1. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa Ministerial NEtwoRk for Valorising Activities in digitisation Why MINERVA? a European network for promoting culture through the web

2. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa The eEurope initiative started on December 1999 to foster the internet and new economy development across Europe and allow the citizens to participate to the information society. Member States and the European Commission were invited to define coordination mechanisms for digitisation policies and programmes. The MINERVA background: eEurope

3. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa The Lund meeting The European Commission organised on 4th April 2001 in Lund a meeting of experts and representatives from Member States to accomplish coordination mechanisms of digitisation policies and programmes across Europe. The Lund Principles and the Lund Action Plan are the results of the convention.

4. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa The European culture can be freely accessible through the digitisation of cultural content. This will also support and promote the cultural difference in a global scenario. The Lund Principles

5. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa The European Commission asked the Member States to officially nominate their national representatives for digitisation in the cultural sector. All the people appointed constitute the National Representatives Group The National Representatives Group NRG

6. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa National Representatives Group The NRG meets every 6 months to share national experiences under the aegis of the presidency in turn.

7. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa MINERVA MINERVA is the operative section of the NRG Project funded by the EC in the frame of IST (5th Framework Programme) then enlarged to the new countries (6th Framework Programme) to implement the Lund Action Plan

8. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa MINERVA Network MINERVA is a network of all the 25 EU Member States ministries + Russia and Israel Italy coordinates the project

9. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa MINERVA goals To discuss, correlate and harmonise activities carried out in digitisation of cultural content to promote awareness and exchange of experiences at European level To create a common European platform of recommendations and guidelines about digitisation, standards, long-term accessibility, preservation and quality of cultural web sites. To coordinate the national programmes To enlarge the network and to cooperate with other projects acting in the field of digitisation To create the conditions for the sustainability of the network

10. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa Impact MINERVA has demonstrated to have contributed to the creation of a broad consensus at institutional level on the importance of promoting the European culture trhough the web. The NRG activated a mechanism of institutional cooperation among the Presidencies of the Council of the European Unione. MINERVA affected the national digitisation prorammes carried on by member States with tangible results in Belgium, France, Italy and Sweden.

11. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa The results The Charter of Parma The Progress Report The Good Practices Handbook The Principles and the Handbook for quality in cultural web sites The Technical Guidelines Training The cluster MICHAEL and the Portal of culture

12. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa The Charter of Parma During the conference Quality in cultural Web sites (Parma 20-21 November 2003), event of the Italian Presidency, the Charter of Parma was introduced and adopted by the NRG to strengthen the Lund Principles that are its background.

13. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa The articles of the Charter of Parma Art. 1Intelligent use of new technologies Art. 2 Accessibility Art. 3 Quality Art. 4 IPR and privacy Art. 5 Interoperability and standards Art. 6 Inventories and multiligualism Art. 7 Benchmarking Art. 8 Cooperation at national, European and international levels Art. 9 Enlargement Art. 10Building the future together: at the forefront of the knowledge society

14. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa The Progress Report The Progress Report of the NRG has the objective of promoting digitisation policies, programmes and projects in the field of cultural heritage carried on by Member States. The updating 2004 is forthcoming

15. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa Good practices handbook A practical handbook to the establishment, execution and management of digitisation projects. Target: teams within and across cultural institutions who are contemplating, or are already executing, digitisation projects. Foreword: the research undertaken all over Europe, enriched with an online collection of existing guidelines on digitisation.

16. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa Cultural web site quality principles A quality cultural website celebrates European cultural diversity by providing access for all to digital cultural content. A quality website must be: transparent - effective - maintained - accessible – user centred - responsive - multilingual - interoperable - managed - preserved

17. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa The quality handbook Goal: exploiting the possibilities of the web communication in the filed of the cultural heritage Key steps : Brussels Quality Framework, (December 2001, during the Belgian Presidency) MINERVA WP5 activity, Identification of user needs, content and quality framework for common access points Ongoing activity : dissemination, testing and validation on the field

18. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa Technical Guidelines for digital cultural content creation programmes Based on the activities carried out by NOF elaborated together with PULMAN, EMII-DCF ERPANET and Minerva Thought for decision makers and managers of digitisation programmes and projects Foster the development of interoperable content taking also into account long term preservation issues.

19. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa 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.MINERVA technical guidelines 2.digitisation process, cataloguing and management, including metadata for the preservation; 3.legal aspects: IPR/copyright and data protection; 4.quality: criteria for design and development of cultural Web sites; 5.management of projects and services.

20. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa The cluster Two meetings of the European cultural networks (Rome, 30 October 2003 and Florence 31 March 2004) were organised by Minera, with the aim of creating a synergies and cooperations among the running projects in the area of digital culture. The following projects are so far involved: BRICKS, CALIMERA, DELOS, DIGICULT, EMII- DCF, EPOCH, ERPANET, EUROMED HERITAGE II, EVA, HEREIN, MINERVA, MUSICNETWORK, PRESTOSPACE, SCRAN

21. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa Minerva and MinervaPLUS working groups Inventories & discoery of digitised content> multilingual thesauri Interoperability, Service Provision & IPR> business models for digitisation programmes Quality & User requirements> small cultural institutions requirements Good Practices & Competence Centres> cost reduction for cultural digitisation

22. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa MICHAEL Multilingual Inventory of Cultural Heritage in Europe Project supported by the eTEN programme, originally involving Italy, UK and France (currently under preparation the extension to new participants), to establish an international online service, to search, browse and examine multiple national cultural portals (starting with France, Italy, and UK) from a single point of access, based on standards and open source software.

23. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa The NRG sustainability Due to the success achieved in term of impact on the institutions, the NRG is working now on a long term sustainability strategy. The concrete results of MINERVA should find the way to be further exploited and improved. Next meetings in Luxembourg (June 2005) and UK (November 2005) will define the programme and organisation for the next years.

24. Berlin, 7-8 April 2005Antonella Fresa THANK YOU fresa@promoter.it for further information www.minervaeurope.org