Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 1 MINERVA - Ministerial NEtwoRk for Valorising Activities in digitisation CIDOC 2005 Zagreb, May 1 Towards an Agreed European Platform for Digitisation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage Giuliana De Francesco Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 2 MINERVA framework eEurope Initiative (december 1999) to foster the Internet and new economy across Europe allow citizens to participate in the information society eEurope Action Plan (June 2000) 3d) European digital cultural content for global networks meeting of experts and representatives of EU Member States to stimulate European cultural content for global networks Lund Principles Lund Meeting, 4 April 2001

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 3 Lund Principles Digitisation of heritage resources crucial to: provide improved access to cultural heritage preserve Europe's collective cultural heritage sustain cultural diversity in a global environment also key resource for education and for the tourism and media industries To achieve eEurope objectives: ongoing forum for coordination of digitisation policies support a European view on policies and programmes exchange and promote good practices, guidelines and skills work in a collaborative manner to make visible and accessible the digitised cultural heritage of Europe

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 4 NRG: representatives appointed by Member States authorities to coordinate digitisation policies and programmes to guarantee a close relationship between the Ministries or other governmental institutions and the EC to assure that EC policies and programmes have a widespread diffusion in every country to be the voice of national policies and programmes at European level – to allow visibility to national initiatives The NRG meets every 6 months co-chaired by the rotating EU Presidency and the EC National Representatives Group

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 5 A network of Member States Ministries: to discuss, correlate and harmonise activities in digitisation of cultural and scientific content to create a common European platform made up of agreed recommendations, guidelines and standards to promote awareness and exchange of experiences and skills at European level to enlarge the network and establish further international cooperation MINERVA is a collaborate operative framework for implementing Lund Action Plan and organising its working groups (support to NRG) MINERVA - Ministerial NEtwoRk for Valorising Activities in digitisation

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 6 MINERVA Funded by the EC IST 5th FP (2002–2005) Started with 8 partners, representing 7 countries: Italy, coordinator (Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali) Belgium (Ministère de la communauté française) Finland (University of Helsinky) France (Ministère de la culture et de la communication) Spain (Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte) Sweden (Riksarkivet) United Kingdom (Museums, Archives and Libraries Council)

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 7 MINERVA Plus F unded by EC IST 6th FP ( ) Enlarges the network including NAS countries, sharing MINERVA objectives 18 partners representing 14 countries AustriaCzech Republic EstoniaGermany GreeceHungary IrelandIsrael ItalyMalta PolandPortugal RussiaSlovenia

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 8 MINERVA Network The remaining 6 EU countries: have a membership agreement andtake part on a regular basis to NRG and MINERVA activities MINERVA is a network of the 25 EU Member States ministries + Russia and Israel Italy coordinates the network Cyprus Denmark Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg The Netherlands

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 9 NRG – Charter of Parma Charter of Parma strategic document, continues and supports Lund Principles approved at the 5 th NRG meeting in Parma (2003) Printed: eng – fre - ita Online: eng – fre – ger – gre – ita – slk charterparma031119final.htm

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 10 Charter of Parma - Articles 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

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 11 Progress report of the National Representatives Group Coordinating Digitisation in Europe 1 st (2002) globalreport/globalrep2002.htm 2 nd (2003) includes contributions from NAS, Israel and Russia globalreport/globalrep2003.htm 3 rd (2004) under print NRG Global Report

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 12 MINERVA technical WPs WP3 Inventories, discovery of digitised content, multilingualism issues WP4 Interoperability, service provision, IPR WP5 User needs, quality framework for common access points WP6 Good practice and competence centres

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 13 WP3 Inventories and multilingualism Inventories, discovery of digitised content, multilingualism issues MINERVA+ specific topic: multilingual thesauri Key issues: Inventories of digital content and digitisation projects needed both for management and strategic issues and to enable access to European scientific and cultural digital contents Multilingualism issues

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 14 Inventories products Specifications for Inventories of Digitised Content metadata set for inventories of digital collections Definition of a data model and a metadata set for invetories of digital content

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 15 Inventories products French-Italian Prototype Portal of Digital Collections Specifications implemented through the open source platform used by the French Inventory project MICHAEL: a MINERVA spin-off project

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 16 WP4 Interoperability Interoperability, service provision, IPR MINERVA+ specific topic: business models for digitisation programmes Key issues: Technical and metadata standards to support interoperability, long term preservation, access, security of digital resources Recommendations on OAI DC.Culture IPR Round Tables

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 17 Interoperability products Technical Guidelines for Digital Cultural Content Creation Programmes In print: eng – fre – ita Online: eng – fre technicalguidelines.htm not a single prescriptive set of requirements to which all projects must conform identify areas where there is broad agreement –Flexible, context-specific requirements might be built –Conceived for policy-makers and funding programmes –Can be used for self-assessment by projects

