The MINERVA Project Marzia PiccininnoPrato, 13th April 2004 Ministerial NEtwoRk for Valorising Activising in digitisation

What is MINERVA A NETWORK OF MEMBER STATES MINISTRIES to discuss, correlate and harmonise activities carried out in digitisation of cultural content; for creating agreed European common recommendations and guidelines about: –digitisation, –metadata, –long-term accessibility, –preservation., –quality of cultural web sites.

MINERVA is the operative section of a wider framework made up of the Lund Principles, the LUND Action Plan and the National Representatives Group (NRG) in the field of the cultural heritage digitisation The MINERVA framework

Foreground June 2000: eEurope Action Plan endorsement by EU Member States (renewed until 2005) 4 th of April 2001: meeting in Lund to discuss co-ordination mechanisms for digitisation programmes across European Member States and how to stimulate a European content on global networks. Lund Principles to be developed through the Lund Action Plan MINERVA is the instrument to support the implementation of the Lund Action Plan

eEurope eEurope is an initiative started in 1999 to foster internet development and new economy across Europe, in order allow to the citizen to get involved in the information society.

eEurope action plan The eEurope 2005 Action Plan was launched at the Seville European Council in June 2002 and endorsed by the Council of Ministers in the eEurope Resolution of January 2003.eEurope 2005 Action Plan It aims to develop modern public services and a dynamic environment for e-business through widespread availability of broadband access at competitive prices and a secure information infrastructure. ex_en.htm ex_en.htm

The Lund Principles They state that the Member States could make progress on the eEurope objective if they: establish an ongoing forum for coordination of policies for digitisation; support the developing of a European view on policies and programmes; exchange and promote good practices, guidelines and skills development; work in a collaborative manner to make visible and accessible the digitised cultural heritage of Europe.

Lund Action Plan The Lund Action Plan describes a first set of actions to be launched, and assigns responsibilities for them to Member States or to the European Commission, identifying also the areas where specific actions are needed.

National Representatives Group The NRG is made up of officially nominated experts from each Member State. Purposes: to coordinate digitisation policies and programmes and to facilitate the adoption and implementation of the Lund Action Plan. to monitor progress regarding the objectives encapsulated in the Lund Principles. The NRG meets every 6 months to share national experiences under the aegis of the presidency in turn.

The rolling agenda In order to guarantee the continuity of the initiatives undertaken, the past, present and future presidencies of the EU, supported by the MINERVA network, commonly define the so-called rolling agenda.

Activities MINERVA has demonstrated to contribute to the creation of a broad consensus on the European framework derived from the e- Europe initiative In many countries, under the aegis of MINERVA, many new national programmes of digitisation of cultural heritage started up

Working Groups; Publications (guidelines, reports, case studies, etc.); National Policy Profiles concerning digitisation; Harmonising activities; NRG meetings; Workshops; Co-operation with other projects; Enlargement of the network. What MINERVA does

Benchmarking To exchange comparable information between Member States on programmes and policies; To give visibility to national activities in order to share similar experiences and skills; To promote the adoption of a benchmarking framework as a key tool for coordinating and harmonising national activities as well as to develop measures to show progress and improvement.

Inventories, discovery of digitised content, multilingual issues To share experiences, to discuss and facilitate implementation of common actions concerning: inventories of past, on-going and planned digitisation projects based on national observatories; technical infrastructure for coordinated discovery of European digitised cultural content, including a common set of metadata for description; multilingual issues; Analysis, refinement and adoption of the French model of descriptive standards.

Interoperability, Service Provision, IPR analysing, identifying and evaluating activities on metadata, registries and schemes; discussion on standards, conformance testing centres, agreed terminologies, common metadata schema, middleware specifications; examination of related legal issues, such as IPR and copyright;

User needs, contents and quality framework quality criteria for the digitised content; encourage quality plan in cultural and scientific web sites; supporting the initiatives launched by the European Commission with the provision of national digital content; encourage training actions in cultural sites.

Good practices Aim: to select and promote good practice examples from Member State programmes and projects in order to exchange experiences, skills and collect consensus from different communities of users. First selection presented in Alicante, June 2002 First MINERVA Handbook on Good Practices to be published during the Italian Presidency (2003)

Training A programme of training courses that uses open distance learning methodologies has been set up to diffuse the results of the project. Action lines: 1. digitisation: process, cataloguing and management, including metadata for the preservation; 2. legal aspects: IPR/copyright and data protection; 3. quality: criteria for design and development of cultural web sites; 4. management of projects and services.

The digitisation of cultural heritage played a fundamental role among the activities of the Italian Presidency of EU (July-December 2003). Key topics: long term preservation, quality of cultural web sites and good practice in digitisation. Highlight: Naples, 23 rd -24 th October: seminar Territorial information systems for the conservation, preservation and management of Cultural Heritage (organised by the MiBAC - DG for Archaeology, in cooperation with MINERVA) f f The Italian Presidency

Outcomes : the strategic documents The Charter of Parma The Florence Agenda: a short term action plan, which individuates concrete and realistic actions in the field of digital memory preservation, elaborated by European experts coordinated by Erpanet and MINERVA. The Rome Agenda: a set of common issues agreed by the participants on the occasion of the meeting of European cultural networks with the purpose of promoting reciprocal cooperation

The Charter of Parma The Charter of Parma, discussed and approved during the 5 th NRG meeting in Parma, achieves the first priority set up during last NRG meeting in Corfu: consolidate the NRG position and high-level political commitment also using the tool of publications and recommendations by NRG. documents/charterparma.htm

Outcomes: the publications Already published Progress report of the National Representatives Group 2002 Booklet on MINERVA activities in the framework of the Italian Presidency Good practice handbook Handbook for quality in cultural web sites The ten principles for quality The Charter of Parma Under preparation Progress report of the National Representatives Group 2003 Technical Guidelines (Univ. of Bath and Minerva) The MINERVA report

The Progress Report Published in more than 3,000 copies, it was distributed trough the NRG in all the member states directly to decision makers and experts in the field of digitisation of the cultural heritage. The updating, including contributions from NAS, Israel and Russia, is forthcoming.

