1. 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

2. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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

3. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 MINERVA keywords Coordination among the Member States Common approach for archives, libraries, museums A shared platform made up of recommendations and guidelines

4. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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. How MINERVA worked

5. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 MINERVA ended in January 2006. The results were higher than expected.

6. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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).

7. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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

8. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 Products, publications and MINERVA results Handbook for quality in cultural Web sites Cultural Website Quality Principles Quality Principles for cultural Web sites: a handbook Museo&Web Good practice handbook Technical guidelines for digital cultural content creation programmes Cost reduction in digitisation guide IPR guide Survey on multilingualism etc

9. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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/document_ohrid_2005.pdf)http://www.kultura.gov.mk/docs_pics/uzknm/document_ohrid_2005.pdf

10. The future

11. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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/dapversionxhtml.htm

12. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 General objectives 1.Providing strategic leadership in a dynamic and changing environment in which rapid technological and economical developments are taking place. 2.Strengthening co-ordinationand forging stronger links between Member States’ digitisation initiatives, EU networks and projects. 3.Continuing efforts in overcoming fragmentation and duplicationofdigitisation activities and maximising synergy. 4.Assessing and identifying appropriate models, funding and policy approaches to sustain development and long-term preservation strategies. 5.Promoting cultural and linguistic diversitythrough digital contentcreation. 6.Improving online accessto European cultural content.

13. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 Action areas a.Users and content b.Technologies for digitisation c.Sustainability of content d.Digital preservation e.Monitoring progress The NRG will organise working groups for each one of these areas.

14. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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

15. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 Austria Belgium Czech Republic Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Ireland Italy Luxembourg Malta Poland Portugal Slovak Republic Slovenia Spain Sweden UK 20 Member States: More than 150 cultural institutions involved Partners Coordinated by the Italian Ministry.

16. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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/i20 10/index_en.htm

17. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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.

18. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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.

19. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 Strategic objective MICHAEL and MICHAELplus aim at launching a European online service to enable the European cultural heritage to be promoted a worldwide audience.

20. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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. What the MICHAEL service does

21. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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... European services

22. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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. Background

23. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 MINERVAplus MINERVA eC R&D implementationfull depl. MICHAEL Plus The project phases MINERVA *** Catalogue des fonds culturels numérises (FR) 2002 …………………….....…. 06/2004 …...........… 06/2006.. 06/2007… 05/2008 MICHAEL NRG - DAP

24. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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 Standards

25. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 The MICHAEL platform

26. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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) The MICHAEL consortium

27. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 MICHAELplus started on 1° June. 14 countries and 31 institutions. The MICHAELplus consortium Malta the Netherlands Poland Portugal Spain Sweden UK Czech Republic Finland France Germany Greece Italy Hungary

28. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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 Directions for the next enlargement

29. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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 MICHAEL and MICHAEplus basic facts

30. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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€ MICHAEL and MICHAELplus financial issues

31. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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 Achievements so far

32. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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.

33. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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, Ministry’s repository, etc.

34. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 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.

35. Rossella Caffo, 11 June 2006 Thank you. rcaffo@beniculturali.it http://www.minervaeurope.org http://www.michael-culture.org