1. Paphos, Cyprus 10-11 Sept. 2007 ePSIplus Thematic Meeting E-xploitation of Cultural Heritage Information – a need for a European hand? Making the policy: challenges and choices Rossella Caffo Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali – Italy Coordinator of MICHAEL and MINERVA projects

2. Table of content Main issues involved EC policy The European Digital Library MICHAEL project experience An Italian case study: the Italian Culture Portal Contribution by MINERVA eC Conclusions

3. The cultural information in the digital era The mission of the cultural institutions includes giving access to their heritage to as many people as possible An important way for achieving this is through digitisation, databases and the Internet The re-use of digital information about CH enables the creation of different kind of services (such as e-commerce, on-line booking, social-networking services – Web 2 etc.). However, some issues have to be addressed

4. Main issues involved e-Inclusion: promoting equal digital opportunities, bridging digital divide and social divisions Accessibility: enabling access for people with disabilities or different abilities Copyright and IPR Privacy issues Implementation of common and open technical standards Cost reduction: need of strategies for digitisation cost reduction Preservation: ensuring suitable storage and long term preservation of digital resources Safety of the tangible heritage not kept under guardianship

5. EC policy towards digital access to culture - 1 i2010: Digital Libraries Initiative “ Once digitised, our cultural and scientific heritage can be used as input for new creative efforts and for a wide range of information products and services. It can, for example, play a key role in the future growth of sectors such as learning and tourism.” By the end of 2010, more than 6 millions digital items should be made available online by the European Digital Library. The harmonisation of the member States’ efforts is crucial in this prospect. http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/digital_libraries/index_en.htm Main issues to be addressed in order to achieve this goal: Copyright Technical standards Harmonisation of policies and programmes by EU Member States

6. EC policy towards digital access to culture - 2 High Level Expert Group on digital libraries Copyright sub-group 1. Report on Digital Preservation, Orphan Works and Out-of-Print Works 2. Model agreement for a license on digitisation of out of print works Interoperability working group Member States’ Expert Group on Digitisation and Digital Preservation An EC advisory body To monitor progress and assess the impact of the implementation of the Commission Recommendation and of the Council Conclusions on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation. To provide a forum for cooperation between Member State bodies and the Commission at European level http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/digital_libraries/mseg/index_en.htm

7. The building blocks of the European Digital Library Bruxelles, 13 November 2006 Council of the Ministers of Culture of the EU Council Conclusions on the Digitisation and Online Accessibility of Cultural Material, and Digital Preservation (Official Journal of the European Union C 297/1, 7 December 2006 ). In order to build the European Digital Library, there are two main building blocks: CENL and the service “The European Library”, providing access to the national libraries’ collections across Europe MICHAEL and the European portal of digital collections http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/digital_libraries/doc/culture_council/council_concl usions_nov_2006/en.pdf

8. MICHAEL

9. MICHAEL is: A European portal giving access to digital cultural collections A single access point to any cultural information available in digital format, to enable the European cultural heritage to be promoted to a worldwide audience A network of 16 national portals contributing data to the European service

10. MICHAEL: the method Based on MINERVA experience and recommendations MICHAEL implemented: Open source software Open and worldwide adopted technical and metadata standards (oaipmh, xml, dublin core…) A single, Dublin Core-based data model Mandatory, Recommended, Optional fields Customisable at national level Data are made available to the public through the Creative commons licence Attribution- Non Commercial

11. MICHAEL makes currently available to the European Digital Library: Descriptions of more than 5000 digital collections, including details of the related institutions, services or products, physical colelctions and projects A comprehensive network of thousands of institutions of every type and scale Expertise, standards, …. MICHAEL: the results

12. A case study: the Italian Culture Portal CulturaItalia

13. The Italian Culture Portal: the mission Creating a single and integrated point of access for information on the Italian cultural heritage Offering a single catalogue of metadata by giving access to external CH databases through the metadata (no duplication) To bring out the digital cultural content and make it visible to a wide public To encourage the production of digital content To contribute content to the European Digital Library Online by the end of the year.

