Development of the unified portal for cultural and audiovisual content, electronic services and dissemination

In December 2024, Asseco Lithuania, acting together with a joint venture partner Insoft, signed a contract with the National Library of Lithuania regarding modernization of the Virtual Electronic Heritage Information System (VEPIS, www.epaveldas.lt) and creation of its subsystem, the eCulture (eKultūra) portal.

Modern artificial intelligence (AI) technologies will be used for the development of the eCulture platform components like description of cultural objects, identification of objects in images, transcription of video and audio, and optical character recognition. The new and modernized VEPIS solutions will ensure an attractive access to high-quality digital data of cultural institutions on the eCulture portal, improve the accuracy and accessibility of data search results. Based on modern technologies, attractive e-services and products for data empowerment and reuse will be created for the user.

This contract covers one of the most important activities of the project “eCulture” platform (a unified portal for digitized and digital cultural and audiovisual content, electronic services and dissemination) financed by the European Union’s economic recovery and resilience plan “New Generation Lithuania” – creation of the joint cultural portal eCulture. The project also includes modernization of six more information systems, that will allow even more cultural data and content to be found in one place. In addition to the aforementioned activities, the project also includes digitization of cultural content, implementation of a digital/digitized cultural content and project communication campaign. All activities are planned to be implemented in 2026.

This project aims to increase the dissemination, accessibility and inclusion of the society into a cultural life by adapting the forms of content expression and dissemination tools to the needs and expectations of individual users and social groups, while preserving cultural content and transferring it to the future generations, because as technologies age, there is a threat that the available information may be lost or become unreadable or no longer accessible to users. It is planned that by the end of 2026 the number of users of the new and improved public digital services, products and processes on the eCulture platform will exceed 100,000.

The predecessor of the eCulture platform, the Virtual Electronic Heritage Information System, was launched in 2005 and is constantly being improved, electronic services are being created and further developed, making a more convenient and faster access to the digitized cultural heritage content. The Virtual Electronic Heritage Information System is administered by the National Library of Lithuania, which is also responsible for the creation of the joint platform eCulture.