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The purpose of this paper is to examine practices for the presentation of specific sites in Greece, and in particular the way the Acropolis, Greece, a World Heritage Site, is communicated at national, local, and international levels, seeking to identify the policy for the presentation of heritage in the specific venue with its historical and current developments.

This study presents data collected from the analysis of archival documents and interviews with curators who offered the researchers ground to explain the purposes and reasons for the implementation of decisions related to the management of heritage following a case study design.

The paper argues for the need of a critical approach towards the implementation of communication activities for many sites rather than the world‐renowned ones. Issues that associate with the relationship of heritage with social aspects of the contemporary world receive little attention in the literature, let alone the masked political and economic implications that state governments often do not admit. The projection of the perceived distinct characteristics of a country, nationally and internationally, signifies the role that these properties may have when states present them at national level while retaining their international character.

The article makes a theoretical and practical contribution to the way the marketing of heritage for the Acropolis can consist of a typical recourse for other sites in other areas and is associated with socio‐economic and political implications.

The purpose of this paper is to show and critically discuss the motivations, conflicting narratives, practices and effects around the marketisation of cultural heritage. The work focusses on the exemplar case study of the ancient temple of the Athenian Parthenon, as a proto-brand, to explore ancient, medieval and modern marketing forces and practices through which various stakeholders have promoted, gifted, commercially traded, exchanged, acquired and illegally removed national cultural artefacts and historical monuments.

The study is based on a structured historical periodisation that covers three main eras – classical age, late antiquity and modern period – that triggered the marketisation of the ancient temple in diverse ways. First, historical research was conducted through the use of a range of secondary sources and archives. Second, observation techniques were used to study heritage marketisation practices at the New Acropolis Museum and the Parthenon in Athens and the British Museum in London. Third, visual material further facilitated the analysis.

This paper identifies multifarious institutional forces, political interests, technologies and sociocultural events that shape the commodification of history and marketisation of heritage offering a broader discussion on the evolution of early marketing practices and brands used to promote particular values, cultures and places, as well as the emergence and growth of illicit arts and antiquities markets.

Considering the lack of marketing research on the commercialisation of heritage, the work discloses novel insights around the use of cultural proto-brands and the formation of illegal markets and questionable arts trade practices. It, therefore, questions the ethical, socio-political, economic and aesthetic implications of the extensive marketisation of history and raises issues around the legitimate ownership, promotion and consumption of heritage.

A context‐aware system is a system that uses context to provide relevant information or services to its users. While there has been a variety of context middleware infrastructures and context‐aware applications, little work has been done on integrating context into database management systems. The purpose of this paper is to consider a preference database system that supports context‐aware queries, that is, queries whose results depend on the context at the time of their submission.

The paper proposes using data cubes to store the dependencies between context‐dependent preferences and database relations and on‐line analytical processing techniques for processing context‐aware queries. This allows for the manipulation of the captured context data at various levels of abstraction, for instance, in the case of a context parameter representing location, preferences can be expressed, for example, at the level of a city, the level of a country or both. To improve query performance, the paper uses an auxiliary data structure, called context tree. The context tree stores results of past context‐aware queries indexed by the context of their execution. Finally, the paper outline the implementation of a prototype context‐aware restaurant recommender.

The use of context is important in many applications such as pervasive computing where it is important that users receive only relevant information.

Although there is much research on location‐aware query processing in the area of spatial‐temporal databases, integrating other forms of context in query processing is a rather new research topic.

Post‐secondary institutions are undergoing change. This review aims to look at how the changes are being addressed in Europe and the USA.

Two books are reviewed. One looks at the change through the efforts of the Spellings Commission in the USA while the other, a study of the European Bologna Process, holds the hope that there might be lessons for the USA's traditional colleges and universities.

Both of the authors are concerned with the current and future state of post‐secondary education in the USA. Gaston defines the rise and the current state of the Bologna Process of harmonization of universities across the EU's borders. He also indicates that the USA's global hegemonic reputation may not hold in the future. Zemsky's study focuses on the Spellings Commission study and sees post‐secondary education as the center point of knowledge, needing some change, but not so off course that it needs to follow the path of homogenization which the USA sees as being taken in Europe. The paper also reveals how the US public institutions, the public itself and the government need to resolve the need for centers of academic and research excellence while addressing the social needs of an increasingly diverse population in a time of limited fiscal resources.

