EVA Moscow

1
EVA Moscow MINERVA Standards and Guidelines
for Digitisation MICHAEL cultural heritage
collections online
Antonella Fresa Advisor of the Italian Ministry
of Culture
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MICHAEL and MINERVA from the LUND Principles to
EUROPEANA

• MINERVA
• MINERVA Plus
• MINERVA-EC ATHENA
• MICHAEL
• MICHAEL Plus

IST - FP5 FP6
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The projects phases
RD initial deployment
full depl.
Catalogue des fonds culturels numérises (FR)
MICHAEL
MICHAEL Plus
ATHENA
eEurope .. I2010 .
European Digital Library EUROPEANA
MINERVA, MINERVA Plus, MINERVA-EC
2002 ............. 06/2004 ...........
05/2006 .. 05/2008 11/2008
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The MINERVA initiative

• MinervaEC continued the work undertaken by
  MINERVA and MINERVA Plus towards the elaboration
  of a platform of recommendations, guidelines and
  tools for digitisation.
• MINERVA
• MINERVA Plus
• MINERVA-EC
• Three projects belonging to the same initiative
• Active since 2002 in Europe and beyond

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MINERVA objectives

• Aligned with and
  Europeana
• To improve accessibility to
  and visibility of European digital
  cultural resources
• To contribute to increasing interoperability
  between existing networks of services
• To promote the use of digital cultural resources
  by business and citizens
• To facilitate exploitation of cultural digital
  resources, providing clear rules for their use
  and re-use, respecting and protecting the
  creators rights.

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MINERVA targets

• Beneficiaries of the MINERVA initiative are
• public and private organisations and institutions
  that create, collect or own digital content
• private citizens, interested in receiving quality
  contents, reliable and directly responding to
  their interests
• universities and schools, which wants to use
  cultural contents for educational purposes in a
  legal and safe environment
• small and large enterprises interested in
  (re)using digital cultural content.

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MINERVA approach

• Same successful approach for the three projects
  (MINERVA, MINEVA Plus and MinervaEC)
• tight liaison with national digitisation policies
• implementation of the results achieved into new
  initiatives (e.g. MED-CULT, MICHAEL, MICHAEL
  Plus, ATHENA)
• involvement of experts from all cultural sectors
  (museums, libraries, archives etc.)
• cooperation with other networks and projects

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MINERVA and MINERVA Plus a flashback

• MINERVA IST FP5
• from 2002 until 2005
• 7 countries
• MINERVA Plus FP6
• from 2004 until 2006
• 14 EU countries Russia Centre PIC and Israel

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MINERVA and MINERVA Plus main results

• Annual Reports 4 editions (2002, 2003, 2004,
  2005)
• A set of practical Handbooks
• Good Practices
• Technical Guidelines
• Good quality cultural websites
• Cost reduction
• Multilingual websites and thesauri
• The Minerva website www.minervaeurope.org
• 9 NRG meetings under the aegis of 9 EU
  Presidencies Alicante-Spain, Copenhagen-Denmark,
  Corfu-Greece, Parma-Italy, Dublin-Ireland, The
  Hague-The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Bristol-UK,
  Salzburg-Austria
• Hundreds of European cultural institutions
  involved in workshops, seminars, training

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MINERVA-EC

• Thematic Network
• Supported under eContentplus
• Started on 1st October 2006
• Completed on 30th September 2008
• Coordinated by the Italian Ministry of Culture
• 22 EU countries
• More than 150 cultural institutions from all over
  Europe

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National workshops

• 15 National workshops held in 2 years to promote
  MINERVA and to illustrate its tools and
  publications
• Brussels, 24/4/2007
• Santiago de Compostela, 11/5/2007
• Poprad, 2/10/2007
• Vilnius, 4/10/2007
• Tallin, 18-19/10/2007
• Riga, 30/10/2007
• Bratislava, 12-13/11/2007
• Jerusalem, 20-21/11/2007
• Sofia, 26/02/2008
• Warsaw, 20/5/2008
• Belfast, 22/5/2008
• Athens, 29/5/2008
• Vienna, 25/8/2008
• Brussels, 19/09/2008

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MinervaEC international meetings

• Working groups meetings
• Rome, 5/12/2006
• Berlin, 20/6/2007
• Tenerife, 1-3/6/2008 cooperation to the
  workshop Semantic Interoperability in the
  European Digital Library
• Plenary meetings in cooperation with the EU
  Presidencies
• Helsinki, 12 October 2006
• Berlin, 23 February 2007
• Ljubljana, 5-6 June 2008
• Final conference in Leipzig in September 2008

