Dr. ElSherif led the first effort in the world in digitization of cultural heritage in the early 90's. He led the vision and the formulation of "Preserving the Past" Initiative, which was born out of an urgent need to revive and preserve the cultural heritage of the Arab Region. In line with the Initiative of Preserving the Past, the Cultureware Program was launched in 1992, to provide information technology solutions to help preserve the Arab region's rich cultural heritage by utilizing imaging, text, sound, video and special effects technologies. Cultureware's vision was to set up programs that would implement comprehensive documentation projects for museums, libraries and archaeological sites utilizing the features and capabilities of multimedia technology. Cultureware aimed at coupling science, art and technology with culture to develop and integrate information systems and cultural multimedia projects for the preservation and dissemination of the Arab cultural information. It focused on adopting these technologies in three major areas, namely Museums, Manuscripts and Archeological sites. Under his leadership, Cultureware implemented more than 25 projects in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Princeton-USA, Chicago-USA, Palestine, Turkey, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the Euro-Mediterranean region.