The MichaelMichael Project is partly funded by the

1
Antonella Fresa Technical Coordinator
The Michael/Michael Project is partly funded by
the  European Commission eTEN Programme
2
MICHAEL and MICHAEL Plus deploying MINERVA results

• 2 deployment projects
• Supported by eTEN
• Involving 14 EU countries
• Based on the metadata standard for cultural
  inventories developed by MINERVA
• Aimed to build a unique multilingual access point
  to the digital collections of museums, libraries
  and archives in Europe
• Total investment 90 million

3
MICHAEL actors and roles

• Ministries of culture coordination and financing
• Central cultural institutes standardisation and
  guidelines
• Technology providers software implementation
• Regions and Universities surveys and local
  coordination of the cataloguers
• The actual cultural institutions on the
  territory museums, libraries and archives to
  provide content

4
Policy links

• MICHAEL and MICHAEL Plus have strong policy links
• The success of the initiative is based on the
  actual political commitment at national and
  European levels
• Main targeted policy domains
• Culture multilingualism
• Education training
• Research innovation
• Tourism economic development

5
The project phase
RD
implementation full depl.
MinervaEC
Catalogue des fonds culturels numérises (FR)
MINERVA
Michael PLUS
MICHAEL
The new eContent Plus initiatives ATHENA,
EDL-Local, etc.
MINERVA Plus
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MICHAEL Portals
MICHAEL European Portal launched in December 2006
http//www.michael-culture.org
Three national portals online since 2006
France http//www.michael-culture.fr UK
http//www.michael-culture.org.uk Italy
http//www.michael-culture.it MICHAELplus
partners are registering the domains for the
respective national MICHAEL portals according to
the same pattern
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MICHAEL Users

• many different user communities
• education
• cultural tourism
• research
• co-ordination
• and computers

8
MICHAEL European portal

• Launched December 2006
• Periodical harvesting of the published national
  instances

http//www.michael-culture.org/
9
MICHAEL national portals
1450 digital collections 500 institutions 250
services-products

• FR

766 digital collections 616 services 321
projects 306 institutions
UK
2588 digital collections 1396 institutions 1404
services/products 1520 physical collections 423
projects/programs
IT
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Communication Disseminationinternational
events

• Four international conferences with high level
  political participation
• Paris, 1 April 2005, with the participation of
  the French Minister for Culture
• Bristol, 16 November 2005, with the participation
  of the UK Minister for Arts
• Rome, 4-5 December 2006, with the participation
  of the Italian Minister for Culture and the EC
  INFSO Director General
• Berlin, 21-22 June 2007, under the aegis of the
  German Presidency of the EU

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Communication Disseminationnational events

• A large number of national initiatives in all the
  MICHAEL and MICHAELplus countries
• Workshops
• Training sessions
• Other national and local initiatives

12
Sustainability

• The AISBL (Association international sans but
  lucratif) MICHAEL-Culture was created on July
  2007 under the Belgian law
• Founders MCC (France), MiBAC (Italy), Amitié,
  Dédale
• MLA (UK) and SPK (Germany) are about joining the
  Association

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Organisational framework

• Coordination
• At the Ministerial level
• Cooperation with other ministries and national
  and regional levels
• E.g. Ministry of education
• Regions
• Institutions involved
• Local branches of the ministry (archives,
  libraries, architecture and heritage, museums,
  music, performing arts, theatre etc.)
• Institutions of all levels (national, regional,
  local)
• Universities

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MICHAELplus and further enlargement

• The take-off of MICHAELplus gives evidence of
  MICHAEL success.
• 11 new countries involved
• Further national investment for more than 55
  million euros
• More European countries are currently
  implementing the MICHAEL service on the basis of
  their own investment, without any EC funding
• Bulgaria
• Belgium Flemish Community
• Estonia
• Slovak Republic
• Expression of interest by several other
  countries, both European and extraEuropean

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Impact at international level MICHAEL selected
for IST 2006 and eGov 2007