The rising technological demands of a flattening world raise the educational need of the workforce taking it from K‐12 to K‐14+ and removing the bright line that has separated the tertiary institutions from the secondary schools. Additionally, global mobility changes the marketplace, particularly at the undergraduate levels and the role of the academics who labor in the Ivory Tower.

The paper reveals information on the influence of the Bologna Process and the Spellings Commission in educational reform.

Reports on the CERLIM‐organized conference “Libraries Without Walls 7”, Lesvos, Greece, 14‐18 September 2007.

Reports from the viewpoint of a conference participant and presenter of a paper and gives an overview of the whole conference with more detail on some of the presented papers.

The conference was worthwhile and enlightening, revealing the diversity of current developments in library service delivery worldwide.

Of interest as a review of the conference.

The purpose of this paper is to test critical conservation approaches through conceptual architectural interventions that integrate the evolution of a significant urban building, the Temple of Dagan in Ugarit, the capital of an important Bronze Age civilisation in Syria, with the pre-existing phases of the site and offer a paradigm for the presentation of the city’s evolution. This reflection aims to investigate how far the remaining fabric can frame the original architectural experience of the place allowing the visitors of the ruins to contextualise the architectural development of the temple.

A detailed reading of archaeological reports and the French mission’s architectural interpretation as well as in situ surveys and architectural and urban analyses were carried out to inform this conservation reflection, which primarily explores the potential of critical conservation approaches for key architectural interventions. The main vehicle is a virtual reconstruction approach to probe the proposed critical conservation principles and their success in highlighting the stratigraphy of a site.

The work shows that critical conservation approaches can make a distinct contribution to the understanding of the ruins; in particular, the virtual approach can handle effectively the presentation of the intangible experience of the temple (original processional routes) and its archaeological stratigraphy.

The poor condition of the temple, being exposed for more than 80 years after excavation, have limited further architectural analysis as some evidence is confusing to read in situ. The pre-conservation analysis, therefore, was based more on the archaeological mission’s work, which is comprehensive.

The reconstitution of the temple’s architectural layers in a coherent narrative will have educational value as it will highlight the development of architectural perception and techniques during the Bronze Age. Debate on the application of such tools by managers of the site may enhance the visitors’ appreciation of the ruins. The digital output itself constitutes an engaging material that enhances the public understanding of the site and its rich stratigraphy.

The study is the first attempt to constitute an architectural experience out of the confusing ruins integrating the archaeological evidence in the frame of contemporary conservation and architectural design. As one of the predominant urban artefacts in Ugarit, the Temple of Dagan witnessed at least a millennium of the city’s history and thus the conservation strategy of its intense development and stratification reflects the whole city.

Since the 1980s, planning public spaces for leisure walking is largely linked with economic and cultural objectives. Parallel to this tendency and the priorities of local authorities on barker public space projects, inhabitant’s associations, that grow up after the 2000s, propose new ways of visiting the city through collective walks. Drawing on the example of the Atenistas group, and based on the discourses of its founders, its presence on social media and the narratives of participants, the purpose of this paper is to question the emergence and function of new forms of urban walking that joggle between tourism, social exchange and act of citizenship.

The case study is based on personal semi-directive interviews with organisers and participants at “Atenistas Open Walks”. It is also based on interviews that have been held with architects and urban planners within technical services of the municipality of Athens as also as within private sector’s structures.

First insights from the study question pedestrianisation as a dominant urban planning tool towards animated street life and performant local economy. Contrary to the traditional top-down approach in Athens’s public space planning which uses pedestrianisation or land management to re-invest on the city centre, Atenistas Open Walks reveal the existence of alternatives ways of a re-engagement with city values and history. People search to explore the city by themselves and re-trace their proper itineraries (and ways of seeing the city) by outpassing official discourses on the decline, the success, the dangerousness or the beautifulness of certain neighbourhoods. Consequently, walkers constantly nourish their will to better understand the city. Public space experience outpasses morphological or functional issues. The act of walking with others in the city willing to explore places and to exchange on this experience, confront people with different narratives and trajectories and can momently be a strong factor of social cohesion and activation of public space with significant impacts on local economy. Walking collectively can emerge, in this way, as a counter model of public space planning capable of revitalise not only touristic activity, but also citizenship.

The study questions dominant discourses that link urban liveability and touristic attractiveness of urban centres with recreational events and streets’ pedestrianisation projects.