Ancient Civilizations Come Alive Online

Indiana University and IBM are bringing ancient civilizations, including Chichen Itza and Uxmal, back to life through a virtual reality digital preservation project known as CLIOH (Cultural Digital Library Indexing Our Heritage), an initiative of the university’s School of Informatics. Using advanced digital techniques, the project will develop virtual reality replicas of the sites as they exist today, and create scalable multimedia applications to recreate the history, sights and sounds of the locations as they were in ancient times. Scientists, students and anyone else will be able to use the Internet, or a faster communications technology, to take a virtual walk through the digital recreations.

The CLIOH project is one of several that uses IBM’s HPSS technology to compile, access and transmit large amounts of data among researchers faster. The technology allows researchers to collaborate from across the street or the continent to create virtual digital libraries with almost instantaneous access to scientific data, experimental findings, books or illustrations. At Indiana University, the system is expected to foster greater collaboration between researchers, faculty and students. Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, (812) 855-4848, www.cs.iupui.edu/~clio.Indiana University and IBM are bringing ancient civilizations, including Chichen Itza and Uxmal, back to life through a virtual reality digital preservation project known as CLIOH (Cultural Digital Library Indexing Our Heritage), an initiative of the university’s School of Informatics. Using advanced digital techniques, the project will develop virtual reality replicas of the sites as they exist today, and create scalable multimedia applications to recreate the history, sights and sounds of the locations as they were in ancient times. Scientists, students and anyone else will be able to use the Internet, or a faster communications technology, to take a virtual walk through the digital recreations.

The CLIOH project is one of several that uses IBM’s HPSS technology to compile, access and transmit large amounts of data among researchers faster. The technology allows researchers to collaborate from across the street or the continent to create virtual digital libraries with almost instantaneous access to scientific data, experimental findings, books or illustrations. At Indiana University, the system is expected to foster greater collaboration between researchers, faculty and students. Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, (812) 855-4848, www.cs.iupui.edu/~clio.

This article originally appeared in the 10/01/2001 issue of THE Journal.

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