Dr Milena Dobreva

Publications

A checklist to publish collections as data in GLAM institutions

Candela Gustavo, Gabriëls Nele, Chambers Sally, Dobreva Milena, Ames Sarah, Ferriter Meghan, Fitzgerald Neil, Harbo Victor, Hofmann Katrine, Holownia Olga, Irollo Alba, Mahey Mahendra, Manchester Eileen, Pham Thuy-An, Potter Abigail, Van Keer Ellen

Global Knowledge, Memory and Communication (2023)

https://doi.org/10.1108/GKMC-06-2023-0195

Data Spaces for Cultural Heritage : Insights from GLAM Innovation Labs

Dobreva Milena, Stefanov Krassen, Ivanova Krassimira

From Born-Physical to Born-Virtual Augmenting Intelligence in Digital Libraries (2022) (2022)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21756-2_41

DuoSearch : A Novel Search Engine for Bulgarian Historical Documents

Beshirov Angel, Hadzhieva Suzan, Koychev Ivan, Dobreva Milena

Advances in Information Retrieval ECIR 2022 (2022) (2022)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99739-7_31

Libraries and COVID-19 : opportunities for innovation

Dobreva Milena, Anghelescu Hermina

IFLA Journal Vol 48, pp. 3-8 (2022)

https://doi.org/10.1177/03400352221077748

Disinformation research in Bulgarian. Datasets and tools

Dobreva Milena

CEUR Workshop Proceedings Vol 3061, pp. 54-63 (2021)

Adoption and use of free and open source software (foss) globally : an overview and analysis of selected countries

Bwalya Tuesday, Akakandelwa Akakandelwa, Dobreva-McPherson Milena

Zambia Journal of Library & Information Science (ZAJLIS) Vol 3, pp. 48-66 (2019)

More publications

Professional Activities

Cataloging and Classification Quarterly (Journal)

Peer reviewer

1/11/2023

EuropeanaTech 2023

Participant

10/10/2023

2nd ESFRI Stakeholders Forum Meetup

Participant

27/9/2023

IFLA Journal (Journal)

Editorial board member

2017

IFLA Journal (Journal)

Editorial board member

1/1/2017

International Journal on Digital Libraries (Journal)

Editorial board member

1/1/2016

More professional activities

Projects

Bulgarian Romanian Observatory of Digital Media

Dobreva, Milena (Principal Investigator)

A project funded by the Digital Europe programme of the European Commission to contribute disinformation research, policy actions and educational programmes from Bulgaria and Romania to EDMO (the European Digital Media Observatory).

01-Jan-2022 - 31-Jan-2025

Learn and Exchange: Upskilling the Information Professionals of the Future

Dobreva, Milena (Principal Investigator)

Web-based instruction, also called online learning or e-learning, has become one of the most useful and flexible education and training media recently.

Action learning/blended learning are proven, effective staff development process in the face to face learning but they are only recently being explored as an e-learning instructional methodology.

Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs, as an alternative educational medium, have been one of the most appealing subjects in the field of online/digital education. MOOCs provide large-scale and free participation in higher education, available to a broad range of audiences from different parts of the world.

Today, the most necessary 21st century skills and knowledge include the content of infrastructure, connectivity and digital equipment; effective digital capacity planning and development, including up-to-date organisational capabilities; digitally competent and confident teachers and education and training staff; high-quality learning content, user-friendly tools and secure platforms which respect privacy and ethical standards; digital skills and competences such as digital literacy, including fighting disinformation; computing education; and good knowledge and understanding of data-intensive technologies, like artificial intelligence.

The LEARN & EXCHANCE project aims not only to improve the digital skills and capabilities of learners (national and international) but also to create and share standardized international online courses to provide exchange opportunities in virtual learning environments.

Within this framework, our project aims to develop a MOOC specialising in digital transformation knowledge and skills answering the needs not only for more accessible digital education provision, but also for enhancing the action learning approach in an online environment. The project partners will publish and share their content via this MOOCs system.

In this way, a reliable, internationally qualified platform for learners will be supplied all over the world related to “digital transformation”, “data management and visualization”, “digital literacy”, “information organization and access”, “user experience design” and "spotting and fighting with disinformation" .

