Jerusalem, 21 November 2007 EVA-Jerusalem 2007 Rossella Caffo - MiBAC National and international initiatives of the Italian Ministry of Culture for the

Jerusalem, 21 November 2007

EVA-Jerusalem 2007Rossella Caffo - MiBAC

National and international initiatives of the Italian Ministry of Culture

for the digitisation of cultural heritage

Rossella CaffoMinistero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali



Table of content

• The MINERVA network• MICHAEL• MEDCULT• The Italian Culture Portal -

CulturaItalia



The Ministry’s effortsSince 2002 coordination of European projects:

MINERVA, MINERVA plus, MINERVAeC, MICHAEL, MICHAEL plus, MEDCULT.

Objectives• promoting knowledge, valorisation and preservation

of the cultural digital resources;• fostering the on line accessibility;• encouraging the adoption of shared standards and

guidelines on digitisation;• developing services for the users;• contributing to the European Digital Library.



The MINERVA networkwww.minervaeurope.org

http://www.minervaeurope.org/



What MINERVA did…The MINERVA network (2002-2006) elaborated guidelines and

recommendations shared by the EU Member States for the digitisation of the cultural heritage and the on line accessibility.

Added value: bottom up approach, all cultural fields involved.

Products:• Good practices handbook• Digitisation guidelines• Quality tools for cultural web sites (handbooks, Museo&Web)• Cost reduction in digitisation handbook• Multilingualism report• IPR report• Progress Report



…and what it is still doingMINERVA eC started on 1° October 2006.It gathers the culture ministries of 20 EU countries.

MINERVA eC follows the same approach of the previous projects, MINERVA and MINERVAplus:

• tight coordination with the national digitisation policies;• implementation of the achieved results into new initiatives (e.g.,

MICHAEL and MICHAEL Plus, MEDCULT, the Italian Culture Portal);• involvement of experts of all the cultural fields;• cooperation with other European thematic networks;• supporting the development of the European Digital Library for

accessing cultural resources;• monitoring progresses through the publication of an annual report.



ActivitiesWorkshops and seminars on:• MINERVA tools for digitisation of cultural heritage• Quality of cultural websites

Handbooks, guidelines and studies:• IPR guidelines• Digitisation Guidelines updating• Study on user needs of cultural web sites• Report on content interoperability• European directory of the websites regulatory

framework• Map of the cultural heritage in Europe• Annual digitisation report



MINERVAfor the digital libraries

MINERVA eC is expected to contribute in stimulating decision makers and implementers in:

• using international standards;• adopting the MINERVA guidleines, shared at

European level;• enhancing interoperability and accessibility

of digital content;• creating the conditions to improve the quality

of content and services.



MICHAELwww.michael-culture.eu

www.michael-culture.org

http://www.michael-culture.eu/

http://www.michael-culture.org/



What MICHAEL is

MICHAEL is a multilingual service

providing an integrated and unique access to European

digital cultural collections on a cross

domain basis.

http://www.michael-culture.org/ MICHAEL is an example of the implementation of the

MINERVA results



1 country> 1 national portal

Phase 1, MICHAEL (2004-7):

• Italy• France• United

Kingdom

PartnersPhase 2, MICHAELplus

(2006-8):• Belgium• Bulgaria• Czech Republic• Estonia• Finland• France• Germany• Greece• Hungary• Italy (coordinator)• Malta• the Netherlands• Poland• Portugal• Slovak Republic• Spain• Sweden• United Kingdom



Search and browse in:– all the cultural fields

archives, libraries, museums, audiovisual, landscape…

– all kind of cultural institutionsnational, regional, local, small and large,public and private…

The MICHAEL data model was suitably conceived to describe digital collections and the related information:institutions, projects or programmes, services or products, physical collections.

Cross domain approach



The European MICHAEL portal is on line at http://www.michael-culture.orgMore than 5,000 digital collections from FR, IT, UK inside!The digital collections groups millions of records.

The national systems are on line and constantly updated and enriched with new data.

FR http://www.michael-culture.fr or http://www.numerique.culture.fr

IT http://michael-culture.it UK http://www.michael-culture.org.uk

The national portals of DE, GR, NL, PL, PT are under construction.

The achievements so far



The registryof the European Digital Library







MEDCULTwww.medcult.org



MEDCULTMay 2005:

MEDCULT project approved by UNESCO-IFAP for funding, to spread MINERVA products through Mediterranean Arab countries.

