MINERVA — Ministerial NEtwo Rk for Valorising Activities

MINERVA - Ministerial NEtwo. Rk for Valorising Activities in digitisation International Seminar “Digitisation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage” - Bansko, Bulgaria, 28 August – 3 September 2004 Giuliana De Francesco Bansko, August 30 th, 2004

MINERVA framework e. Europe initiative launched to foster the internet and new economy development across Europe and allow the citizens to participate to the information society • e. Europe Action Plan (June 2000): roadmap and measures 3 d) European digital content for global networks Lund, 4 th April 2001: meeting of experts and representatives from EU Member States to accomplish coordination and foster European cultural content for global networks Lund Principles 2

Lund Principles MINERVA framework Digitisation of heritage resources crucial for: • providing improved access • preserving Europe's collective cultural heritage (both past and future) • sustaining cultural diversity in a global environment • also key resource for education and for the tourism and media industries Progress towards the e. Europe objectives if: • establish an ongoing forum for coordination of digitisation policies • support a European view on policies and programmes • exchange and promote good practices, guidelines and skills • work in a collaborative manner to make visible and accessible the digitised cultural heritage of Europe 3

National Representatives Group A National Representatives Group (NRG), made up of representatives nominated by Member States’ authorities was set up to coordinate digitisation policies and programmes and to facilitate and monitor the adoption and implementation of the Lund Action Plan. Role: • to guarantee a close relationship between the Ministries or other governmental Institutions and the EC • to assure that EC policies and programmes have a widespread diffusion in every country • to be the voice of national policies and programmes at European level • to allow visibility to national initiatives 4

National Representatives Group The NRG meets every 6 months, co-chaired by the EU Presidency in turn and the EC NAS NRG were appointed under the Italian presidency 7 th NRG meeting: 17 th September, The Hague Charter of Parma a strategic document that continues and supports the Lund Principles, has been discussed and approved at the 5 th NRG meeting in Parma 5

MINERVA Ministerial NEtwo. Rk for Valorising Activities in digitisation • funded by the EC IST 5 th Framework Programme (2002– 2005) • is a collaborate operative framework for implementing Lund Action Plan and organising its working groups (support to NRG) A network of Member States’ Ministries: • to discuss, correlate and harmonise activities carried out in digitisation of cultural content at European level • to create an agreed European platform made up of recommendations and guidelines in the field of digitisation of CH • to give international visibility to national initiatives • to embed the results of European coordination in national digitisation activities (due to commitment of governments) 6

MINERVA and MINERVA Plus Started with 7 partners (Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, Sweden, Spain, United Kingdom) • 15 EU Member States had joined MINERVA network by 2003 MINERVA Plus, funded by the EC IST 6 th FP, enlarges the network to 6 NAS countries (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia) plus Israel and Russia. 7

Network enlargement Two instruments: Membership agreement to formalise the participation of in the network Ministries from new countries Co-operation agreement to formalise the participation of organisations in the cultural field (University institutes, cultural institutions, private companies, associations) 8

Cooperation: Digitisation cluster MINERVA promoted a coordination between European cultural networks/projects. Purpose: • • • sharing knowledge and exchanging experience promoting results (studies, reports, guidelines) adopting common standards and agendas avoiding duplication of effort and waste of resources merging efforts together to maximise the impact of the individual projects Networks involved: BRICKS CALIMERA DELOS DIGICULT FORUM EMII-DCF EPOCH ERPANET Euromed Heritage II EVA HEREIN MINERVA MUSICNETWORK PRESTOSPACE SCRAN 9

How MINERVA works • Networking activities (enlargement of the network, website, newsletter, workshops, cooperation with other projects, on-line training) • Working groups at European level • Publications (guidelines, reports, handbooks, brochures) 10

MINERVA Workgroups « Inventories, discovery of digitised content, multilingualism. M+ specific topic: multilingual thesauri « Interoperability and service provision M+ specific topic: business models for digitisation programmes « Identification of user needs, quality framework for common access points M+ specific topic: small cultural institutions requirements « Good practices and competence centres M+ specific topic: digitisation cost reduction 11

A MINERVA spin off: MICHAEL Multilingual Inventory of Cultural Heritage in Europe (www. michael-culture. org) «e. TEN programme-funded, building on national investment «partners: initially France, Italy, and UK. • develops results achieved by MINERVA in the field of Inventories of digitised content and Interoperability (French. Italian prototype of a portal of digital collections) • trans-european inventory of digital cultural collections, with an online service to allow to search, browse and examine them from a single access point. • open source software, open standards-based 12

MINERVA Publications: NRG Report Annual Progress Report on CH digitisation policies, programmes and projects carried on in Member States 1 st (2002) and 2 nd (2003) Progress Reports « Coordinating Digitisation in Europe. Progress report of the National Representatives Group 2003 • updates Global Report 2002, includes contributions from NAS, Israel and Russia • hot of print 13

MINERVA Publications «Handbook for Quality in Cultural Websites: Improving Quality for Citizens «Cultural Websites Quality Principles «Good Practice Handbook «Technical Guidelines for Digital Cultural Content Creation Programmes 14

Technical Guidelines for Digital Cultural Content Creation Programmes For policy-makers and funding programmes for the creation of digital cultural content not a single prescriptive set of requirements to which all projects must conform • can be used flexibly by programme managers; context-specific requirements might be built • can be used for self-assessment by projects identify areas where there is broad agreement • no surprises! 15

Why use technical standards? Support: Interoperability Access Preservation Security To be as widely useful, portable and durable as possible, digital resources should be interoperable. The appropriate use of standards in digitisation can deliver the consistency that allows interoperability. 16

TG structure: ‘life cycle’ approach • Preparation for digitisation (Hardware, Software, Environment) • Metadata creation/capture • Publication (Delivery formats, • Handling of originals • Disclosure of resources • The digitisation process • Storage and management of the digital master material (File formats, Preservation strategies) 3 D and Virtual Reality Issues, GIS, websites) (Metadata harvesting, Distributed searching) • Re-use and re-purposing (Learning resource creation) • Intellectual property rights and Copyright (Identifying, recording and managing IPR, Safeguarding IPR) 17

TG contents Guidance on practice, and detailed standards • requirement levels: “may”, “should”, “must” (IETF vocabulary) Links also provided to: • standards • sources of further guidance • further information 18

TG implementation • Circulated as guidance to FP 6 Digitisation cluster projects • already in use for 2 UK funding programmes • versions in national languages, for implementation by national programmes • translated/adopted in France, Italy, Israel … Feedback expected 19

Find out more! www. minervaeurope. org contact details: defrancesco@beniculturali. it minerva@beniculturali. it Thank you for your kind attention 20