MICHAEL. A service for accessing the European digital cultural heritage. Rossella Caffo

Jerusalem,20 November 2007

EVA Jerusalem 2007Rossella Caffo

MICHAEL.

A service for accessing the European digital cultural heritage.

Rossella CaffoMinistero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali



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/





The MICHAEL service allows to search and browse digital cultural information coming from:

– all the cultural heritage sectors: archives, libraries, museums, intangible heritage, built heritage, audiovisual, landscape…

– all kind of cultural institution: national, regional, local, large and small, public and private…

A cross-domain initiative



MICHAEL is a spin-off of the MINERVA project.

It is based on:• the work of the MINERVA working groups on

inventories, discovery of digitised content and multilingualism, interoperability and service provision

• the technical platform of the French Catalogue des fonds culturels numérisés

Background



• Agreeing on a common approach for a digital cultural heritage registry in Europe

• Creating a single point of access to the European digital collections

• Implementing a distributed platform based on open source software

• Supporting multilingualism• Creating a European infrastructure to sustain the

service

• Adoption by all the European countries

Goals



• MICHAEl and MICHAEL plus are deployment projects• Funded by the eTen programme• From June 2004 to 2008• Based on national initiatives on digitization and the

creation of culture portals

Funding• National funding (90%)• EC contribution (10%), only to fulfil the integration of the

national initiatives into the European infrastructure• MICHAEL and MICHAEL plus total budget: 90 M€

Basic facts



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



Cultural institutionsin MICHAEL

• Ministries• Government and regional agencies for cultural heritage• Foundations• Research networks• Universities• National libraries, local libraries• National archives, local archives• National museums, local museums• Sound and audiovisual archives

The national surveys are reaching thousand of national, regional, and local cultural institutions,



• open source software platform

• MINERVA recommendations and guidelines

• data model aligned to the Dublin Core metadata set and the emerging Dublin Core Collection Level Description

• XML data base

• metadata harvesting through OAI-PMH

Standards



A distributed architecture



MICHAEL users

Many different user communities– education– cultural tourism– research– management– …



The digital collectionaccording to MICHAEL

Definition based on international standards (Research Support Libraries Programme-RSLP collection description and Dublin Core): “A digital collection is an aggregation of digital items”– collections of digital surrogates of physical items– collections of 'born-digital' items– catalogues of such collections

Contents of a digital collection might include:• aggregations of digital images, text, audio, video, 3D objects, mixed

media• databases• collections of web resources• Internet directories and subject gateways• digital archives• digital inventories, catalogues, finding aids etc.



Entities of the data model:• Institution• Digital collection• Physical collection• Project - programme• Services and products

Data model suitable for all kind of digital collections coming from all the cultural fields.

The data model



Activities

• Population of the national databases– description of the collections– migration of the existing data

• Implementation of the MICHAEL national portals

• Increase of the European portal– metadata harvesting from the national databases



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 survey of the digital collections in the participating countries:

• covers the whole territory(national and local cultural bodies)

• includes all the CH sectors(archives, libraries, museums, audiovisual, archeology, built heritage, landscape…)

• is integrated with the other national initiatives(culture portals, national, regional, digitisation programmes etc.)

The ongoing work



CoordinationMiBAC – DG for the technological innovation and promotion

Cooperation with other ministriesAgreement with the Ministry of Education

Institution involved• More than 600 MiBAC cultural institutions (libraries, museums, archives,

archaeological sites, preservation offices, central institutes)• 20 Italian Regions: thousands museums, libraries, archives• Libraries and museums of the 77 Italian universities

Integration with the forthcomingItalian Culture Portal (http://www.culturaitalia.it)

2762 digital collections

1475 institutions

1509 services/products

1627 physical collections

456 projects/programs

Italy



CoordinationMinistère de la culture et de la communication - Steering group for digitisation, with • Working group with the DGs of the ministry (expertise and steering)• Mission de la recherche et de la technologie (implementation of the data bases)

Cooperation with other ministries • Ministère de l’Education nationale (Direction Générale de l’enseignement supérieur - sous-

direction des bibliothèques et de l'information scientifique)

