and practice shifts from product to process as part of the current information paradigm, the archival bond becomes insufficient to accurately represent the plurality of relationships established between records in the digital environment. The concept of informational bond is suggested as the network of relationships that each resource establishes with other resources, thus enabling expanding of the archival recordkeeping to preserve not just archival documents but also resources as any type of entity that can be related to them. The adoption of the concept of information bond instead of archival bond enables the recordkeeper to encompass all the resources with which the record might be linked, including the convergence and relationship between libraries, archives, and museums.

Svitlana Derkach, Myroslava Melnyk, Volodymyr Fisher, Mykola Krypchuk, and Tetiana Sovhyra (Kyiv National University of Culture and Art) are the authors of the article Video Mapping Technologies as Spatial Augmented Reality in the Artistic Process. This feature deals with the connection between the technical developments in video mapping and digitalization of the artistic process and creative spaces. The authors show that video mapping technologies have become one of the most publicly visible manifestations of art modernizations, such as in applications for huge light shows (e.g. festivals of light), which themselves have changed the demonstration of visual images projected on the surfaces of objects, more or less in relation to the context of place and time and sometimes in the context of digital storytelling. The article aims to determine ways to involve video mapping technologies, analyzed in the variety of their manifestations and names, particularly as the new forms of spatial augmented reality in the progressive evolution of the artistic process. The authors suggest a change in art based on the visualisation of subjects and images using new expressive means through the augmented reality. In conclusion, video mapping will probably grow more advanced and available as technology develops, with many trends and potential directions for further development and application. At the same time, video mapping technology could be observed as an indicator of considerable transformations in the field of culture.

This issue closes with an article by Maxat Kassen (Astana IT University), entitled Covid-19 Pandemic and Digital Public Awareness Platforms: Strategies, Solutions, and Tools of Communication and e-Government Data Management. Although the Covid-19 pandemic steered a lot of contemporary academic research, analysis, and publishing throughout the world, it is expected that scholarly interest will continue to pay a lot of attention to the direct consequences of the pandemic and particularly to the post-Covid world in general. This article is a contribution in that direction, with a focus on an analysis of governments’ digital information campaigns for public awareness about Covid-19. The article presents various ways to increase public awareness and to solve the problems of misinformation and fake news that gained momentum in the times of uncertainty and crisis. Different public relations and data preservation, data retention, and data distribution strategies have been applied by healthcare policymakers to initiate, implement, and promote a wide range of public information campaigns, unique open data-driven platforms, and related digital solutions and tools to achieve this goal. The author analyzes how these different public relations and data management strategies were manifested in real administrative and technological practices, what communication and data management tools they used, and how effective they were in raising public awareness about the pandemic via such digital information platforms and related data-driven initiatives. The research has identified interesting trends, strategies, and public awareness solutions on platforms related to, namely, generation of information on precaution measures, testing of symptoms, use of interactive guidelines and visualizations, information on financial and psychological support for the affected population, and precautionary measures for the distribution of disinformation and fake news related to the effects of the Covid-19 crisis management. The article suggests further developments and steps in managing potential pandemic crises in the future, especially regarding data governance, data preservation, retention and distribution, and development of promising data-driven digital platforms in the area.