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An overview of the MINERVA products
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Translation of Handbooks Guidelines and Reports
from Minerva / Minerva Plus continued during
MINERVA-EC
All the publications are available at
minervaeurope.org Hundreds of cultural
institutions are continuing to download the
MINERVA products to support their daily work in
digitisation Many products translated in Russian
language by Centre PIC
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New products

• Annual Reports 2007-2008 (in cooperation with EC)
  
• Directory of the European legislation v.2
• 3 new Handbooks
• Technical guidelines v.2
• IPR guidelines
• Handbook on cultural web user interaction

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Annual Report 2007-2008

• Realised in cooperation with the European
  Commission
• Based on the questionnaire sent by EC in
  February/March 2008
• Reports gathered by EC are on the Thematic
  Portal
• http//ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities
  /digital_libraries/experts/mseg/reports/index_en.h
  tm
•  
• The national reports complementary information
  about MINERVA and MICHAEL activities are
  published in the MINERVA Annual Report.
•  

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Annual Report 2007-2008
The report includes the following
chapters MINERVA eC MICHAEL Culture service Key
Steps 1999-2007 MINERVA publications   Reports
from Member States and Observers Member States
Expert Group communication
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Annual Report 2007-2008
Printed version of the Report distributed at the
Conference Numérisation du patrimonine
culturel, held in Paris on 27-28 November 2008,
under the aegis of the French Presidency of the
EU.   PDF files are available on the MINERVA
Website at the following URL http//www.minervaeu
rope.org/publications/globalreport.htm
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Directory of European and national rules on web
applications
First release 2004 http//www.minervaeurope.org/pu
blications/ qualitycriteria1_2draft/appendix4.htm
New release 2008 Update and addition of new
Member States national rules http//www.minervaeu
rope.org/eu_nat_webapplications.html edited by
the Research Staff of the Italian Senate Library
in co-operation with European Parliamentary
Libraries
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www.minervaeurope.org gt Directory
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Content of the Directory
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• The new MINERVA Handbooks
• 2008 editions

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Technical Guidelines (2004)
Technical Guidelines for Digital Cultural Content
Creation Programmes

• For policy-makers and funding programmes for the
  creation of digital cultural content
• Propose the adoption of standards as the
  foundation for interoperability of resources and
  the creation of services for integrated access
• Technical standards support
• Interoperability
• Access
• Preservation
• Security

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Technical Guidelines for Digital Cultural Content
Creation Programmes

• Identify areas where there is broad agreement
• Not a single prescriptive set of requirements to
  which all projects must conform
• can be used flexibly by Programme Managers
• can be used for self-assessment by projects
• Reflect a life cycle approach to the
  digitisation process (as in MINERVA Good Practice
  Handbook)
• Divided into 10 sections matching life cycle
  stages

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Digitisation life cycle
Technical Guidelines for Digital Cultural Content
Creation Programmes

• Digitisation project planning
• Selection of material and preparation for
  digitisation
• Handling of originals
• HW, SW, digitisation process
• Digital master storage and management
• Metadata
• Publication
• Disclosure/Use of resources
• IPR, re-use, re-purposing

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Technical Guidelines (2008)
Technical Guidelines (2008)
Technical Guidelines (2008)
Technical Guidelines (2008)
Updates To Version 2

• Why
• New and updated standards
• Standards which have failed
• Accompanying resources which are no longer
  available
• Impact of Web 2.0
• 3D

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Guidelines on 3D and virtual reality

• Focus
• Standards and methods for acquisition, storage
  and visual display of digital three-dimensional
  models for objects or scenes of cultural interest
  
• Context
• Progress in the development of digital 3D
  graphics and visualization tools, both HW and SW
• Decrease of their cost
• Foreseen increase of 3D digitisation by cultural
  institutions
• Need for guidance to the institutions
• Prepare a training route for people in charge

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Guidelines on 3D and virtual reality

• Goals
• Identify standards and provide guidelines for
  planning, designing, carrying out, documenting,
  publishing and communicating multimedia 3D
  projects and resources
• Cover
• 3D scanning of physical objects
• 3D modelling (born digital 3D content created
  with computer graphics systems)
• Make a census of the 3D realisations and identify
  good practices, according the different project
  objectives (education, research, communication to
  the public, etc.)