Institutions involved• The ministerial working group works with all the braches of the ministry (archives, libraries

(archives, libraries, architecture and heritage, museums, music, performing arts, theatre etc.)• Institutions of all levels (national, regional, local)

Integration with http://www.culture.fr and

the on-going project of unique access point

to the data bases of the heritage

France



CoordinationMLA – Museums, Libraries, Archives Council

Institutions involved• English regions: MLA South West, MLA London, MLA South East,

MLA East of England, MLA West Midlands, MLA East Midlands, MLA Yorkshire, MLA North West, MLA North East

• Wales: CYMAL • Scotland: Scottish Museums Council• National museums, English Heritage, National Archives• Cultural institutions of all levels (national, regional, local)

Linked initiatives• People’s Network Discovery Service• UK Cultural Information Services• regional portals

United Kingdom



The other 15 countries that joined the network with MICHAELplus

started the survey of the cultural digital collections

according to the organisational model set up in France, Italy, and UK.

The national portals are under preparation.

The other countries



UK

It

Fr

MICHAEL and multilingualism



• Human translation of static pages and editorial content

• All languages spoken in partner countries

• User may choose in which language to browse the portal

Multilingual access



Translation of European standard terminologies.

Local terminologies are mapped into the European ones.

Multilingual access



The description of the digital collections is useful for:

• reaching wider audiences at national and international level

• promoting the cultural institutions• informing users about the collections that they

own and promoting the access to them• building a road-map of what’s on in the field of

the digitisation of the cultural heritage

Benefits forthe cultural institutions



The AISBL “MICHAEL Culture” was created according to the Belgian law.

It will assure the MICHAEL service in a long term perspective.

Full members:France (presidency), Italy (deputy-

presidency), Germany, United Kingdom.Other European countries are joining the

AISBL as associated members.

Sustainability



The EuropeanDigital Library

EC Communication: i2010: Digital Libraries (30th September 2005)

• a common multilingual access point to Europe’s distributed digital cultural and scientific heritage– all types of cultural material

• texts, audiovisual, museum objects, archival records etc

– held in different places by different organisations

– targeted at delivering rapidly a critical mass of resources to the users



MICHAEL andthe European Digital Library

13 November 2006

Brussels, Council of the Ministers of Culture

Adoption of the text “Digitisation and Online Accessibility of Cultural Material, and Digital Preservation” that says that, to build the European Digital Library, two are the main bricks:

• CENL and the service “The European Library” that provides access to the national libraries across Europe

• MICHAEL and the European portal of the digital collections



MICHAEL for the European Digital Library

MICHAEL established a comprehensive network of thousands of European cultural and scientific organisations:

• Large, medium and small• National, regional or local• Public and private• Every scientific and cultural sector (Museums,

Libraries, Archives, Catalogue and preservation offices, Education, Research institutes etc…)The network successfully tested cooperative approach and working methods.



MICHAEL contribution to the European Digital Library

• MICHAEL Culture AISBL, one of founder members of the Foundation – representing Ministries and cross-sector interests

• MICHAEL Culture AISBL is participating in EDLnet Thematic Network (http://www.europeandigitallibrary.eu/edlnet/)



What doesthis mean technically?

• MICHAEL locates digital collections from across Europe that will be collected into the European Digital Library

• MICHAEL was developed to be an ‘information environment services registry’

• MICHAEL holds details of interoperability protocols supported by different databases– Z39.50, OAI-PMH, Web Services

• MICHAEL holds details of terminologies used by different databases



European Digital Library

Collections

Items

MICHAEL TEL

MICHAEL andthe European Digital Library

Diagram developedat TEL / MICHAELmeeting, Frankfurt,March 2006

National Library

collections

National LibrariesNational & Regional Museums, Audio-Visual, Archives and Libraries



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

www.michael-culture.eu (project)www.michael-culture.org (portal)

Contacts

Documents

MICHAEL. A service for accessing the European digital cultural heritage. Rossella Caffo