Transcript The local dimension in the European Digital Library: from

The local dimension in the
European Digital Library: from
MINERVA and CALIMERA to
MICHAEL
Kate Fernie, MLA
Intelligent Access to Digital Heritage, Tallin, October 2007
Background
Since the 1990s, across Europe, State and local
authority programmes have invested in the
digitisation of cultural collections from
across the sectors, involving thousands of
cultural institutions and private organisations archives, libraries, museums, historic
environment conservation bodies, audiovisual
archives, scientific and research institutions
and others.
Locally-held content
• Local cultural institutions hold lots of digital
content and lots more that needs to be digitised
• The content is very diverse and in
heterogeneous formats
• It is widely distributed between organisations in
municipalities, regions/territories and localities
Billy Pigg (1902-1968) was very highly regarded and was
said by some to be the best Northumbrian piper ever
Skye crofters
Local dimension
• Public libraries, museums and archives are
essential contributors of our collective
memory of the varied cultural traditions and
communities in Europe.
• But they have to be mobilized to make best
use of technology.
• They need support from policy makers.
• We need to know more about the content that
they can offer!
European context
• eEurope - Feira summit in June 2000 launched a
programme to stimulate the development and
use of European digital content on the global
networks and to promote linguistic diversity in the
information society
• Coordination actions under IST:
–
–
–
–
FP4 – PubliCA [1998-2000]
FP5 – PULMAN [2001-3]
FP5 – MINERVA [2002-]
FP6 – CALIMERA [2004-5]
MINERVA
• Network of policy makers and professionals from
cultural ministries and national institutions (EU)
• Core concern: harmonising the digitisation of
cultural and scientific content across Europe
– Avoiding fragmentation, minimising duplication,
enabling long-term accessibility and preservation
• Interoperability
– Technical guidelines
• Quality, accessibility, usability
• Inventories of projects
http://www.minervaeurope.org/home.htm
Interoperability work
• establishing the framework for the
information environment
• Working on standards
• Building on expertise, identifying
competence centres
• Producing reports and guidelines
Technical Standards - Purpose
• for policy-makers and funding programmes for the
creation of digital cultural content
• identify areas where there is broad agreement
– no surprises!!!
• 30,000+ downloads
• being implemented by
funding programmes
– England, Greece, Italy, France,
Netherlands, Israel
and Sweden
Quality
http://www.museumscomputergroup.org.uk/jodis/– Jodi Award 2004/5
Digital readiness
CALIMERA
• A network of professionals, policy-makers,
researchers and suppliers from 43 countries (EU
and neighbouring states)
• Core concern: what new digital technologies mean
for end-users of cultural services
• Policy work: sensitizing decision-makers,
professionals and solution providers
• Guides for practitioners on digital services,
available in over 30 languages.
http://www.calimera.org
Policy work
Policy work to sensitize decision-makers,
professionals and solution providers at
European, national and local levels:
• Information gathering
• Engagement
• Policy tool kit
Calimera Guidelines
• Social Policy
– Cultural identity, eGovernment, citizenship,
learning, social and economic development
• Management
– Business
models, staffing,
planning
• Technical
– Deployment to
meet user needs
User centred
Identify
and
Acquire
Describe
Preserve
Ask
Validate
Provide
Publish
Interpret
View
Create
Learn
Affirm
Share
Acquire
Discuss
Enjoy
Assess
Teach
Enable
Disseminat
e
Communi
cat
e
Design
Discovery
We need ways to help us to find the
wealth of content that is available
from local institutions
Vision
Connecting people to collections
from museums, libraries, archives,
and cultural and scientific
organisations across Europe
St John’s College
Cambridge:
Manuscript
collection
Susan teaches music
in a primary school
Play burmese
musical
instruments online:
Museums Open
Learning Initiative
MICHAEL
• Builds on work by MINERVA on specifications
for inventories of digitised content based on
international standards
• 18 countries are participating: Belgium, Bulgaria,
Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France,
Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malta, the
Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic,
Spain, Sweden and UK
Cross domain
Museums, libraries, archives, audio-visual archives
and other institutions are contributing
descriptions of their collections
MICHAEL European service
http://www.michael-culture.org/en/home
For local institutions
Benefits of MICHAEL:
• increasing the visibility of local collections –
alongside the collections of the great national
institutions
• reaching new audiences (nationally and
internationally)
• enabling users to access exciting local content
• planning future digitisation to complement what is
available from others
The European Digital Library
MICHAEL is a powerful tool for:
•
•
•
Discovering digital content from local and regional
institutions
Knowing who has what
Identifying content to build themes
Next steps?
• Locally held content accessible to a distributed
network of repositories connected to the European
Digital Library
• Needs simple, comparatively low cost
implementation at local level – OAI-PMH
• Needs to be based on standards and guidelines
promoted through MINERVA and CALIMERA – No
surprises!
Thank you
[email protected]