Impact and benefits Rossella Caffo, Project Manager Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali Warsaw, 19 May 2008

Backgroung Since the 1990s: Across Europe, State and local authority programmes invested in the digitisation of cultural collections from all cultural sectors, involving thousands of cultural institutions and private organisations. Member States worked together at European level to create the inventory of the European cultural collections (NRG and MINERVA network) They identified the need for a way of promoting access to the richness and diversity of our collections Rossella Caffo, MIBAC Warsaw, 19 May 2008

Connecting people to collections from museums, libraries, archives, and cultural and scientific organisations across Europe MICHAEL vision Launching a European online service to enable European cultural heritage to be promoted to a worldwide audience MICHAEL Multilingual Inventory of Cultural Heritage in Europe

MICHAEL is one of the most relevant implementation projects in the field of digital cultural heritage Based on national investments (90%), amounting to more than 90ME Funded by EC in the frame of eTEN programme (10%) National and EU investments

A European online service offering quick and easy access to European cultural heritage Cross domain approach Builds upon MINERVA results: -Technical Guidelines for digital Cultural Content Creation Programmes -Specifications for Inventories of Digital Cultural Content MICHAEL and MINERVA Rossella Caffo, MIBAC Warsaw, 19 May 2008

MICHAEL project: Funded by the programme Begun June 2004 Ministries of Culture in France and Italy Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, UK with Dédale, Amitié and AJLSM, as technical partners MICHAEL Rossella Caffo, MIBAC Warsaw, 19 May 2008

MICHAEL/MICHAEL PLUS = portals Israel

Discovering collections MICHAEL is a multilingual service based on surveys of digital cultural collections at national level MICHAEL satisfies the need for promoting on-line access to the richness and diversity of cultural collections. MICHAEL is a European portal giving access to national databases through periodical harvesting Rossella Caffo, MIBAC Warsaw, 19 May 2008

Standards Open source software platform MINERVA recommendations and guidelines Data model aligned to the Dublin Core metadata set and the emerging Dublin Core Collection Description Appl. Prof. XML data base Metadata harvesting through OAI-PMH Rossella Caffo, MIBAC Warsaw, 19 May 2008

Achievements so far The European service MICHAEL Culture is on line at More than 7,000 digital collections corresponding to millions of digital objects!

Several national portals are on line and constantly updated and enriched with new data. FR IT UK DE FI ……. All other national portals of MICHAELplus partners + Bulgaria, Israel, Latvia, Slovakia are under testing and will be online soon Achievements so far Rossella Caffo, MIBAC Warsaw, 19 May 2008

Cultural institutions contributing to MICHAEL Ministries Government and local agencies for cultural heritage Foundations Research networks Universities Libraries Archives Museums National surveys of digital collections reach thousands of cultural institutions at national, regional and local level. Rossella Caffo, MIBAC Warsaw, 19 May 2008

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 Rossella Caffo, MIBAC Warsaw, 19 May 2008

European Impact Council Conclusions on the Digitisation and Online Accessibility of Cultural Material and Digital Preservation (2006/C 297/01), THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION […] underlines […] the work ongoing in the Michael and Michael Plus projects in describing and linking digital collections of museums, libraries and archives from different Member States and providing access to these collections… Rossella Caffo, MIBAC Warsaw, 19 May 2008

National Impact Integration with national programmes FR: Integration with Collections portal (unique access point to the heritage data bases) IT: Integration with the on-going Portal for the Italian Culture ( UK: Linked initiatives Peoples Network Discover Service 24 Hour Museum Regional portals and also Germany, Greece, Hungary, Estonia…

National impact Involvement of cultural institutions MICHAEL established a network of thousands of European cultural institutions: Large, medium and small National, regional or local Public and private Every heritage sector (Museums, Libraries, Archives, Catalogue and preservation offices, Education, Research institutes etc…) Institutions and private organisations are now asking to contribute their data into MICHAEL

An example: MICHAEL-IT The survey of the Italian digital collections: covers the whole territory (national and local cultural bodies) includes all the CH sectors (archives, libraries, museums, audiovisual, archeology, built heritage, landscape…) Described so far in the system: 3444 digital collections 1780 institutions 1950 services/products 1905 physical collections 570 projects/programs MICHAEL-IT is an action line of the Italian Portal for Culture CulturaItalia Rossella Caffo, MIBAC Warsaw, 19 May 2008

Coordination MiBAC Cooperation Cooperation with the 20 Regions Cooperation with the Conference of the Rectors (CRUI) Agreement with the Ministry of the Education Institutions involved More than 600 MiBAC cultural institutions (libraries, museums, archives, archaeological sites, preservation offices, central institutes) 20 Italian Regions: thousands of museums, libraries, archives Libraries and museums of the 77 Italian Universities MICHAEL-IT organisational framework

Benefits Benefits for ministries and local authorities MICHAEL proved to be a powerful tool for: building a road-map of digitisation of cultural heritage planning digitisation initiatives and monitoring digitisation programmes and projects undertaken or funded by ministries or local authorities valorising results of digitisation initiatives - integrating MICHAEL national instance into national aggregators MICHAEL allows the discovery of digital resources and fosters synergies between projects

Benefits for cultural institutions Through MICHAEL a cultural institution can: Reach wider audiences at national and international level Inform users and promote access to their collections Enhance their online profile and increase access to their collections Manage collections and large groupings of objects Plan further digitisation activities Benefits Rossella Caffo, MIBAC Warsaw, 19 May 2008

Benefits for the users MICHAEL service allows users to access information about digital cultural heritage coming from: –all cultural sectors: archives, libraries, museums, heritage, audiovisual, landscape… –cultural institutions of any kind: national, regional, local, large and small, public and private on a multilingual basis, by subject, period, spatial coverage, by institution type or location, through full text search, etc… Benefits Rossella Caffo, MIBAC Warsaw, 19 May 2008

Benefits for Europeana MICHAEL provides the European Digital Library with: – comprehensive, reliable and multilingual information – about thousands of digital collections from 20 countries – from all heritage sectors (archives, libraries, museums, monuments and archaeology…) => MICHAEL is the catalogue of Europeana Benefits Rossella Caffo, MIBAC Warsaw, 19 May 2008

MICHAEL beyond EC CANADA ISRAEL South Eastern Europe Contacts Proposal of cooperation Platform installation Expression of interest Cooperation with SEEDI Rossella Caffo, MIBAC Warsaw, 19 May 2008

Thanks for your attention ! Rossella Caffo Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali