1 MINERVA - Towards a European Platform for Digitisation of Cultural and Scientific Content Belgrade CALIMERA Conference Belgrade, November 15 th, 2004 Giuliana De Francesco 1

2 MINERVA framework eEurope initiative (december 1999) Lund, 4th April 2001: meeting of experts and representatives from EU Member States Lund Principles Lund Action Plan

3 MINERVA framework Lund Principles: Digitisation of Europe's cultural and scientific heritage is crucial: For providing improved access for citizens For preserving Europe's collective cultural heritage (both past and future) For sustaining cultural diversity in a global environment Is a key resource for education and for the tourism and media industries Lund Action Plan: establishes a set of actions to be carried out by Member States and EC To progress, an ongoing forum for coordination of digitisation policies was needed

4 Set up of the National Representatives Group (NRG), made up of representatives officially appointed by Member States to coordinate digitisation policies and programmes to facilitate and monitor the adoption and implementation of the Lund Principles and Action Plan NAS NRG appointed in 2003 The NRG meets every 6 months 7 th NRG meeting: 17th September 2004, The Hague. Next meeting in Luxembourg National Representatives Group - NRG Charter of Parma Strategic document continuing and supporting the Lund Principles, approved at the 5 th NRG meeting in Parma

5 is the operative arm of the NRG for implementing Lund Action Plan and organising its working groups funded by the EC IST 5th Framework Programme (2002– 2005) A network of Member States Ministries: to discuss, correlate and harmonise activities carried out in digitisation of European cultural content to create an agreed European platform made up of recommendations and guidelines to give international visibility to national initiatives to embed the results of European coordination in national digitisation activities MINERVA Ministerial NEtwoRk for Valorising Activities in digitisation

6 MINERVA and MINERVA Plus MINERVA Plus (funded by the EC IST 6th FP) extends the network to: the 15 former EU Member States, the NAS (6 at start: Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia) Israel and Russia Spain Sweden United Kingdom 7 original partners: Belgium Finland France Italy

7 How MINERVA works Working groups Publications (guidelines, handbooks, reports) Networking activities (enlargement of the network, website, newsletter, workshops, dissemination, on-line training, cooperation with other projects)

8 MINERVA Workgroups Inventories, discovery of digitised content, multilingualism. M+ specific topic: multilingual thesauri Interoperability and service provision, IPR issues M+ specific topic: business models for digitisation programmes Identification of user needs, quality framework for common access points M+ specific topic: small cultural institutions requirements Good practices and competence centres M+ specific topic: digitisation cost reduction

9 MINERVA Publications Handbook for Quality in Cultural Websites: Improving Quality for Citizens Cultural Websites Quality Principles Commentary and exploration of the ten quality principles Good Practice Handbook

10 MINERVA Publications Technical Guidelines for Digital Cultural Content Creation Programmes NOT a single prescriptive set of requirements to which all projects must conform: seeks to identify those areas in which there is already commonality of approach and to provide a core around which context-specific requirements might be built in order that the content produced is as widely useful, portable and durable as possible, resources should be interoperable the appropriate use of standards in digitisation can deliver the consistency that makes interoperability possible standards support also access, preservation, security

11 MINERVA Publications: NRG Report Coordinating Digitisation in Europe. Progress Report of the National Representatives Group Policies, programmes and projects in the field of digitisation of cultural and scientific heritage carried on in Member States Progress of the coordination initiative Annual 2003: includes contributions from NAS, Israel and Russia

12 Cooperation: Digitisation cluster MINERVA promoted a coordination among European cultural networks/projects. Purpose: avoiding duplication of effort and waste of resources merging efforts together to maximise the impact of the individual projects sharing knowledge and exchanging experience promoting results (studies, reports, guidelines) adopting common standards and common agendas BRICKS CALIMERA DELOS DIGICULT FORUM HEREIN MINERVA MUSICNETWORK PRESTOSPACE SCRAN EMII-DCF EPOCH ERPANET Euromed Heritage II EVA Networks involved: :

13 MINERVA spin offs MICHAEL - Multilingual Inventory of Cultural Heritage in Europe ( funded by eTEN partners: initially France, Italy, and UK develops MINERVA achievements in the fields Inventories of digitised content and Interoperability Will develop a trans-european inventory of digital cultural collections open source software, open standards-based EURIDICE – EUropean Recommended materials for DIstance learning Courses for Educator –project under negotiation (eTen)

14 Opportunities INTERREG initiative Strand B: cross-national cooperation CADSES Among thematic priorities: Priority 2: Efficient and sustainable transport systems and access to the information society Priority 3: Promotion and management of landscape, natural and cultural heritage

15 contact details: Find out more! Thank you for your kind attention