Ukraine is adopting the digitization of cultural heritage experience from Poland. At the invitation of the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Culture and National Heritage Piotr Gliński, a Ukrainian delegation led by the Deputy Minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine Anastasia Bondar visited Polish cultural institutions.

According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and Information Policy, Gliński expressed solidarity with Ukraine concerning Russia’s war crimes. Moreover, the digitization of Ukrainian resources of cultural and historical heritage was discussed during the meeting.

“The war has been continuing for 230 days, and every day the Russian army destroys our immovable monuments, shells our museums, takes away (or to put it bluntly – steals) our exhibits and valuables. Currently, the absence of the Unified Electronic Register of Cultural Values is especially noticeable, so the Ministry is currently working on creating such a database. But we also feel the tremendous support of our international partners. So we gladly accepted the invitation of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland, who decided to share their achievements in the field of digitization of culture with us,” said Bondar.

During the visit to the leading cultural institutions of Poland, the Ukrainian delegation got acquainted, among the others, with the decisions regarding the preservation and digitization of collections and objects of national heritage.

“So, for example, colleagues from the Polish National Institute for Museum Studies told us about their experience in implementing various electronic accounting systems of values ​​in Polish museums. Currently, there are about 380 museums in Poland, which store 20 million objects. 3,7 million of them have already been digitized, and information about them has been entered into electronic accounting systems. The institute, like us at the moment, faced the problem of the lack of legally fixed standards for the digitization of museum values ​​- thus, each museum conducts digitization in its way, which makes further integration into the general unified system impossible,” commented Bondar.

Earlier, Uber released a special app to rescue Ukrainian art. UNESCO confirmed damage to at least 53 places of cultural heritage in several regions of Ukraine. To continue the efforts to restore, identify and protect these most important treasures, the National Research Restoration Center of Ukraine has begun working with Uber to create a customized app version. The app, known as Uber Restore, allows requesting 12-seat vehicles for free to transport the specialists and specialized equipment needed for these rescue missions across the country.