European strategies and actions for accessing cultural digital content: the Dynamic action plan and

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European strategies and actions for accessing
cultural digital content the Dynamic action plan
and the MICHAEL project
Rossella Caffo Ministero per i beni e le attività
culturali
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Timeline

• 1999 eEurope, to foster the development of the
  internet and the new economy
• 2001 Lund meeting of European experts of
  digitisation of the cultural heritage
• Lund Principles and Action Plan
• National Representatives Group (NRG) to
  implement the Lund Principles and Action
  Plan
• 2002 MINERVA, to support the NRG
• 2003 Charter of Parma, to strenghten the role of
  the NRG
• 2004 MINERVAplus, to extend the project to NAS
• 2004 MICHAEL, deployment of the MINERVA results
• 2005 Dynamic Action Plan, to update the Lund
  Action Plan
• 2006 MICHAELplus, to extend the project to other
  11 countries
• 2006 MINERVA eC

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MINERVA keywords

• Coordination among the Member States
• Common approach for archives, libraries, museums
• A shared platform made up of recommendations and
  guidelines

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How MINERVA worked

• Political level MINERVA guaranteed a close
  cooperation among the Member States, and between
  these and the European Commission.
• MINERVA intended to
• give visibility to national initiatives
• promote the exchange of good practices
• ensure the diffusion and awareness of community
  policies and programmes at both national and
  local levels
• Technical level MINERVA elaborated a common
  European platform made up of shared
  recommendations and guidelines about standards
  related to digitisation and the quality of
  cultural Web sites.

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• MINERVA ended in January 2006.
• The results were higher than expected.

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Acknowledgment

• Viviane Reding, European commissioner for the
  Information Society, spoke about MINERVA as an
  extraordinary example to develop during next
  years (Conference on future coordination of
  digitisation, Luxembourg, June 2005).

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MINERVA and the NRG

• MINERVA gave support to the activities of the
  National Representatives Group in order to
• elaborate the new Dynamic Action Plan that
  replace the previous Lund Action Plan
• support the official acknowledgment of the NRG

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Products, publications and MINERVA results

• Handbook for quality in cultural Web sites
• Cultural Website Quality Principles
• Quality Principles for cultural Web sites a
  handbook
• MuseoWeb
• Good practice handbook
• Technical guidelines for digital cultural content
  creation programmes
• Cost reduction in digitisation guide
• IPR guide
• Survey on multilingualism
• etc

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MINERVA and the SE Europe

• Regional Meeting on Digitisation of Cultural
  Heritage (Ohrid, 17-20 marzo 2005), organised by
  the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of
  Macedonia, the UNESCO Venice Office-ROSTE, and
  the Italian Ministry on behalf of MINERVA.
• Outcome
• Recommendations for coordination of digitisation
  of cultural heritage in south-eastern Europe
  (http//www.kultura.gov.mk/docs_pics/uzknm/documen
  t_ohrid_2005.pdf)

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The future
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The new Dynamic Action Plan (DAP) is based on the
results achieved by the NRG, supported by
MINERVA.The DAP updates the Lund Action Plan
and the Charter of Parma.
http//www.minervaeurope.org/publications/dap/dapv
ersionxhtml.htm
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General objectives

• Providing strategic leadership in a dynamic and
  changing environment in which rapid technological
  and economical developments are taking place.
• Strengthening co-ordinationand forging stronger
  links between Member States digitisation
  initiatives, EU networks and projects.
• Continuing efforts in overcoming fragmentation
  and duplicationofdigitisation activities and
  maximising synergy.
• Assessing and identifying appropriate models,
  funding and policy approaches to sustain
  development and long-term preservation
  strategies.
• Promoting cultural and linguistic
  diversitythrough digital contentcreation.
• Improving online accessto European cultural
  content.

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Action areas

• Users and content
• Technologies for digitisation
• Sustainability of content
• Digital preservation
• Monitoring progress
• The NRG will organise working groups for each one
  of these areas.

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The future of MINERVA

• The extension of MINERVA, MINERVA eC has been
  approved.
• Goals
• to implement the results achieved by MINERVA
• to support the NRG for the implementation of the
  Dynamic Action Plan

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Partners
20 Member States

• Austria
• Belgium
• Czech Republic
• Estonia
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Greece
• Hungary
• Ireland

Italy Luxembourg Malta Poland Portugal Slovak
Republic Slovenia Spain Sweden UK
Coordinated by the Italian Ministry.
More than 150 cultural institutions involved
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i2010 - A European Information Society for growth
and employment

• The DAP is aligned with the the Communication of
  the European Commission named i2010.
• i2010 highlighted the fundamental role of the
  coordination of the national policies of
  digitisation to create a European space of the
  cultural information.
• i2010 reniew the eEurope strategy.
• http//europa.eu.int/information_society/eeurope/i
  2010/index_en.htm

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The European Digital Library

• i2010 put special emphasis on the digital
  libraries topic, and, in particular, to the
  realisation of the European Digital Library.
• The EC aims at gathering by the end of 2006 the
  consensus of all the European national libraries
  museums and archives will be included in a second
  time.
• It is hoped that by the end of 2010 a European
  platform with more than 6 millions records from
  all the cultural sectors will exist.