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IPR Guidelines

• Focus
• For the use of cultural heritage institutions
  which are digitising cultural material and
  publishing it online, or are considering doing
  so.
• Goals
• To provide pragmatic, concise advice to cultural
  heritage institutions on the topic of
  intellectual property rights, as it impacts on
  digitisation projects.
• Summarize, update and re-organise materials
  produced by MINERVA on IPR

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IPR Guidelines

• Content
• Two main sections, corresponding to the two key
  points where Intellectual Property Rights impact
  on digitisation projects
• Rights clearance Permission must be obtained
  from rights holders to digitise and publish must
  be obtained
• Publication The rights of rights holders and of
  the cultural heritage institution must be
  protected during the online publication of the
  digitised material.
• For each section, a range of background
  information is provided.
• Guidelines on how a digitisation project should
  respond to this background information are then
  provided.
• Information is complemented by reference to
  relevant Web resources

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Handbook on cultural web user interaction

• Key messages
• Quality must be planned into a website from
• the start of the project
• The user is critical involve him at every stage
  
• Relationships with other resources must be
• considered online (interoperability) and
  future
• (long term preservation)?

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The users who are they in 2008?

• Some definitions
• hybrid individual
• transceiver (transmitter receiver)?
• prosumer (producer consumer) information
  recipient and provider of its own contents  

Different terms characterize the many users
activities and behaviours on the web consumer /
client / audience user / surfer / viewer player
/ clicker / downloader / streamer
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Another type of user...
Non human users/agents robots, spiders,
crawlers, harvesters
This variety of definitions reflects an
articulated offer of contents and applications in
the new media environment
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Handbook on cultural web user interaction

• To help the designer of a cultural web site to
  answers to some questions such as
• What do users want?
• How do users behave?
• How can we understand the use they make of our
  web applications?
• Do effective methods exist to ask users about
  their expectations (before) and their degree of
  satisfaction (after)?

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MICHAEL to deploy MINERVA results

• MICHAEL and MICHAEL Plus 2 deployment projects
  lasted between 2004 2008, supported by eTEN
• MICHAEL service currently involves 20 EU
  countries
• MICHAEL Culture Association has been established
  in 2007 to manage the MICHAEL services and it is
  member of the Executive Committee of EUROPEANA
  Foundation
• MICHAEL implementation is based on the metadata
  standard for cultural inventories developed by
  MINERVA

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MICHAELMultilingual Inventory of Cultural
Heritage in Europe

• A European online service offering quick and easy
  access to European cultural heritage
• Based on surveys of digital cultural collections
  at national level
• European portal giving access to national
  databases through periodical harvesting

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Standards
Open source software platform MINERVA
recommendations and guidelines Data model
aligned to the Dublin Core Metadata Set and the
emerging Dublin Core Collection Description
Application Profile XML data base Metadata
harvesting through OAI-PMH
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MICHAEL European Portal

• The European service MICHAEL Culture is on line
  at
• http//www.michael-culture.org
• More than 7,000 digital collections corresponding
  to millions of digital objects!

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MICHAEL National Portals
Several national portals are on line and
constantly updated and enriched with new data. FR
http//www.michael-culture.fr IT
http//michael-culture.it UK http//www.michael-c
ulture.org.uk DE http//www.michael-portal.de
FI http//www.michael-culture.fi Bulgaria,
Czech Rep., Estonia, Flemish Belgium, Greece,
Hungary, Israel, Latvia, Poland, Slovakia, Spain,
Sweden
Rossella Caffo, MIBAC Warsaw, 19 May 2008
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Cross-domain approach

• MICHAEL data model is conceived for describing
  digital collections belonging to every sector of
  cultural heritage
• MICHAEL is designed to provide integrated online
  access to the whole European cultural heritage

MINERVA Involving all the cultural domains,
museums, libraries and archives
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Policy links

• MICHAEL has strong policy links
• Its success 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

MINERVA Ability to interact with Ministries,
Presidencies and other political stakeholders
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MICHAEL Users

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

MINERVA Study on the User Needs
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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

MINERVA model for cooperation and quality
framework
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The future

• MINERVA and MICHAEL are now completed projects.
• The next project is ATHENA
• Best Practice Network,
• coordinated by the Italian Ministry of Culture
  supported by eContentplus
• ATHENA will last for the next 2 years, with the
  participation of many partners from all over
  Europe and cultural institutions from Russia,
  under the coordination of Centre PIC

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The Italy-Russia protocol of cooperation

• Italian Ministry Direction General Libraries
• and
• Russian State Library of Moscow
• are going to sign a cooperation protocol for the
  valorisation of Russian culture and language in
  Italy and viceversa.
• This protocol includes the exploitation of the
  results of MICHAEL and MINERVA for the online
  access to digital cultural content.

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The Italy-Russia protocol of cooperation

• Foreseen activities include
• Exhibitions,
• Translations,
• Bibliographic exchange,
• Cataloguing and digitation,
• Communication.
• MICHAEL, MINERVA and ATHENA will contribute to
• Best practices exchange
• Cooperation in the frame of implementation
  projects
• Encounters among experts
• Dissemination

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• Thank you for your attention
• www.minervaeurope.org
• www.michael-culture.org
• Antonella Fresa
• fresa_at_promoter.it