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 18 Interoperability products Preparation for digitisation (Hardware, Software, Environment) Handling of originals The digitisation process Storage and management of the digital master material (File formats,Preservation strategies) Metadata creation/capture Publication (Delivery formats, 3D and Virtual Reality Issues, GIS, websites) Disclosure of resources (Metadata harvesting, Distributed searching) Re-use and re-purposing (Learning resource creation) Intellectual property rights and Copyright (Identifying, recording and managing IPR, Safeguarding IPR) TG structure: life cycle approach

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 19 WP5 Quality Identification of user needs, quality framework for common access points MINERVA+ specific topic: small cultural institutions requirements Key steps: Brussels Quality Framework (December 2001) Parma Quality Conference (November 2003) Berlin Quality Conference (April 2005)

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 20 Handbook for Quality in Cultural Websites: Improving Quality for Citizens Version 1.2 – Draft, November 2003 Printed: eng - ita Online: eng – ita publications/ qualitycriteria.htm publications/ Quality products - 1 Focussed on content -Intelligent use of the Web as an effective mean for the communication of culture -Quality as the result of interaction between cultural organisations and users -Accessibility and usability

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 21 Quality products - 2 Cultural Website Quality Principles A quality cultural website celebrates European cultural diversity by providing access for all to digital cultural content A quality website must be: responsive multilingual interoperable managed preserved transparent effective maintained accessible user centred

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 22 Ten Principle Cards Printed: eng – fre - ger – hol - ita Online: eng - fre - gre – spa – est – hun – ita – slo - slk publications/tenqualityprinciples.htm Front page: 10 Quality Principles Back page: Short explanation Quality products - 2

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 23 Quality Principles for Cultural Websites: a Handbook Quality Principles for Cultural Websites: a Handbook (2005) Printed: eng; fre and ita under preparation Online: eng – gre – hun qualitycommentary_en.htm A set of practical and pragmatic criteria Can be used to gain further insight into the compliance with the Principles A checklist, based on the critera, can be used in assessing the website Quality products - 3

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 24 Museo&Web - Planning Kit for a Quality Site for Small and Medium Sized Museums Based on –Quality handbooks –W3C accessibility guidelines Will follow: -Planning kit for schools -Planning kit for libraries Quality products - Practical tools

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 25 WP6 Good Practice Good practice and competence centres MINERVA+ specific topic: digitisation cost reduction Key issues: Identification of competence and advisory centres on digitisation Promotion of good practices developed within Member State programmes and project –First selection of good practices (2002) –New campaign started Submission forms available on MINERVA website

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 26 Good practice products Good Practice Handbook Printed: eng, fre, ita Online: ger – eng – gre - Fr – It – Por – Slk goodpract/document/goodpractices1_3.htm A practical handbook to the establishment, execution and management of digitisation projects Target: teams within and across cultural institutions planning, or executing, digitisation projects Complemented by the collection of existing guidelines on digitisation, available online in MINERVA website

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 27 International cooperation: cultural networks Coordination between the European cultural networks in the field of digital culture promoted by MINERVA aiming at: Sharing knowledge and exchanging experience Merging efforts together to maximise the impact of the individual projects Adopting common standards and agendas Avoiding duplication of effort and waste of resources Evolving towards a common European research area Cooperation has been established with: BRICKS – CALIMERA – DELOS – DIGICULT – EMII DCF – EPOCH – ERPANET - EUROMED HERITAGE II – EVA – HEREIN – MINERVA – MUSICNETWORK –PRESTOSPACE - SCRAN

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 28 Information for All Programme (IFAP) –MINERVA participation to IFAP St. Petersburg and Petropavlovsk annual conferences –MINERVA participation in the IFAP board meeting (October 2004) MEDCULT project, for dissemination of MINERVA products within Arab-speaking Mediterranean countries of the STRABON network, approved by IFAP board (April 2005) International cooperation: UNESCO

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 29 Regional Bureau for Science in Europe – ROSTE Joint organisation of the SEE Regional Meeting on Digitisation of Cultural Heritage (Ohrid, March 2005), in cooperation with the FYROM Ministry of Culture Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, FYROM, Romania, Serbia & Montenegro Set of Recommendations on digitisation of cultural heritage in South-Eastern Europe that will be adopted as an official UNESCO document International cooperation: UNESCO

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 30 Ohrid outcome Proposal of training actions on digitisation in South-Eastern Europe Supported by MINERVA Submitted to EC in the framework of Marie Curie programme for knowledge transfer

Giuliana De Francesco, MiBACCIDOC Zagreb 31 contact details: contact details: Find out more! Thank you for your kind attention