MinervaEC MinervaEC Bulgaria National Workshop Sofia, February 26, 2008 MinervaEC MInisterial NEtwoRk for Valorising Activities in digitisation, eContentplus Supporting the European Digital Library Antonella Fresa Technical Coordinator

MinervaEC: the project Thematic Network Supported under eContentplus Started on 1st October 2006 Duration: 2 years Coordinated by the Italian Ministry of Culture 22 EU countries More than 150 cultural institutions from all over Europe

MinervaEC and the European digital library MinervaEC continues the work undertaken by MINERVA and MINERVA Plus towards the elaboration of a platform of recommendations, guidelines and tools for digitisation. MinervaEC supports MICHAEL, MICHAEL Plus and ATHENA initiatives. MinervaEC is aligned with: i2010 strategy for a European Information Society for growth and employment, the EC Recommendation on digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation, and the Council Conclusions. In this light, it contributes to the creation of the European digital library.

MINERVA and MINERVA Plus: a flashback MINERVA – IST FP5 from 2002 until 2005 7 countries MINERVA Plus – FP6 from 2004 until 2006 14 EU countries + Russia and Israel

MINERVA and MINERVA Plus at a glance Aligned with eEurope Implementing the Lund Action Plan In synergy with the National Representatives Group (NRG) 5 working groups: Benchmarking Inventories of digital content Interoperability and IPR Quality and user needs Best practices and Competence Centres

MINERVA and MINERVA Plus main results Annual Reports: 4 editions (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005) A set of practical Handbooks: Good Practices Technical Guidelines Good quality cultural websites Cost reduction Multilingual websites and thesauri The Minerva website: www.minervaeurope.org 9 NRG meetings under the aegis of 9 EU Presidencies: Alicante-Spain, Copenhagen-Denmark, Corfu-Greece, Parma-Italy, Dublin-Ireland, The Hague-The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Bristol-UK, Salzburg-Austria Hundreds of European cultural institutions involved in workshops, seminars, training

MICHAEL and MICHAEL Plus deploying MINERVA results 2 deployment projects Supported by eTEN Involving 18 EU countries Based on the metadata standard for cultural inventories developed by MINERVA Aimed to build a unique multilingual access point to the digital collections of museums, libraries and archives in Europe Total investment: ˜90 million €

MICHAEL Users many different user communities education cultural tourism research ‘co-ordination’ and computers …

MICHAEL actors and roles Ministries of culture: coordination and financing Central cultural institutes: standardisation and guidelines Technology providers: software implementation Regions and Universities: surveys and local coordination of the cataloguers The actual cultural institutions on the territory: museums, libraries and archives to provide content

Policy links MICHAEL and MICHAEL Plus have strong policy links The success of the initiative is based on the actual political commitment at national and European levels Main targeted policy domains: Culture & multilingualism Education & training Research & innovation Tourism & economic development

Cross-domain approach MICHAEL data model is suitable for describing digital collections belonging to every sector of cultural heritage and for recording related and context information: Institutions Projects / programmes Services / products Physical collections MICHAEL aimed since the beginning at giving integrated access to the whole European cultural heritage through the Internet

MICHAEL European portal Launched December 2006 Periodical harvesting of the published national instances http://www.michael-culture.org/

MICHAEL national portals FR 1450 digital collections 500 institutions 250 services-products 766 digital collections 616 services 321 projects 306 institutions UK 2588 digital collections 1396 institutions 1404 services/products 1520 physical collections 423 projects/programs IT

Catalogue des fonds culturels numérises (FR) The projects phases R&D initial deploym. full depl. Catalogue des fonds culturels numérises (FR) MICHAEL MICHAEL Plus new initiatives: ATHENA, EDL-Local, etc. eEurope …………….. i2010 ……………….. European Digital Library MINERVA, MINERVA Plus, MINERVA-EC 2002 ………............. 06/2004 …...........… 05/2006 .. ………… 05/2008

MinervaEC objectives Aligned with and Europeana To improve accessibility to and visibility of European digital cultural resources; To contribute to increasing interoperability between existing networks of services; To promote the use of digital cultural resources by business and citizens; To facilitate exploitation of cultural digital resources, providing clear rules for their use and re-use, respecting and protecting the creators’ rights.

MinervaEC targets Beneficiaries of the actions of the project: public and private organisations and institutions that create, collect or own digital content; private citizens, interested in receiving quality contents, reliable and directly responding to their interests; universities and schools, which wants to use cultural contents for educational purposes in a legal and safe environment; small and large enterprises interested in (re)using digital cultural content.

MinervaEC approach The MinervaEC approach follows the steps of the MINERVA project: a tight liaison with the national digitisation policies the implementation of the results achieved into new initiatives (e.g. MICHAEL, MICHAEL Plus, ATHENA) the involvement of experts from all the cultural institutions (museums, libraries, archives etc.) the cooperation with the other networks (EDLnet, EPOCH, DELOS, etc.)

MinervaEC publications 2 Annual Reports (the edition 2008 is ongoing, under the direct coordination of EC) 5 Thematic publications: Map of the cultural heritage in Europe IPR guidelines Technical guidelines v.2 Directory of the European legislation v.2 Study on the user needs Project dissemination literature

MinervaEC national workshops National workshops in each partner country to promoter MINERVA and to illustrate its tools and publications: Brussels, 24/4/2007 Santiago de Compostela, 11/5/2007 Poprad, 2/10/2007 Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Tallin, 18-19/10/2007 Riga, 30/10/2007 Bratislava, 12-13/11/2007 Jerusalem, 20-21/11/2007 Sofia, 26/02/2008 …..

MinervaEC project meetings Working groups meetings: Rome, 5/12/2006 Berlin, 20/6/2007 Plenary meetings in cooperation with the EU Presidencies: Helsinki, 12 October 2006 Berlin, 23 February 2007 Ljubljana, 5-6 June 2008 Paris, 27 November 2008 (final event)

The future MinervaEC will last until September 2008 The next project is ATHENA, currently under negotiation. ATHENA is a Best Practice Network, coordinated by the Italian Ministry of Culture and supported by the EC in the frame of eContentplus programme Currently under negotiation, it will last for the next 2 years, with the participation of many partners from all over Europe. The Academy of Science is partner of ATHENA.

ATHENA objectives to reinforce the participation of Museums and other institutions coming from the sectors of Cultural Heritage that are not yet getting enough involved in the creation of the EDL; to contribute to the integration of the different sectors of cultural heritage promoting standards and guidelines, in order to harmonise their contributions to the EDL; to develop a set of plug-ins to be integrated within the EDL, facilitating the access to and the re-use of digital contents belonging to European cultural institutions museums, libraries and archives.

Next appointments 19 March, Luxembourg: MinervaEC National Workshop 18 April, Florence: MinervaEC workshop in the frame of EVA Florence 19-20 May, Warsaw: MICHAEL International Conference 23 May 2008, London: MICHAEL UK Conference 5-6 June 2008, Ljubljana: International conference on media and digital cultural heritage, under the aegis of the Slovenian Presidency of the EU 25 August, Vienna: MinervaEC National Workshop, in the frame of EVA Vienna November 2008: International conference on the European Digital Library, under the aegis of the French Presidency of EU Second Half 2008: launch of ATHENA Best Practice Network

Thank you for your attention www.minervaeurope.org fresa@promoter.it