The quality handbook Goal: exploiting the possibilities of the web communication in the filed of the cultural heritage Starting point: Brussels Quality Framework (December 2001, during the Belgian Presidency) MINERVA WP5 activity, Identification of user needs, content and quality framework for common access points

Cultural web site quality principles A quality cultural website celebrates European cultural diversity by providing access for all to digital cultural content. A quality website must be: transparent - effective - maintained - accessible – user centred - responsive - multilingual - interoperable - managed - preserved

Good practices handbook A practical handbook to the establishment, execution and management of digitisation projects. Target: teams within and across cultural institutions who are contemplating, or are already executing, digitisation projects. Foreword: the research undertaken all over Europe, enriched with the existing guidelines on digitisation and presented at NRG meeting in Alicante, May 2002.

Good practices: the 10 categories 1) Digitisation Project Planning 2) Selecting Source Material for Digitisation 3) Preparation for Digitisation 4) Handling of Originals 5) The Digitisation Process 6) Preservation of Digital Master Material 7) Meta-Data 8) Publication 9) IPR and Copyright 10) Managing Digitisation projects

The Parma Conference Quality in cultural Web sites - Online Cultural Heritage for Research, Education and Cultural Tourism Communities The conference debated the main themes connected to the aspects of the online accessibility of cultural heritage to facilitate its access to a wider public all over the world, and to promote the development and valorisation of cultural tourism services. The Charter of Parma and the Quality Web Sites Handbook were presented.

Outcomes: the enlargement The enlargement: The Italian presidency asked to NAS representatives at CAC to nominate their own NRG and the action was successful the MinervaPLUS project started on 1st February 2004: NAS, Israel and Russia have been involved

MinervaPLUS working groups: specific topics Inventories & multilingualism> multilingual thesauri Interoperability, Service Provision & IPR> business models for digitisation programmes Quality & User requirements>small cultural institutions requirements Good Practices & Competence Centres>cost reduction for cultural digitisation

Cooperation with non-European countries Russia: 3rd September 2003, Petropavlovsk, International Conference-Information for All UNESCO Program: National, Regional and International Information Policies Development Israel: Jerusalem, 10th and 11th December 2003, Italy Israel Bi-National Seminar on Digital Access to Scientific and Cultural Heritage Canada: 27th-29th February 2004, Calgary and Banff, Alberta, Cultural Content Forum Russia, St. Petersburg June 2004, Information for All UNESCO Programme: Universal Access to Information

The cluster The result of the meeting of the European cultural networks, most of them approved on the occasion of the first call of 6FP, held in Rome on 30th October 2003, was a set of agreed common issues. The second meeting was held on the occasion of EVA Florence on the 31st of March. Networks involved: BRICKS, CALIMERA, DELOS, DIGICULT, EMII- DCF, EPOCH, ERPANET, EVA, HEREIN, SCRAN, MINERVA, MUSICNETWORK, PRESTOSPACE

A MINERVA spin off: MICHAEL MICHAEL (Multilingual Inventory of Cultural Heritage in Europe) is a project presented by the MiBAC in the framework of the eTEN programme. MICHAEL will establish an international online service, to search, browse and examine multiple national cultural portals (starting with France, Italy, and UK) from a single point of access. MICHAEL was born on the basis of the MINERVA activities on interoperability and inventories, in particular on the French-Italian prototype of portal elaborated.

Outcomes: the technical guidelines Technical Guidelines for digital Cultural Content Creation Programmes Based on the activities carried out by NOF and elaborated together with PULMAN, EMII-DCF and ERPANET Thought for decision makers and managers of digitisation programmes and projects A MINERVA task force is going to be set up as point of reference for the guidelines and all the technical products of the project

Emerging issues: the portals of culture MINERVA/NRG and the Irish presidency will focus their efforts on the topic of the cultural portals, on the basis of perspective opened by the article 10 of the Charter of Parma.

National Multilingual Portal for cultural, tourism and productive resources The Italian ministry for Cultural Heritage and activities launched the National Multilingual Portal for cultural, tourism and productive resources, an initiative elaborated thanks to the cooperation among different ministries in order to promote the exploitation of the cultural heritage and the services deriving from it. This project will make use of the technological European platform elaborated by MINERVA, made up with standards, recommendations and guidelines, and be undertaken in accordance to the results of MICHAEL too.

The financial plan Each ministry involved will annually fund the National Portal, together with regions and local authorities too. The digitisation projects will be realized by private companies on the basis of the digital collections owned by State and Regions and according to the European standards and guidelines elaborated by MINERVA.

Some reasons to join MINERVA Why should an organisation invest in order to bring its activities under the MINERVA framework ? to share knowledge and experiences, avoiding to duplicate the efforts; to coordinate national/local initiatives within a European approach, being prepared for larger exploitation; to share technological platforms and tools, saving efforts and money in replicating what already exists; to contribute to the necessary and ambitious common goal of implementing the Lund Action Plan.

For further information: Thanks for your attention. Keep in touch soon…