Page 1III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 MICHAEL: a network of portals promoting online access to digital culture Giuliana De Francesco Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali The third SEEDI International Conference: Digitization of cultural and scientific heritage, Cetinje, Montenegro, September 13-15, 2007 South-Eastern European Digitization Initiative

Page 2III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 MICHAEL Objective: Launching a European online service to enable European cultural heritage to be promoted to a worldwide audience Multilingual Inventory of Cultural Heritage in Europe

Page 3III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 MICHAEL vision Connecting people to collections from museums, libraries, archives, any cultural and scientific organisation across Europe Susan teaches music in a primary school St Johns College Cambridge: Manuscript collection Play burmese musical instruments online: Museums Open Learning Initiative

Page 4III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 MICHAEL vision The MICHAEL vision (2003-4): –To give visibility and make available the richness of the European Cultural legacy –To provide a single high level access point to the whole European cultural and scientific heritage through the Internet –To allow access to all sectors of society, including the young, the elderly, the disadvantaged, the educated, the serious researcher and the merely interested; MICHAEL project was seen as a first step to unlocking the digital items held in databases from across Europe

Page 5III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 Cross domain approach MICHAEL aimed since the beginning at bringing together every cultural and scientific sector… –Archives –Libraries –Museums –Heritage cataloguing and preservation offices –Audiovisual –Scientific heritage and research –Education… … and scientific and cultural institutions of all kind and scale –National –Regional –Local –Public and private –Large and small …

Page 6III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 The project Funded by the eTen programme (deployment) Spin-off of the MINERVA project. Based on: the work of the MINERVA working groups on Inventories, discovery of digitised content and multilingualism (wp3), Interoperability and service provision (wp4) the software platform of the French Catalogue des fonds culturels numérisés MICHAEL (UK, FR, IT) started June 2004 MICHAELplus (+ 11 countries) started June 2006

Page 7III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 The partnership Ministries and national agencies, universities, cultural institutions, technical support companies from 16 countries MICHAEL: 3 countries, 5 partners MICHAELplus: 14 countries, 38 partners More European countries are currently implementing the MICHAEL service on the basis of their own investment, without any EC funding: Belgium Flemish Community Estonia Slovak Republic Total: 18 countries, more than 40 partners Bulgaria

Page 8III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September A single multilingual access point to European digital cultural collections MICHAEL European portal launched December 2006

Page 9III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September Three national portals online

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Page 12III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 MICHAEL national portals FR 1450 digital collections 500 institutions 250 services-products IT 2588 digital collections 1396 institutions 1404 services/products 1520 physical collections 423 projects/programs UK 766 digital collections 616 services 321 projects 306 institutions

Page 13III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September More national portals underway

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Page 15III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September national database > > 1 portal Phase 2, MichaelPLUS (2006-8): Czech Republic Finland Germany Greece Hungary Malta The Netherlands Spain Poland Portugal Sweden Phase 1, MICHAEL (2004-7): Italy France United Kingdom MICHAEL portals Recently: Belgium Flemish Community Estonia Slovak Republic Bulgaria

Page 16III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 Digital collections What is a digital collection? Dublin Core definition: The term 'collection' can be applied to any aggregation of physical or digital items A digital collection is an aggregation of digital items: collections of digital surrogates of physical items, collections of 'born-digital' items catalogues of such collections

Page 17III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 Contents of a digital collection might include: Aggregations of digital images, text, audio, video, 3D objects, mixed media Databases Collections of web resources Internet directories and subject gateways Digital archives Digital inventories, catalogues, finding aids etc. Digital collections

Page 18III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 International standards Metadata for collection description –RSLP, Dublin Core Collections AP MICHAEL data model is suitable for describing digital collections belonging to every sector of cultural heritage and for recording related and context information: –Institutions (creator, owner, keeper, manager) –Projects / programmes (funding) –Services / products (giving access) –Physical collections ( represented full or in part) MICHAEL DM is an agreed international standard; a MICHAEL-DC AP is available

Page 19III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 International standards Terminologies ISO: Language (ISO 639); Spatial coverage (ISO 3166 Countries) DCMI: Digital type (DCMI Type) UNESCO thesaurus: Subject (UNESCO) W3C/WAI: WAI (WAI/MICHAEL) MINERVA and MICHAEL –Digital format (MINERVA/MICHAEL) –Period (MICHAEL) –Institution type (MINERVA/MICHAEL) –Access type (MINERVA/MICHAEL) –Access conditions (MICHAEL) –Audience (MINERVA/MICHAEL)

