The community consists of municipalities located in the cross border region of Upper Austria and Southern Bohemia, most of them situated in Austria. The communities are responsible for the historic sites within their geographic range. The information presented is directed not only to experts, but to the general public. Also cultural organisations are in most cases in close contact with the municipalities which are the most important source of funding.

Lhenice joined the community as the first Czech municipality and several other municipalities are interested in becoming part of the community.

Before the trial started, most municipalities had no or only a very simple web site. Systematic presentation of the historic information was difficult. Search possiblities including more than one municipality were also not available. In a first step, the municipalities taking part in the trial had to be identified. As well as translating the content to be presented, more than 1,500 terms had to be translated to support the navigation and use of the general RiSKommunal framework. Selected areas of interest had to be described by the authors in the municipalities, a regional shell had to be set up to present the regional (and common) layer of the information fed to the RiSKommunal content management system.

The software is based on Microsoft Active Server Pages and an SQL database. A description of RiSKommunal is available at http://www2.riskommunal.net.

• The trial resulted in the implementation of a multi-lingual regional historic information system. The historic information of the participating municipalities is presented at two levels, the municipal level and the regional level. The system also helps to keep the community informed by providing an online newsletter.
• The trial tested the use of the the available RiSKommunal software in a multi-lingual environment. The integration of information about the common history which had to be presented in two very different languages, was also tested.
• The usability of the navigation aspects of the software is very high. However, further investigation of the multi-lingual presentation of the cultural heritage content will be carried out in the second project trial.

Contact: Dietmar Nedbal (nedbal@ris.at)