December 2005:MEDCULT kick-off in Rome

General scope:promoting information literacy, through capacity building particularly for information

professionalsIn particular:• To translate and diffuse among partners the MINERVA criteria for a quality web

communication of the cultural heritage• To organised workshops over the countries involved for experts of both cultural and

education sectors• To set up a replicable model of workshop



• Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, MiBAC (ITALY, coordinator)

• Fondation Maison des Science de l'Homme, Coordinator of the STRABON network (FRANCE)

• Ministère de la culture, Centre Multimédia d'inventaire et de documentation du patrimoine (MOROCCO)

• CultNat, Bibliotheca Alexandrina (EGYPT)

• Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Department of Antiquities (JORDAN)

Partners



Activities

• Translation into Arab of the Cultural web sites quality principles

• Translation into Arab of the publication “Quality Principles for cultural Web sites, a handbook”

• Application of Museo&Web, the kit for planning quality cultural web sites

• Workshops: – December 2005, kick off in Rome (Italy)– April 2006, Alexandria (Egypt)– May 2006, Rabat (Morocco)– December 2006, Amman (Jordan)



The Italian Culture Portalwww.culturaitalia.it

(coming soon!)





CulturaItalia is an integrated point of access that valorises the Italian cultural heritage and facilitates the access to the resources.

It is an interdisciplinary tool that foreseen the involvement of all the CH sectors.

CulturaItalia is the Italian contribution to the European Digital Library.



Mission

• To communicate the various aspects of the Italian culture (heritage, landscape, cinema, music, literature etc.)

• To create a unique and integrated point of access for the Italian cultural heritage

• To bring out the digital cultural content and make it visible to a wide public

• To increase the production of digitised content

• To foster the development of services for tourism

• To contribute to the building process of the European Digital Library



Strategy1. Tight cooperation among:• the public and private sectors• museum, libraries, archives, preservation and administrative

offices• national, regional and local institutions• universities and other ministries

2. Integration with other initiatives and projects:• MICHAEL• MINERVA• National and local portals

CulturaItalia is based on the MINERVA and MICHAEL recommendations, guidelines, results.



According the most used international standards, CulturaItalia is based on:

• protocol for Metadata Harvesting - Open Archive Initiative (OAI-PMH)

• Dublin Core (DCMI) for the metadata description

• HTTP protocol for data transfer

• XML for data representation

Standards



Content

• Catalogue of metadata

• Editorial content

• Cultural web sites, selected and organised by the editorial staff



The metadata

CulturaItalia doesn’t duplicate the data.

CulturaItalia gathers metadata coming from different providers:

• ministry’s institutions• private institutions• local institutions• universities Each provider holds the rights of the digital objects

shown through the portal and is responsible for their maintenance and updating.



Application profileCulturaItalia organizes in a unique index (meta)data

harvested from many metadata repositories.

A specific AP based on Dublin Core has been adopted as metadata standard, as the most used internationally.

It describes the resources of all the CH.

The aim is to describe with metadata not only digital resources, but also tangible cultural heritage, people (artists, authors), institutions (museums, libraries, etc.).

Metadata describes the resources at item level.



Browse the index:whowhat

where when









CulturaItalia will increase its providers in progress.

The current work is:1. Define agreements with public or private

partners, invited to join the project2. Identify data-bases to be harvested3. Define the level of publication of data

through the portal

Work flow



4. If data are provided with DC metadata they can be harvested directly;

5. otherwise a mapping between PICO AP and the data model of the databases must be defined

6. The provider must install on its servers a OAI-PMH repository (MiBAC can provide “ready-to-use” technical solutions)

7. The provider must create a script to generate XML metadata record, exporting values from the data bases.

Work flow



MINERVA coordination and standards

MICHAEL catalogue of the digital European collections

CulturaItalia application of international standards and MINERVA and

MICHAEL inputsMEDCULT coordination action

in the Mediterranean area

http://www.worlddigitallibrary.org/project/english/

Keywords



Possible synergies towards the Mediterranean Digital Library

UNESCO’s World Digital Library project

http://www.worlddigitallibrary.org/project/english/



Rossella [email protected] per i beni e le attività culturali

www.minervaeurope.orgwww.michael-culture.euwww.culturaitalia.itwww.medcult.orgwww.otebac.it

Contacts

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.minervaeurope.org/

http://www.michael-culture.eu/

http://www.culturaitalia.it/

Documents

Jerusalem, 21 November 2007 EVA-Jerusalem 2007 Rossella Caffo - MiBAC National and international initiatives of the Italian Ministry of Culture for the