Page 20III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 International standards Technology XML records/databases OAI-PMH protocol for metadata harvesting National instances make XML metadata records available through OAI-PMH The European service has no content component of it own but is the sum of records created and maintained by each constituent country MICHAEL EU Service OAI repository retrieves metadata across the Internet from the national instances

Page 21III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 International standards Rights MICHAEL metadata are made available to the public under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial (by-nc) licence. This means that everyone can copy, distribute and re-use the metadata for non-commercial purposes, provided that the source is mentioned

Page 22III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 Open source software MICHAEL software platform consists of two modules working together: –A Production module (creation, editing, importing and managing of records through web forms) –A Publishing module (interface to allow user access through web browser) The platform is built on top of well known open source components such as: –Apache Cocoon –eXist –Xdepo: –SDX, Apache Lucene search engine

Page 23III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 MICHAEL software is being published open source on Sourceforge.net

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Page 25III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 MICHAEL users Many different user communities –Education –Research –Cultural tourism –Co-ordination –Creative industries –Cultural services –General public

Page 26III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 INTERNET CONTENT utente MICHAEL NATIONAL INSTANCE MICHAEL European portal MICHAEL NATIONAL INSTANCE MICHAEL NATIONALE iNSTANCE CONTENT MICHAEL Users

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Page 28III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 Human translation of static pages and editorial content All languages spoken in partner countries User may choose in which language to browse the portal Multilingual access

Page 29III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 Translation of European standard terminologies. Local terminologies are mapped into the European ones Multilingual access

Page 30III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 Free text fields in the records original language Multilingual access

Page 31III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 Automatic translation tool Multilingual access

Page 32III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 Multilingual access

Page 33III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 Keywords appear in the language chosen for browsing Multilingual access

Page 34III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 MICHAEL Culture AISBL In order to guarantee the sustainability and evolution of the service after the end of the project, MICHAEL partners established (July 2007) an international not-for-profit association under Belgian Law (AISBL), MICHAEL Culture –Founder members: MCC; MiBAC; Dédale; Amitié –Already joined: MLA; SPK MICHAEL Culture aims at getting membership from all countries willing to join the MICHAEL European Service and to share its cross-domain vision

Page 35III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September MICHAEL project website

Page 36III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 MICHAEL and the European Digital Library

Page 37III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 The European Digital Library EC Communication: i2010: Digital Libraries (30 th September 2005) a common multilingual access point to Europes distributed digital cultural and scientific heritage –all types of cultural material texts, audiovisual, museum objects, archival records etc –held in different places by different organisations –targeted at delivering rapidly a critical mass of resources to the users

Page 38III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 Bruxelles, 13 th November 2006 Ministerial conclusions on Digitisation and Online Accessibility of Cultural Material, and Digital Preservation. In order to build the European Digital Library, two are the main building blocks: The European Library (TEL) as a gateway to the collective resources of national libraries across Europe MICHAEL-MICHAELplus and the work ongoing in describing and linking digital collections of museums, libraries and archives from different Member States and providing access to these collections The European Digital Library

Page 39III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 MICHAEL takes part to the process of building the European digital library : MICHAEL and MICHAEL Plus partners are participating in EDLNet project (eContent+ / ) and are leading the workpackage on human and political interoperability MICHAEL / MICHAEL Plus has contributed to the Interoperability Working Group set up by the Commission MICHAEL Culture AISBL is one of the founder members (representing Ministries and cross-sector interests) of EDL Foundation will be created in 2007 – supported by the EDLNet project MICHAEL and the European Digital Library

Page 40III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 MICHAEL provides a catalogue of the digital collections, Europe-wide, covering all sectors MICHAEL locates digital collections from across Europe that will be collected into the European Digital Library MICHAEL holds all the technical details needed to enable machine-to-machine services MICHAEL holds details of interoperability protocols supported by different databases –Z39.50, OAI-PMH, Web Services MICHAEL holds details of terminologies used by different databases MICHAEL and the European Digital Library

Page 41III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 MICHAEL and the European Digital Library MICHAEL established a comprehensive network of thousands of European cultural and scientific organisations: Large, medium and small National, regional or local Public and private Every scientific and cultural sector (Museums, Libraries, Archives, Catalogue and preservation offices, Education, Research institutes etc…) The network successfully tested cooperative approach and working methods

Page 42III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 European Digital Library Collections Items MICHAELTEL MICHAEL and the European Digital Library Diagram developed at TEL / MICHAEL meeting, Frankfurt, March 2006 National Library collections National LibrariesNational & Regional Museums, Audio-Visual, Archives and Libraries

Page 43III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007 Thank you for your kind attention! Giuliana De Francesco