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One of the main goals of the PARTHENOS project (Pooling Activities, Resources and Tools for Heritage E-research Networking, Optimization and Synergies - EC-H2020-RIA grant agreement 654119) is to bridge existing DHIs by forming a federation where researchers of different sectors of the Humanities can collaborate, share data, services and tools in an integrated environment. PARTHENOS will produce a complete technical framework for the federation, enabling transparent access to resources managed by different DHIs and enabling the creation and operation of Virtual Research Environments where researchers with different backgrounds can collaborate on specific research topics.

Archival, ancient manuscripts constitute a primary carrier of information about our history and civilisation process. In the recent past they have been the object of intensive digitisation campaigns, aimed at their preservation, accessibility and analysis. At ISTI-CNR, the availability of the diverse information contained in the multispectral, multisensory and multiview digital acquisitions of these documents has been exploited to develop several dedicated image processing algorithms. The aim of these algorithms is to enhance the quality and reveal the obscured contents of the manuscripts, while preserving their best original appearance according to the concept of "virtual restoration". Following this research line, within an ERCIM "Alain Bensoussan" Fellowship, we are now studying sparse image representation and dictionary learning methods to restore the natural appearance of ancient manuscripts affected by spurious patterns due to various ageing degradations.

The aggregation of heterogeneous data from different institutions in cultural heritage and e-science has the potential to create rich data resources useful for a range of different purposes, from research to education and public interests. In this paper, we present the X3ML framework, a framework for information integration that handles effectively and efficiently the steps involved in schema mapping, uniform resource identifier (URI) definition and generation, data transformation, provision and aggregation. The framework is based on the X3ML mapping definition language for describing both schema mappings and URI generation policies and has a lot of advantages when compared with other relevant frameworks. We describe the architecture of the framework as well as details on the various available components. Usability aspects are discussed and performance metrics are demonstrated. The high impact of our work is verified via the increasing number of international projects that adopt and use this framework.