The ICT Unit was a new departure in Greek marine science. It evolved from the early Education/Training & Multimedia Unit, as IMBC faced up to the challenge to disseminate its research results and information to an increasingly sophisticated and information-rich target audience. From the start, IMBC Departments have been heavily involved in competitive EU and other international and national projects. Participation in such projects makes heavy demands on the scientists involved. A Final Report in print format is no longer the sole satisfactory end product: first videotapes, CD-ROMs, and now electronic delivery to centrally-held databases are expected as deliverables. The ICT Unit plays a significant role in finding and producing appropriate delivery methods for research results, so that these are then accessible to a much larger audience. Print delivery, however, is also seen as very important and a high standard is maintained in its hard copy deliverables, including IMBC Collected Reprints collated by the Department.

Once a professional production level has been reached, the end product, whether print , video , CD-ROM, Internet Web page , can be distributed widely with confidence. The product of years of research work is given more impact, because the target audience can grasp its fundamentals and its details more readily.

An important part of its workload was the design, construction and maintenance of the IMBC website, which now attracts in excess of 80.000 visitors per year. In the Millennium year 2000, www.imbc.gr attracted 80695 visitors who accessed 430.112 pages, making almost 1.4 million hits.

The ICT Department has also made many successful competitive bids for programmes dependent on new information technologies. Its online courses in marine science are now attracting a daily average 1000 hits from users in all parts of the globe.

The ICT's information designers, programmers and content providers , all specialists in different areas of work, combine their knowledge and skills, in order to produce the best possible results in these very different modes of delivery. Their multi-tasking capabilities have led directly to the IMBC's successes in the competitive multi-media market.

Video Equipment

The Video Production team has a professional Sony BETACAM edit suite, for the production of broadcast quality video tapes; SONY PVW 2800P; SONY UVW 1600P; Edit Controller SONY FXE 100P.

Video and audio editing is performed with Media100i digital video editing software on a double processor Macintosh G4.

In addition, it has a Sony SP Umatic High band 3-machine edit, as well as hi-8 edit facilities.

It has a range of cameras, suitable for a variety of purposes:

• Sony BETACAM DXC 637P+ PVV3P;
• Sony VI hi-8 3-chip camcorder;
• Sony DXC 3000, used with the Sony portable recorder VO8800P;
• Panasonic WV15E used with Panasonic portable recorder NV 180.
• For microscope work, a Sony DXC107P used with a Sony V)7600P recorder

Underwater

• two camcorders for use in two underwater housings:
• Sony hi-8 TR 800 and JVC GR 65.
• two custom-built "matchbox" cameras ( colour + b/w) to film fish tanks, used with NV 180 + portable monitorJVC CX 60GB
• two cameras for the Benthos miniRover

Copying to VHS is done by means of a Sony SV0 9620 SVHS-VHS, which copies to PAL. SECAM and NTSC. There is also a SECAM transcoder.

ICT Services

The ICT Department may be commissioned on a commercial basis (i.e. as contractors, sub contractors and associate contractors). For further information please contact Dept. Head, Margaret Eleftheriou.

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