• MICHAEL was invited by the European Commission as
  a representative project on the occasion of
• 4th Ministerial eGovernment Conference (Lisbon,
  19-21 September 2007)
• IST 2006 (Helsinki, 23 November 2006)
• Ministerial e-Inclusion Conference (Riga, 11-13
  June 2006)
• E-Government conference (Manchester, 25 November
  2005)

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Impact at national level integration with
national programmes

• FR Integration with http//www.culture.fr,
  Collections portal (unique access point to the
  heritage data bases)
• IT Integration with the on-going Portal for the
  Italian Culture (http//www.culturaitalia.benicult
  urali.it)
• UK Linked initiatives
• Peoples Network Discover Service
• 24 Hour Museum
• Regional portals
• and also
• Germany, Greece, Hungary, Estonia

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Impact at local level involvement of cultural
institutions

• MICHAEL established a network of thousands of
  European cultural institutions
• Large, medium and small
• National, regional or local
• Public and private
• Every heritage sector (Museums, Libraries,
  Archives, Catalogue and preservation offices,
  Education, Research institutes etc)
• Institutions and private organisations are now
  asking to contribute their data into MICHAEL

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Cross-domain approach

• MICHAEL data model is suitable for describing
  digital collections belonging to every sector of
  cultural heritage and for recording related and
  context information
• Institutions
• Projects / programmes
• Services / products
• Physical collections
• MICHAEL aimed since the beginning at giving
  integrated access to the whole European cultural
  heritage through the Internet

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Benefits for Ministries and Local authorities

• MICHAEL proved to be a powerful tool for
• Building a road-map of whats on in the field of
  the digitisation of the cultural heritage
• Planning and monitoring digitisation initiatives
  undertaken or funded by ministries and other
  local authorities
• MICHAEL allows the discovery of digitised
  resources and fosters synergies between projects

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Benefits forcultural institutions

• Through MICHAEL cultural institutions can
• Reach wider audiences at national and
  international level (visibility)
• Inform users about the collections they own and
  promote access to them
• Increase their online profile and promote their
  own activities
• Manage collections and large groupings of objects
  or data
• Plan further digitisation activities basing on
  knowledge of whats available and possible
  synergies

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Benefits for final users

• MICHAEL service allows to search and browse from
  a single access point information on digital
  cultural heritage coming from
• every CH sectors archives, libraries, museums,
  heritage, audiovisual, landscape
• cultural institutions of any kind national,
  regional, local, large and small, public and
  private
• on a multilingual basis
• by subject, period, spatial coverage
• by institution type or location
• through full text search
• etc.

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• MICHAEL and
• the EUROPEAN DIGITAL LIBRARY

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High level political profile

• 13 November 2006
• Bruxelles, Council of the Ministers of Culture
• Adoption of the EC Recommandation Digitisation
  and Online Accessibility of Cultural Material,
  and Digital Preservation to build the European
  Digital Library, two are the main building
  blocks
• CENL and the service The European Library that
  provides access to the national libraries
  collections across Europe
• MICHAEL and the European portal of the digital
  collections

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MICHAEL contribution to the European Digital
Library

• The European Digital Library aims to involve all
  Cultural Heritage sectors and the largest number
  of institutions (national and local, large and
  small).
• MICHAEL can be the catalogue of the European
  Digital Library.

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MICHAEL contribution to the European Digital
Library

• Catalogue of the digital collections,
  Europe-wide, covering all the cultural sector
• Successful cooperative approach and working
  methods
• Network of thousands of European cultural
  institutions
• MICHAEL AISBL organisational and legal structure
  (detailed presentation by Christophe Dessaux).

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MICHAEL and the European Digital Library
Diagram developedat TEL / MICHAELmeeting,
Frankfurt,March 2006
European Digital Library
MICHAEL
TEL
National Library collections
Collections
Items
National Libraries
National Regional Museums, Audio-Visual,
Archives and Libraries
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Thank you for your attention http//www.michael-c
ulture.org