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MICHAEL e MICHAELplus

• The good results achieved by MINERVA have been
  put into practice by MICHAEL and MICHAELplus.
• The DAP recognised the fundamental role of
  MICHAEL and MICHAELplus for the creation of a
  European information space.

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Strategic objective

• MICHAEL and MICHAELplus aim at launching a
  European online service
• to enable the European cultural heritage to be
  promoted a worldwide audience.

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What the MICHAEL service does

• The MICHAEL service will provide simple and quick
  access to the digital collections of museums,
  libraries and archives from different European
  countries.
• France, Italy, and UK (MICHAEL)
• other European countries (MICHAELplus)
• There will be many uses for the MICHAEL
  service education and research, creative
  industries, tourism etc.
• MICHAEL is an essential stepping-stone towards
  the creation of a European cultural space on the
  Internet.

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European services

• A single point of access
• the MICHAEL European portal will allow searches
  on all the national databases from a unique user
  interface
• searches will include full-text, geographical
  area, subject, period, institution responsible
  and more...

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Background

• MICHAEL and MICHAELplus build on
• work by the MINERVA working groups on
  inventories, discovery of digitised content and
  multilingualism
• the technical platform of the French Catalogue
  des fonds culturels numérisés
• MICHAEL takes also into account other MINERVA
  products like, the Technical Guidelines for
  digital content creation programmes, the data
  model for the description of digital cultural
  inventories, the French-Italian portal prototype,
  the 10 Quality Principles for cultural web sites.

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The project phases
RD
implementation full depl.
MINERVA eC
MICHAEL Plus
MINERVA Catalogue des fonds culturels
numérises (FR)
MICHAEL
MINERVAplus
2002 ...... 06/2004 ...........
06/2006 .. 06/2007 05/2008
NRG - DAP
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Standards

• MICHAEL
• An Open-Source project
• Applies MINERVA reccommendations and guidelines
• Data model aligned to the Dublin Core metadata
  set and the emerging Dublin Core Collection
  Description
• Enables metadata exchange in XML format through
  the OAI-PMH protocol

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The MICHAEL platform
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The MICHAEL consortium

• MICHAEL was born as a partnership between France,
  Italy and the UK
• MiBAC (coordinator, Italy)
• Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication
  (France)
• Museums, Libraries, Archives Council (UK)
• Amitié (Italy)
• Dédale (France)
• AJLSM (France)

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The MICHAELplus consortium

• MICHAELplus started on 1 June.
• 14 countries and 31 institutions.

• Czech Republic
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Greece
• Italy
• Hungary

• Malta
• the Netherlands
• Poland
• Portugal
• Spain
• Sweden
• UK

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Directions for the next enlargement

• Europe, expression of interest from
• Belgium, Communauté Française
• Austria, Ministry of Culture
• Romania, Ministry of Culture
• South-Eastern region
• International
• Israel, The Jewish Agency for Israel
• CHIN, Canada
• Cooperation with other initiatives
• TEL
• DELOS
• BRICKS

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MICHAEL and MICHAEplus basic facts

• Deployment projects
• Funded by the eTen programme
• Conclusion MICHAEL May 2007 - MICHAELplus May
  2008
• Based on national initiatives on digitization and
  the creation of culture portals
• Aligned with the NRG Dynamic Action Plan

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MICHAEL and MICHAELplus financial issues

• National funding (90)
• EC contribution (10), only to fulfil the
  integration of the national initiatives into the
  European infrastructure
• MICHAEL and MICHAELplus
• National funding 86 M
• EC funding 8,6 M

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Achievements so far

• The production module and data model have been
  implemented
• National instances of the MICHAEL platform are
  underway in France, Italy and the UK
• Training modules for the cataloguers are ongoing
• National systems are being populated with data

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National public interfaces

• www.numerique.culture.fr
• http//www.michael-culture.org.uk
• http//www.michael-culture.it/

The European portal will be ready in November.
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The content and the data provider

• Almost 1,800 digital collections described so
  far.
• From all sectors archives, libraries, museums
  etc.
• Data from local and national cultural
  institutions, regional data bank, digitisation
  projects, Ministrys repository, etc.

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Horizontal activities

• Sustainability MICHAEL is working towards the
  creation of a self-substaining structure to
  assure the service once the eTen funding run out.
• Communication web site, conferences, brochures
  and so on.

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Thank you. rcaffo_at_beniculturali.it http//www.mi
nervaeurope.org http//www.michael-culture.org