Rivista "IBC" XI, 2003, 4
Dossier: L'IBC per l'Europa
musei e beni culturali, dossier /
In December 1999, the European Commission launched the eEurope initiative, with the objective of bringing the benefits of the Information Society to all Europeans. In June 2002 the eEurope Action Plan was prepared and, among the objectives it set, the key role of content industries in creating added value by encouraging and promoting European cultural diversity was highlighted. Content industries are one of the fastest growing segments of European economy and the Commission identified this sector as one of the key target areas of the Action Plan. Cultural heritage is one of the fields which can fully exploit the opportunities created by the advent of digital technologies. Thus the Commission provided strong support to those initiatives involving the digitisation of cultural content.
The Minerva Project is one of these initiatives. The objectives of Minerva are to establish a network of Member States' Ministries to discuss and harmonise activities related to the digitisation of cultural and scientific content, to create an agreed European common platform and to outline recommendations, guidelines, manuals and tools as regards digitisation, metadata, long-term accessibility and preservation of cultural and scientific content. Content digitisation is the first step towards the creation of a real digital Europe.
The Minerva project, whose members work together to ensure visibility of and accessibility to European cultural and scientific heritage is funded by the European Commission in the context of the IST Programme (Information Society Technologies) and the Fifth Framework Programme. The project started in March 2002 and is expected to end in March 2005. However the network created through this project is expected to become permanent and stable. Minerva basic principle states that "Europe's cultural and scientific knowledge resources are a unique public asset forming the collective and evolving memory of our diverse societies and providing a solid basis for the development of our digital content industries in a sustainable knowledge society". Digitised cultural assets are then crucial in sustaining and promoting cultural diversity. They are also a key resource for education and for the tourism and media industries.
Minerva was inspired by the Lund principles (www.cordis.lu/ist/ka3/digicult/lund_principles.htm), which state that digitisation is a key activity for exploiting Europe's unique cultural heritage and supporting cultural diversity, education and content industries. During the last ten years many Member States have invested significantly in programmes and projects for digitising cultural and scientific content. Such digitisation activities cover a diversity of domains and types of cultural content, such as museum collections, photographic and audio-visual archives, historical documents, manuscripts and books in general. However, the exploitation of these resources risks being strongly limited by a number of problems, such as fragmentation of approach in the different tools adopted, obsolescence of technologies and standards (thus risking creating resources that rapidly become unusable), lack of simple, shared forms of access for all citizens. Other problems identified are those concerning the intellectual property rights (still at the centre of animated discussions) and discontinuous long-term investment programmes.
In June 2001 the representatives of all Member States of the European Council met in Lund to discuss these issues and to make recommendations in order to create bodies for permanent coordination between different projects, to promote and support good practice and its harmonisation and optimisation within Member States and across the EU and to ensure the development of common shared projects and programmes whose final objective is the digitisation of Europe cultural heritage. Lund Action Plan is structured around four main action lines:
- Improving policies and programmes through cooperation and benchmarking;
- Discovery of digitised resources;
- Promotion of good practices;
- Content framework and quality of access points (web sites and portals).
A workgroup of representatives of Member States has been established to analyse the different initiatives and evaluate results. The workgroup meets twice a year to share the experiences of Member States and create a common platform for co-operation and co-ordination of national actions.
At a political level the main principle for action is the direct involvement of governmental organisations. Beside its co-ordination and co-operation activities, the Minerva Project also intends to establish contacts between the Member states partners in the project and other European countries, international organisations, associations networks, international projects dealing with digitisation. However a number of key problems outlined in the Lund principles may limit the potential of these resources. That is why Minerva decided to focus its activities on the core problem of quality by creating a comprehensive and interoperable technical structure at a European level, thus ensuring a quality of the points of access and the development of new services for European citizens.
At a political level Minerva promotes close cooperation between Member States and their governmental institutions and ensures visibility to national initiatives by encouraging the exchange of good practices and supporting dissemination and knowledge of EC programmes and policies at a national and local level. At a technical level Minerva's objective is to set-up a European common platform of recommendations, guidelines, metadata and standards for digitisation and long-term preservation and accessibility of cultural content and to ensure the quality of this process.
The Minerva project operational structure consists of a Steering Committee made up of national representatives from each Member State and a number of work groups made up of experts officially nominated by Member States. In each Member State, this European structure is reproduced by a similar national structure: there is a Commission made up of representatives of all the cultural sectors involved (archives, museums, cinemas etc.) and a number national work groups, one for each action line. National work groups operate in close and permanent contact with their European colleagues, while the coordinator of each work group ensures that all activities are harmonised at a European level. Minerva's work areas are the following:
Benchmarking
Benchmarking is considered a priority tool for the exchange of similar experiences and the definition of good practice. The definition of a benchmarking model for digitisation programmes and projects is still an ongoing process in many Member States.
[www.minervaeurope.org/structure/workinggroups/benchmarking.htm]
Inventories, discovery of digitised content, interoperability, multilingualism issues (Metadata)
Within a common European platform several integrated services for different end users are possible: technological and content interoperability is then necessary to ensure web-integrated access to distributed information. Technologies and standards for metadata, some of which are already implemented, allow the creation of search and cross indexed services that lead to interoperative platforms. However, intellectual property rights and multilingualism can hinder the use of search tools. Some of the Member Countries participating in the Minerva Projects established sub-work groups to analyse such issues and to study, among many other activities, international legislation on intellectual property rights, copyright and data protection.
[www.minervaeurope.org/structure/workinggroups/inventor.htm] [www.minervaeurope.org/structure/workinggroups/servprov.htm]
Identification of good practices and competence centres
As digitisation activities have been developed over many years, competence and good practices are widely available in Europe. Yet there is a lack of feedback for competences and experiences developed in the context of different projects. The work group intends to identify existing good practices and guidelines on digitisation in and outside Europe and to compare experiences and skills.
[www.minervaeurope.org/structure/workinggroups/goodpract.htm]
Quality and accessibility of Cultural Institutions' web sites
Web applications of cultural institutions are one of the most effective means of education, learning, cultural and scientific research. The Italian work group studying these issues drew up a quality manual for cultural web sites developed by public institutions where quality criteria, methods of analysis and methods for assessing cultural web applications are outlined. The manual adheres to the guidelines drawn up by the World Wide Web Accessibility Initiative for ensuring web content accessibility to users with specific needs and complies with the rules developed in the context of the eEurope Action Plan 2002 for ensuring content accessibility. This manual will be presented at the Minerva European Conference `Quality for cultural web sites' which will be held in Parma on the 20th and 21st November 2003.
[www.minervaeurope.org/structure/workinggroups/userneeds.htm]
Within the Minerva project, the Istituto Beni Culturali or IBC (Institute for Cultural Heritage) coordinates those Italian regions with which a cross-evaluation system is in place and participates, as a scientific partner, in work groups. In particular, through the experience developed in many years of its activity, the IBC provides its technical and scientific support to the work group on metadata, benchmarking and quality of web sites.
Web site:
IBC contact persons:
Benchmarking - Margherita Spinazzola
Metadata - Vincenzo Bazzocchi
Quality of web sites - Maria Pia Guermandi
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