It is also planned to produce language packs created within different languages (English, Turkish, French, Italian, Bulgarian, Estonian, and Hungarian) filling a substantial gap in provision of specialised educational content in languages other than English.

Our project answers three current needs - 1. the need for more free specialised content in the domain of digital transformation which is relatively new and is not very well supported by the existing educational provision; 2. the need to provide such content in different languages which in some cases totally lack any available digital education resources on digital transformation (Turkish, Bulgarian, Estonian and Hungarian), and 3. and the need to experiment and introduce more action based learning practices in the online education and share experiences with the educational community.

01-Jan-2022 - 31-Jan-2024

Recovery of cultural heritage through higher education-driven open innovation

Dobreva, Milena (Principal Investigator)

Background
The coronavirus crisis is seen as an opportunity to revitalize the connection between Higher Education (HE) and society and enable them to assume even more energetically their role and responsibilities towards European citizens. The project aims to realise the potential of universities to contribute to the recovery of a sector that has been most severely hit, the cultural and creative sector (CCS), specifically small and medium-sized cultural heritage organizations (CHOs).

An innocative approach
The project encourages HE institutions to adopt open innovation tools to address the challenges faced by CHOs. It contributes to the recovery of the HE sector as a pillar of diversity, social Inclusion and social responsibility in modern societies, helping HEIs re-consider their relationship with society and become more agile in tackling the crisis in important sectors of socio-economic activity, such as the cultural sector, that have been severely hit by the pandemic.

Main Activities
eCHOIng addresses HE staff and students in the field of Cultural Heritage, from a wide range of relevant research fields, including Cultural Studies, (Art) History, Memory studies, Digital Humanities, Cultural Economics and software engineering. It trains them in inducing, governing and leveraging open innovation interventions, such as hacktivism, digital crowdsourcing and co-creation. These methods and activities teach students how to take sustainable and economically viable decisions when engaging in open innovation projects for the benefit of the Cultural Heritage sector. In order to optimize efficiency, eCHOIng maps and critically assesses current practices regarding economic and social sustainability criteria. The project also develops and tests innovative approaches HEIs can adopt in reviving the cultural heritage sector, benefiting from good practices already in place in European institutions that will help to highlight the relevance and power of collaborations between HEis and CHOs.

Targets
While the cultural heritage professionals of tomorrow – HE staff, undergraduate and graduate students, are a vital target audience both in terms of developing and transferring the insights gained through the project, members of small and medium-size CHOs will be involved in eCHOIng too, such as governing boards, working staff and volunteers.

01-Jan-2021 - 31-Jan-2024

DISruptive Technologies in Innovation Labs for digital cultural heritage

Dobreva, Milena (Principal Investigator)

DISTILL addresses the challenge of exploring the changing landscape of innovation diffusion in digital cultural heritage focusing on three major factors for change: the large scale digital collections (growing towards big data) and the challenges they bring to the users interested to use and reuse this digital content; the emerging services aimed at helping users (innovation labs), and the new thinking about the generation of value with the participation of multiple contributors where the contributors have little or no compensation (heteromation).

18-Jan-2021 - 31-Jan-2022

Introducing Innovation Labs to Zambian Cultural Heritage Institutions

Dobreva, Milena (Principal Investigator)

The digital divide results in many deficits in access to knowledge due to missing, or the very slow adoption of, modern technology. In the cultural heritage domain, the digital divide results in the lack of exposure of digital content which exists but is not made available online. There are various explanations why this is the case – ranging from lack of suitable infrastructure for digital asset management to inadequate or missing policies for user engagement with the digital content.

This project prepared and delivered training on innovation labs to raise awareness on the current work in the Sub Saharan African context. It was funded by a UCL Global Engagement Office call for teaching activities in Africa and the Middle East. This transfer of knowledge delivered the first workshop in innovation labs in cultural heritage institutions for Sub Saharan Africa in Zambia.

01-Jan-2019 - 31-Jan-2019

Booksprint "Open a GLAM Lab"

Dobreva, Milena (Principal Investigator)

Fundraising to host an international booksrpint for writing the book "Open a GLAM Lab"

01-Jan-2019 - 30-Jan-2019

More projects