1. eContentplus
ATHENA
Access to cultural heritage networks across Europe

2. Overview
ATHENA is a Network of Best Practice, within the eContentPlus Programme, developed by the MINERVA network.
It is coordinated by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage.
It began on 1 November 2008 and lasts for 30 months.
It involves:
Partners from 20 EU Member States and Israel, Russia & Azerbaijan;
109 top museums and other cultural institutions directly associated with the project;
Use of 20 European languages.

3. Participants Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali (IT)
PACKED vzw (BE)
Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis (BE)
Central Library of the Bulgarian Academy of sciences (BG)
Cyprus Research and Educational Foundation (CY)
Narodni Muzeum (CZ)
Cross Czech a.s. (CZ)
Devoteam Group (CZ)
Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (DE)
Bibliotheksservice-Zentrum Baden-Württemberg (DE)
Eesti Vabariigi Kultuuriministeerium (EE)
Museovirasto (FI)
Michael Culture AISBL (BE)
Association Dédale (FR)
Ethniko Metsovio Polytechnio (National Technical University of Athens) (GR)
Panepistemion Patron - University of Patras (GR)
Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum (HU)
Magyar Rádió Zrt. (HU)
Institutul de Memorie Culturală (RO)
Amitié srl (IT)
Ministère de la Culture, de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche (LU)
Valsts Aģentūra Kultūras Informācijas Sistēmas (LV)
Stichting Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (NL)
Stowarzyszenie Miedzynarodowe Centrum Zarzadzania Informacja (PL)
Luleå Tekniska Universitet (SE)
Ministrstvo za Kulturo Republike Slovenije (SI)
Ministerstvo kultúry SR (SK)
Cordia a.s (SK)
Collections Trust (UK)
Stichting European Digital Library (NL)
Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (FR)
Hellenic Ministry of Culture (GR)
Makash - Advancing CMC Applications in Education, Culture and Science (IL)
Centre PIC (RU)
Azǝrbaycan Respublikası Mǝdǝniyyǝt vǝ Turizm Nazirliyi (AZ)

4. Objectives 1 ATHENA aims to:
Support and encourage the participation of museums and other institutions not yet fully involved in Europeana;
Produce a set of scalable tools, recommendations and guidelines, focusing on multilingualism and semantics, metadata and thesauri, data structures and IPR issues. These will be used by museums to support internal digitization projects and to facilitate the integration of their digital content into Europeana;

5. Objectives 2 ATHENA also aims to:
Identify digital content present in the European museums;
Contribute to the integration of the different sectors of cultural heritage with the overall objective to merge all these different contributions into Europeana. This will be carried out in cooperation with other projects more directly focused on libraries and archives;
Develop a technical infrastructure that will enable semantic interoperability with Europeana.

6. Goals
ATHENA will:
Contribute to the development of Europeana through the use of shared standards
Build on the work of MINERVA in the field of harmonization of digitisation standards and guidelines
Use the experience gained by the MICHAEL project and national aggregators
Contribute to the interoperability of data, the use of the semantic web and the delivery quality services for the final user

7. Activities
Mapping metadata schemas, controlled terminologies and thesauri;
Aligning ontologies for the description of cultural heritage;
Identifying technical standards and protocols for the exchange of data;
Analysing problems related to copyright and suggesting possible solutions;
Developing technical infrastructure for the integration of data in Europeana;
Promoting a competence centre in each partner country;
Creating tools, recommendations and guidelines.

8. Workpackages
WP1 Project Management, monitoring and evaluation MiBAC (Italy)
WP2 Awareness and dissemination - enlarging the network and promoting the service SPK (Germany) & ICIMSS (Poland)
WP3 Identifying standards and developing recommendations RMAH (Belgium) & Collections Trust (UK)
WP4 Integration of existing data structure into the EDL Michael-Culture (Aisbl)
WP5 Coordination of contents MiBAC (Italy) & ICCS-NTUA (Greece)
WP6 Analysis of IPR issues and definition of possible solutions Packed (Belgium) & UP (Greece)
WP7 Development of plug-ins to be integrated within the European Digital Library ICCS-NTUA (Greece) & MKRS (Slovenia)

9. More information