Academia Europaea Workshop on ‘Virtuality’, Venice 2001 Virtuality 18 November 2001 Dr Seamus Ross Director, Humanities Computing & Information Management Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute--HATII ERPANET, the Lund Principles, & the Brussels Quality Framework Scottish Architects' Papers Project The Grand Hotel at St Andrews ref no. SC

Academia Europaea Workshop on ‘Virtuality’, Venice 2001 ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross 2 Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII) Seamus Ross -- Seamus Ross -- Undergraduate & Postgraduate Teaching Systems & Laboratory Development and Management Research (e.g. digital preservation studies, ICT in the heritage sector, evaluation studies) Consultancy Summer Schools, Conferences & Workshops

Academia Europaea Workshop on ‘Virtuality’, Venice 2001 ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross 3 EU Experts Identified Digitisation Needs improve and reinforce the co-ordination of digitisation activities across Europe; enable the efficient and effective use of digitisation to open up Europe’s unique and significant wealth in its cultural and scientific heritage; reduce, if not eliminate, redundancy and fragmentation of effort, divergence of technical approaches, and waste of financial resources; facilitate the creation of Europe’s eContent industries; capitalize on the investment made digital resources creation; ensure visibility and interoperability of the resources; deliver digital assets that promote and reflect cultural diversity; and, bring cohesiveness and shared vision to what is currently a fragmented area of activity.

Academia Europaea Workshop on ‘Virtuality’, Venice 2001 ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross 4 The Lund Meeting of EU Experts 4 April 2001 Aimed to enable a visible, accessible and sustainable heritage Support for cultural diversity, education and content industries Digitised resources of great variety and richness Need for evidence of best practices and business case models Details of the Lund Meeting can be found at:

Academia Europaea Workshop on ‘Virtuality’, Venice 2001 ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross 5 Concluding Messages from LUND Avoid duplicate initiatives – co-ordinate activity Digitisation is a chain of activities of which selection is one small part--but it is an essential part Digitisation creates new assets, but it consumes scarce resources. A balance must be struck. Don’t be a lemming--the rush to digitise makes us followers not leaders Focus on high quality resources (QA & evaluation) –Accurate, authentic, reliable, and complete Planning (e.g. Workflow) and Project management key steps Focus on economic sustainability of resources Skills base -- invest first See for example: (

Academia Europaea Workshop on ‘Virtuality’, Venice 2001 ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross 6 Benchmarking  Exchange good practice, define indicators, identify policy and implement effectively  methods of evaluating and establishing priorities  funding routes and budget responsibilities  Effective management of policy implementation  use and competencies of personnel and their structures   productivity targets and volumes of digitised output  impact in terms of value added to the base service  technical achievements and quality of the output Benchmarking is a continuous exercise essentially aimed at evaluating and understanding where improvements are needed and how “best practices” can be transferred and implemented. --Benchmarking can help policymakers to improve national performance

Academia Europaea Workshop on ‘Virtuality’, Venice 2001 ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross 7 Measuring Quality The Lund Action Plan has the objective 'to optimise the value and to develop shared visions of European content.' –At Brussels work began to develop ‘quality criteria for sites delivering cultural content is a core issue’ See:

Academia Europaea Workshop on ‘Virtuality’, Venice 2001 ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross 8 Measures of Quality agreed vocabulary for describing quality features of web sites automated tool for expressing these characteristics in a machine readable way encouragement for system of self- registration of web sites endorsement of descriptions of web sites by system of approval

Academia Europaea Workshop on ‘Virtuality’, Venice 2001 ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross 9 Brussels Quality Framework The Commission working with nominated experts should develop a framework for quality criteria, capable of being adopted by Member States, covering: –scope (coverage, purpose, audience), –authority and accuracy, –usability, –multilingualism and –technical and descriptive standards Actions necessary for translating the framework into requirements and guidelines for a self-labelling approach for cultural content sites should be identified Member States should identify possible strategies and approaches for validating information quality (eg self-evaluation by toolkits/checklists on how the quality data was derived, by third party organisations, by peer review)

Academia Europaea Workshop on ‘Virtuality’, Venice 2001 ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross 10 Training Lack of information about training needs Lack of information as to training approaches of different countries Need for training strategies and measurements for quality of training Mechanisms to assess the impact of training Ensure the availability of quality training –Perhaps establish a Cultural Informatics Certificate along the lines of the ECDL

Academia Europaea Workshop on ‘Virtuality’, Venice 2001 ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross 11 Outcome of Brussels More work on standards: quality measures, benchmarking, training, metadata. Fora for active exchange of information between those who have experience in digitisation and those who are seeking to embark on the process should be established – encouraging further work on standards and guidelines. Member States should make existing and accepted guidelines visible and link this with policy profiles. Guidelines emerging with a high level of acceptance across different Member States or different professional bodies should be clearly identified. Collaboration between Member States essential

Academia Europaea Workshop on ‘Virtuality’, Venice 2001 ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross 12 Seamus Ross, The British Academy Recurring Value of Electronic Records Industry dependent Product liability Competitive advantage Recurring value through reuse Commercially valuable information a candidate for preservation Corporate memory Costs of re-creation vs storage

Academia Europaea Workshop on ‘Virtuality’, Venice 2001 ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross 13 Key Preservation Issues Medium –storage media naturally decay Technological (e.g. hardware/software) –hardware and software obsolescence makes data/information inaccessible Intellectual –validation of integrity and authenticity Contextual –avoid loss of meaning with metadata Legal Impediments

Academia Europaea Workshop on ‘Virtuality’, Venice 2001 ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross 14 Obsolescence & degradation Hardware (including access devices) Software –Operating Systems –Device drivers –Applications Media developments & degradation Contextual divergence Legal impediments Documentation & system divergence Distributed Networks

Academia Europaea Workshop on ‘Virtuality’, Venice 2001 ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross 15 Obstacles to accessing surviving digital resources Loss of functionality of access devices (e.g. lack of drivers or interface functionality) Media degradation (e.g. temp & hum, disaster, manufacturer defects) Loss of manipulation capabilities (e.g hardware, software, applications) Loss of presentation capabilities Weak links in creation chain (capture, manipulation, storage, dissemination)

Academia Europaea Workshop on ‘Virtuality’, Venice 2001 ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross 16 ERPANET 1.2 million EURO Project over 36 months –EU Funding of 900,000 Euros –Swiss Government Funding of 300,00 Euros Four key partners –HATII, University of Glasgow –The National Archives of the Netherlands –The National Archives of Switzerland –The University of Urbino

Academia Europaea Workshop on ‘Virtuality’, Venice 2001 ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross 17 ERPANET ERPANET will enhance the preservation of cultural heritage and scientific digital objects through nine core objectives. –raise awareness of sources of information about DO preservation –appraise and evaluate information sources and developments in digital preservation and make available results of research; –provide an enquiry and advisory service on preservation issues, practice and technology; –implement six development workshops ; –hold a suite of eight training seminars; –Conduct sixty case studies; –stimulate research and encourage the development of standards in the areas of digitisation and digital preservation from within existing EU supported projects and with Europe; –build an online community; and, –stimulate awareness among software producers of the preservation needs of the user community.

Academia Europaea Workshop on ‘Virtuality’, Venice 2001 ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross 18 ERPANET Started on 5 November 2001 with Launch Meeting in Glasgow Official Launch to happen on 21 November First Event in Madrid January 2002 co-sponsored under the Spanish Presidency ERPANET: