MICHAEL and the Italian Culture Portal: a cooperation model among national, regional, and local institutions The MICHAEL Project is funded under the European Commission eTEN Programme Rossella Caffo - MiBAC Coordinator of the MICHAEL project

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo Background Under the impulse of MINERVA, MiBAC started up a wide range of digitisation initiatives. MICHAEL ITALIAN CULTURE PORTAL MEDCULT National & European Projects LOCAL PROJECTS MINERVA

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo What MICHAEL-IT is MICHAEL-IT is a multilingual service providing an integrated and unique access to Italian digital cultural collections on a cross domain basis.

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo 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…) What MICHAEL-IT does 2489 digital collections 1346 institutions 1356 services/products 1424 physical collections 410 projects/programs MICHAEL-IT is one of the action lines of the Italian Culture Portal.

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo The MICHAEL-IT actors Coordination MiBAC – DG for the technological innovation and promotion (OTEBAC) Cooperation with other ministries Agreement with the Ministry of the Public Education Institution involved More than 600 MiBAC cultural institutions (libraries, museums, archives, archaeological sites, preservation offices, central institutes) 20 Italian Regions: thousands museums, libraries, archives Libraries and museums of the 77 Italian universities

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo Joining MICHAEL-IT A communication campaign to join the MICHAEL service has been launched. It is addressed to all the cultural institutions that whish to give more visibility to their digital collections. These cultural institutions are invited to become associated members of the MICHAEL Culture Aisbl.

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo What the Culture Portal is The Italian Culture Portal - CulturaItalia is a unique, multilingual and integrated point of access to the Italian cultural heritage of all sectors. CulturaItalia aggregates through the metadata the existing digital libraries in order to create the Digital Library of the Italian cultural heritage.

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo Strategy 1. Tight cooperation among: the public and private sectors museum, libraries, archives, preservation and administrative offices national, regional and local institutions universities and other ministries 2. Integration with other initiatives and projects: MICHAEL-IT Regional portals etc. CulturaItalia is based on the MINERVA and MICHAEL recommendations, guidelines, results.

June 21, 2007 Institutional actors: main agreements The Regions The Italian Ministry and all its institutes and offices The 77 Italian Universities The Ministry of University and Research The library of the Senate The Conference of the Italian bishops

June 21, 2007 Other institutions: first agreements Biennale di Venezia BAICR CINECA EXIBART FRATELLI ALINARI INDIRE ISTITUTO LUCE QUERINI STAMPALIA TECHE RAI TOURING CLUB ITALIANO The group of the metadata providers is constantly growing.

June 21, 2007 Workplan 2007 July, involvement of all the Italian Regions From July, loading of 500,000 records per month September, launch of the communication campaign December, official launch of CulturaItalia End of 2007, 2,5 millions of records uploaded

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo Content 1. Index of metadata 2. Editorial content 3. Selected and indexed cultural web sites

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo The application profile CulturaItalia organizes in a unique index of (meta)data harvested from repositories coming from different providers: ministry’s institutions private institutions regions universities Each provider holds the rights of the digital objects shown through the portal and is responsible for their maintenance and updating. A specific AP based on Dublin Core has been adopted as metadata standard, as the most used internationally. It describes the digital and tangible resources of all the CH. The metadata describe the resources at item level. Through the harvesting of the metadata and the application profile, CulturaItalia aggregates the digital resources of the Italian digital libraries.

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo The index The index of the metadata is structured as a tree and gathers references to the digital and digitised “objects” of the Italian cultural heritage. These objects are intended in a broad sense: work of art, monuments, digital images, audiovisual, events, web pages etc. THE INDEX CAN BE CONSIDERED AS THE DIGITAL LIBRARY OF THE ITALIAN CULTURAL HERITAGE

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo Who - institutions museum libraries… - people authors performers… What - tangible heritage churches archaeological sites.. - events - digital resources… Where regions / districts / towns… When - from geological eras to now The index structure

June 21, 2007 The campaign “Join CulturaItalia will be launched in autumn, in parallel with the MICHAEL one. It is addressed to the public and private cultural institutions that whish to share their (meta)data. Joining CulturaItalia The main objective is to increase the metadata providers according to a cooperative model.

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo The current work carried out by OTEBAC is: 1.Define agreements with public or private partners, invited to join the project 2.Identify data-bases to be harvested 3.Define the level of the data publication through the portal Work flow

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo 4.If data are provided with DC metadata they can be harvested directly; 5.otherwise a mapping between PICO AP and the data model of the databases must be defined 6.The provider must install on its servers a OAI- PMH repository (MiBAC can provide “ready- to-use” technical solutions) 7.The provider must create a script to generate XML metadata record, exporting values from the data bases. Work flow

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo MICHAEL-IT and the Culture Portal’s connections THE SAME ACTORS MICHAEL-IT set up a wide network on the whole Italian territory that involves all the CH sectors (more than 600 Ministry’s cultural institutions, 20 Italian Regions, the libraries and museums of the 77 Italian universities, the Ministry of public education). The Culture Portal benefited from the network set up for MICHAEL-IT. The same offices and the same experts that carried out the census of the digital collections, contributed to the identification of those data bases gathered in MIHCAEL-IT that could provide their metadata to the Portal.

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo MICHAEL-IT and the Culture Portal’s connections THE SAME STANDARDS an open source software platform MINERVA recommendations and guidelines data models aligned to the Dublin Core metadata harvesting through OAI-PMH a distributed architecture The technical integration of both platforms is underway.

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo MICHAEL describes the digital collections; the Culture Portal gives access to the digital and digitised objects through their metadata. Both projects are integrated. So… …MICHAEL is the CATALOGUE, the Culture Portal the DIGITAL LIBRARY of the Italian cultural heritage. MICHAEL and the Culture Portal: different goals

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo Benefits for the small cultural institutions Thanks to MICHAEL-IT and the Culture Portal the small cultural institutions will: reach wider audiences at national and international level; increasing their online profile; inform users about the collections and digital objects they own and promoting the access to them.

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo MICHAEL and the European Digital Library 13 November 2006 Bruxelles, Council of the Ministers of Culture Adoption of the text “Digitisation and Online Accessibility of Cultural Material, and Digital Preservation” that says that, to build the European Digital Library, two are the main bricks: CENL and the service “The European Library” that provides access to the national libraries across Europe MICHAEL and the European portal of the digital collections

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo In conclusion Thanks to the use of international standards and guidelines as well as open source software, MICHAEL-IT and the Italian Culture Portal can be considered as bricks of the European Digital Library. They offer to the EuDL: the catalogue and the index of the Italian digital collections and resources the involvement of the cultural institutions of all sectors and levels (national, regional, local); a centralised coordination. MICHAEL-IT is the catalogue of the Digital Library of the Italian cultural heritage; MICHAEL-EU is the catalogue of the Digital Library of the European cultural heritage.

June 21, 2007Rossella Caffo Thanks for your attention The MICHAEL project web site The MICHAEL European portal The Italian Culture Portal