1. The MINERVA Project Marzia PiccininnoLondon, 25th July 2003 Ministerial NEtwoRk for Valorising Activising in digitisation

2. What is MINERVA A NETWORK OF MEMBER STATES MINISTRIES to discuss, correlate and harmonise activities carried out in digitisation of cultural and scientific content; for creating agreed European common recommendations and guidelines about: –digitisation, –metadata, –long-term accessibility, –preservation.

3. MINERVA is the operative section of a wider framework made up of the Lund Principles, the LUND Action Plan and the National Representatives Group (NRG) in the field of the cultural heritage digitisation. The members agreed to give the highest visibility to the Lund Principles in their countries, by setting-up national structures in charge of disseminating the results of the MINERVA project and assure a European coordination. The MINERVA framework

4. Foreground June 2000: eEurope Action Plan endorsement by EU Member States (renewd until 2005) 4 th of April 2001: meeting in Lund to discuss co-ordination mechanisms for digitisation programmes across European Member States and how to stimulate a European content on global networks. Lund Principles to be developed through the Lund Action Plan MINERVA is the instrument to support the implementation of the Lund Action Plan

5. Lund Principles: the major outcome of the meeting They state that the Member States could make progress on the eEurope objective if they: establish an ongoing forum for coordination of policies for digitisation; support the developing of a European view on policies and programmes; exchange and promote good practices, guidelines and consistency of practice and skills development; work in a collaborative manner to make visible and accessible the digitised cultural heritage of Europe. http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ka3/digicult/lund_principles.htm

6. Lund Action Plan The Action Plan describes a first set of actions to be launched, and assigns responsibilities for them to Member States or to the European Commission. The Lund Action Plan takes as its reference the Lund Principles, identifying four main areas where specific actions are needed: Area 1:Improving policies and programmes through co- operation and benchmarking Area 2:Discovery of digitised resources Area 3:Promotion of good practice Area 4:Content framework

7. National Representatives Group The NRG is made up of officially nominated experts from each Member State. Purposes: to coordinate digitisation policies and programmes and to facilitate the adoption and implementation of the Lund Action Plan. to monitor progress regarding the objectives encapsulated in the Lund Principles. The NRG meets every 6 months to share national experiences under the aegis of the presidency in turn.

8. Activities MINERVA has demonstrated to contribute to the creation of a broad consensus on the European framework derived from the e-Europe initiative In many countries, under the aegis of MINERVA, many new national programmes of digitisation of cultural heritage started up MINERVA has contributed to creating a process of institutional collaboration among the various presidencies of the European Union

9. The rolling agenda In order to guarantee the continuity of the initiatives undertaken, the past, present and future presidencies of the EU commonly define the so-called rolling agenda.

10. Benchmarking To exchange comparable information between Member States on programmes and policies; To give visibility to national activities in order to share similar experiences and skills; To promote the adoption of a benchmarking framework as a key tool for coordinating and harmonising national activities as well as to develop measures to show progress and improvement.

11. Benchmarking Short term strategy: Elaboration of a data model to collect information (phase closing on August 2003; report on the results achieved so far, NRG meeting in Corfu (June 2003) Long term strategy: Complete definition of the data base; to set-up methodology, shared data format and tool, for collecting data on a continuous base; to update constantly qualitative and quantitative information and to create a common database.

12. Inventories, discovery of digitised content, multilingual issues To share experiences, to discuss and facilitate implementation of common actions concerning: inventories of past, on-going and planned digitisation projects based on national observatories; technical infrastructure for coordinated discovery of European digitised cultural content, including a common set of metadata for description; multilingual issues; Analysis of the French model of descriptive standards and its adaptability to the Italian requirements.

13. Interoperability, Service Provision,IPR analysing, identifying and evaluating activities on metadata, registries and schemes; discussion on standards, conformance testing centres, agreed terminologies, common metadata schema, middleware specifications; examination of related legal issues, such as IPR and copyright;

14. User needs, contents and quality framework quality criteria for the digitised content (MINERVA Handbook expected by end of 2003), encourage quality plan in cultural and scientific web sites; supporting the initiatives launched by the European Commission with the provision of national digital content; encourage training actions in cultural sites.

15. Good practices Aim: to select and promote good practice examples from Member State programmes and projects in order to exchange experiences, skills and collect consensus from different communities of users. First selection presented in Alicante, June 2002 First MINERVA Handbook on Good Practices to be published during the Italian Presidency

16. Training A programme of training courses that uses open distance learning methodologies has been set up to diffuse the results of the project. Action lines: 1. digitisation: process, cataloguing and management, including metadata for the preservation; 2. legal aspects: IPR/copyright and data protection; 3. quality: criteria for design and development of cultural web sites; 4. management of projects and services.

17. Publications Already published Progress report of the National Representatives Group 2002 Next publications Good practice handbook with the collection of the existing guidelines on digitisation Quality framework for the development of cultural Web sites Collection of the existing laws on IPR Progress report of the National Representatives Group 2003 (2004)

18. New tools The Newsletter: The subscription to the English newsletter is now possible through the MINERVA web site: a constant updating about the MINERVA news. The MINERVA mailing list: Soon available, the MINERVA mailing list will distribute information to users interested in the digitisation issues

19. Some reasons to join MINERVA Why should an organisation invest in order to bring its activities under the MINERVA framework ? to share knowledge and experiences, avoiding to duplicate the efforts; to coordinate national/local initiatives within a European approach, being prepared for larger exploitation; to share technological platforms and tools, saving efforts and money in replicating what already exists; to contribute to the necessary and ambitious common goal of implementing the Lund Action Plan.

20. Italian Presidency Events 1 Minerva participation Florence, 16 th -17 th October: International Conference on Long Term Preservation of Digital Memories (organised by the MiBAC - DG for Libraries, in cooperation with MINERVA) Naples, 23 rd -24 th October: seminar Territorial information systems for the conservation, preservation and management of Cultural Heritage (organised by the MiBAC - DG for Archaeology, in cooperation with MINERVA)

21. Italian Presidency Events 2 Minerva organisation Rome, 29th October: workshop Digitisation: what to do and how to do it (in cooperation with AIB) Parma, 19th November: NRG meeting Parma, 20th-21st November: International Conference Quality for Cultural Web Sites (organised with MiBAC, City of Parma, Emilia-Romagna region, Parma local authorities, University of Parma)

22. The Parma Conference Quality in cultural Web sites - Online Cultural Heritage for Research, Education and Cultural Tourism Communities The conference intends to debate the main themes connected to the aspects of the online accessibility of cultural heritage to facilitate its access to a wider public all over the world, and to promote the development and valorisation of cultural tourism services. I session: Accessibility and communication: principles - best practices II session: Guidelines on quality for cultural Web sites III session: IPR, copyright and data protection

23. The poster session The poster session Web quality for culture is already open (deadline 15th September): 1.Content quality for cultural Web Site 2.Accessibility 3.IPR issues 4.Communication and language

24. … and MinervaPLUS MINERVAplus intends to enlarge the existing network to extend its dimension to the new countries accessing the Union in 2004, Russia, and Israel The project was approved on the occasion of last call of the 6FP

25. For further information: www.minervaeurope.org minerva@beniculturali.it Thanks for your attention. Keep in touch soon…