MINERVA Project: Improving the production of digital cultural heritage in Europe Rossella CaffoParis, 12th September 2003 Ministerial NEtwoRk for Valorising Activising in digitisation

The MINERVA project is the operative section of a wider framework made up with the Lund Principles, the LUND Action Plan and the National Representatives Group (NRG) The MINERVA framework

Lund Meeting – 4th April 2001 Representatives and experts from the Member States gathered in order to identify ways in which a coordination mechanism for digitisation programmes across the Member States could be put in place to stimulate European content on global networks.

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.

What is MINERVA MINERVA is the spreading arm of the National Representatives Group. It is financed by the European Commission in the ambit of the IST Programme. It is a network of Member States ministries.

Original Partners 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 Educaciòn, Cultura y Deporte) Sweden (Riksarkivet) United Kingdom (The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries)

New Members Denmark Greece The Netherlands Austria Germany Ireland Portugal

MINERVA mission The network has been created to: to discuss, correlate and harmonise activities carried out in digitisation of cultural and scientific content; for creating agreed European common recommendations and guidelines about: –digitisation, –metadata, –long-term accessibility, –preservation.

ENDORSEMENT MINERVA has demonstrated to have contributed to the creation of a broad consensus on the European framework. This consensus constitutes the basis for the definition, the validation and the adoption of international standards and guidelines, promoted by governments with the support of the European Commission.

Activities MINERVA has demonstrated to have contributed 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 MINERVA has contributed to creating a process of institutional collaboration among the various presidencies of the European Union

How MINERVA works 5 Working Groups at European level Publications (guidelines, reports, etc.) National Policy Profiles on digitisation Workshops Co-operation with other projects Harmonising activities Enlargement of the network Training courses

The Working Groups To provide political and technical framework for improving digitisation activities and scientific contents To contribute at the definition of a common European platfoprm for the harmonisation of national initiatives

Working Group: 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 co-ordinating and harmonising national activities as well as to develop measures to show progress and improvement.

Working Group: Inventories, discovery of digitised content, multilingual issues To share experiences, to discuss and to 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 and scientific content, including a common set of metadata for description; multilingual issues; Analysis of the French model of descriptive standards and its adaptability to the Italian requirements.

Working Group: Interoperability, Service Provision and 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;

Working Group: User needs, contents and quality framework to define 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, to promote knowledge of multicultural issues.

Working Group: Good practices Aim: to select and to promote good practice examples from Member State programmes and projects in order to exchange experiences, skills and to 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.

Network enlargement The instruments: Membership agreement To formalise the participation of Ministries in the MINERVA network Co-operation agreement To formalise the participation of interested organisation in the MINERVA Users Group

Minerva Web site Whose goals are: To promote the Lund Principles, the acitivities and the results of the project To promote the projects partners To be a gate to other linked initiatives To be an essential instrument on Web quality, digitisation, metadata, long-term preservation, accessibility

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.

Publications Minerva publishes handbooks and guidelines on digitisation, edited by its working groups, and an annual progress report of the NRG. Already published Progress report of the National Representatives Group 2002 Next publications Good practice handbook with the collection of the existing guidelines on digitisation Handbook for quality in public cultural applications: criteria, guidelines and basic recommendations Collection of the existing laws on IPR II Progress report of the National Representatives Group 2003

The Global report The Global report aims at diffusing MINERVA results to a wide public on politics, programmes, projects on digitisation of cultural and scientific content in the 15 Member States

The handbook on quality Proposes methods and criteria to join content quality agreed at European level Available on Minerva web site To be presented during the Parma Conference Commitment of European Commission and Member States to adopt the guidelines presented. It represents one of the actions to be undertaken to ensure quality of digitisation process and quality of contents.

The good practice handbook Provides useful information to the establishment, execution and management of digitisation projects. It is a reasoned organisation of data collected across Europe until May 2002 and it is enriched with a selection of existing guidelines on digitisation.

New tools The Newsletter: The subscription to the English newsletter is now possible through the MINERVA web site: a constant updating about the MINERVA news. The MINERVA mailing list: Soon available, the MINERVA mailing list will distribute information to users interested in the digitisation issues

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

Italian Presidency Events 1 Minerva participation Florence, 16 th -17 th October: International Conference on Long Term Preservation of Digital Memories (organised by the MiBAC - DG for Libraries, in cooperation with MINERVA) 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)

Italian Presidency Events 2 MINERVA organisation Rome, 29th October: workshop Digitisation: what to do and how to do it (in cooperation with AIB) Parma, 19th November: NRG meeting Parma, 20th-21st November: International Conference Quality for Cultural Web Sites (organised with MiBAC, City of Parma, Emilia-Romagna region, Parma local authorities, University of Parma)

The Parma Conference Quality in cultural Web sites - Online Cultural Heritage for Research, Education and Cultural Tourism Communities The conference intends to debate 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. I session: Accessibility and communication: principles - best practices II session: Guidelines on quality for cultural Web sites III session: IPR, copyright and data protection

The poster session The poster session Web quality for culture is already open: 1.Content quality for cultural Web Site 2.Accessibility 3.IPR issues 4.Communication and language

… and MinervaPLUS MINERVAplus intends to enlarge the existing network to extend its dimension to the new countries accessing the Union in 2004, Russia, and Israel The project was approved on the occasion of last call of the 6FP

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