14. The Italian Culture Portal: the strategy 1. Tight cooperation among: Museums, libraries, archives, audiovisual archives, preservation offices and overall management, etc. National, regional and local scale Public and private sectors Cultural Heritage, Universities and Education 2. Integration with international initiatives: MICHAEL and MICHAELplus Based on standards. Recommendations and results by MINERVA and MICHAEL

15. The Italian Culture Portal: the standards Metadata and technical standards: Dublin Core (DCMI) for the metadata description XML for data representation protocol for Metadata Harvesting - Open Archive Initiative (OAI- PMH) oNo standard for IPR management This implied: Drafting a framework agreement Signing detailed agreements to regulate relationships with each content provider, both public and private The agreements take care of the copyright and IPR issues related to the use of the metadata.

16. The Italian Culture Portal: IPR and privacy Personal data aren’t made visible through the portal Each provider holds the rights of the digital objects and information shown through the portal and is responsible for their maintenance and updating MiBAC is the owner of the CulturaItalia repository

17. MINERVA, MINERVAplus, MINERVA eC The MINERVA projects (www.minervaeurope.org) contributed to the definition of a European platform of guidelines and recommendations on digitisation, on-line accessibility and interoperability.www.minervaeurope.org MINERVA promoted the use of international standards. Added value: bottom up approach, all CH sectors involved. Main topics addressed: Good practices in digitisation Interoperability IPR Quality of cultural web sites Digitisation cost reduction Multilingualism

18. What MINERVAeC offers Interoperability, technical and metadata standards: MINERVA Technical Guidelines for Digital Cultural Content Creation Programmes available in 6 languages updating under preparation MINERVAeC Report on Content Interoperability (under preparation) Digitisation cost reduction: MINERVA Cost reduction in digitisation Copyright and IPR MINERVA Guide to Intellectual Property Rights and Other Legal Issues MINERVAeC IPR Guide (under preparation)

19. Conclusions Cultural information into the Directive 2003/98/EC? Limited to metadata for the description of the heritage Suggesting a pricing policy, in order to cover expenses for the service and foster further digitisation Taking care of privacy issues (thus excluding any personal data) Together with a European regulatory framework on: Technical standards (metadata schemata, harvesting methodologies etc.) Rights licenses Already available international standards: Proposal Model agreement for a license on digitisation of out of print works elaborated by the HLEGDL, Copyright Subgroup http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/cf/document.c fm?action=display&doc_id=296 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/cf/document.c fm?action=display&doc_id=296 Creative Commons licenses

20. Creative Commons and re- use Creative Commons ( http://creativecommons.org/) http://creativecommons.org/ Offering a work under a Creative Commons license, the licenser allows copy, re-use and re-distribution of the the own work to any member of the public but only on certain conditions, more or less restrictive, which the licenser may choose: Attribution: Author must be credited Non commercial: Any commercial use of the work is excluded No derivative works: No change (remixes, translations, elaborations…) allowed Share alike: All new works based on the licensed one will carry the same CC license

21. Creative Commons and re- use Creative Commons ( http://creativecommons.org/) http://creativecommons.org/ From the different combination of those choices 6 different licenses are produced:  Attribution  Attribution - Non commercial  Attribution - Non commercial - Share alike  Attribution - Non commercial - No derivatives  Attribution – No derivatives  Attribution – Share alike “Attribution”,acknowledgement of the original creator of the work, is always a requirement.

22. All licenses are expressed in Commons deed, Legal code, Machine readable code CC licenses have been adapted to the jurisdictions of 40 countries (17 EU), many more are in progress (3 EU) http://creativecommons.org/worldwide

23. Creative Commons and re- use Powerful recommendations were made by a the report The Common Information Environment and Creative Commons (October 2005) commissioned by a group of key public sector bodies in the UK ( including: British Library, Department for Education & Skills, Museums Libraries & Archives Council, National Archives, Scottish Library & Information Council, BBC, National Library of Scotland, among others, who together make up the Common Information Environment, CIE): CC licenses are suitable for the publication of many resources produced by public sector organisations because the baseline conditions and choices can meet many situations.” CIE and other public sector organisations that are publishing materials for reuse should use Creative Commons wherever possible The Report also recommended other work be commenced that will likely broaden the knowledge and improve the ease of implementation of open content licensing in both the public and private sectors generally http://www.intrallect.com/index.php/intrallect/knowledge_base/general_articles/cr eative_commons_licensing_solutions_for_the_common_information_environ ment__1

24. _ Thank you for your attention rcaffo@beniculturali.it www.michael-culture.org www.minervaeurope.org