The BRICKS EU Project: Building blocks for allowing European cultural digital resources talking to each other

1. The BRICKS EU Project: Building blocks for allowing European cultural digital resources talking to each other Massimo Bertoncini Engineering Ingegneria Informatica

2. Project Identity Card • Project Acronym:BRICKS - Building Resources for Integrated Cultural Knowledge Services • Project instrument:Integrated Project • Thematic area:Digital Libraries Services • Consortium:24 organisations from 9 countries • Duration: 42 months (January 2004 – June 2007) • Budget: 12,2 Mega Euro Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy

3. Scenario • During the last two millenniums all world populations have developed a lots of Cultural Objects (art-facts, piece of art, paints, sculpture, archaeological sites, architecture site, and so on) • In the last century a lot of information and content on Cultural heritage have been produced and stored in textual, magnetic and electronic formats (movie, book, database, libraries, ecc.) • In the last decade many projects have been conducted, delivering many services and SW to manage these data. • Now it is time to build a common platform to unify and preserve the access to all this data. Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy

4. Goal ... also an integration of services to develop a sizeable integrated platform forDIGITAL EUROPEAN MEMORY • Digital European Memory: an open sourcearchitecture where share knowledge and content • Digital European Memory:reuseof otherproject results by modern SW technologies • Digital European Memory:interoperability, not just forContent, but also for theservices(with Web Services approach) Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy

5. Objectives First objective - to build an open, distributed and safe infrastructure Second objective - to build four main application scenarios to demonstrate the value-added services for the users. Third objective – to be self-sustainable: define the right business model and strategy to sustain in the future Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy

6. “Greek Temple” metaphor In order to illustrate these three areas and account for their interrelationships, the well-known metaphor of the Greek temple will be used: The ROOF: sustainability area The PILLARS: application services The FOUNDATION: infrastructure area Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy

7. Foundation: the infrastructure • Scalable • Easy integration of heterogeneous collections • Support of an unknown number of Bricks nodes • Reliable and flexible • Insensitive to node appearance and disappearance • Handling of emerging semantics • Low administration costs • Open • Based on open standards, e.g. XML, Web Services • Open and well defined interfaces • Open Source Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy

8. Pillars: the application scenarios • Four main application scenarios have been defined • Access to Culture, reconstruction of Knowledge • Management of Culture: Small and Medium Museums • Creation of Culture: living memory • Digital Texts: scriptorium • Other pillars could be added using BRICKS standard infrastructure in a “Plug and Play” way Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy

9. Application scenarios • Reconstruction of Knowledge • Application goal:Design a Pilot to integrate the access of distributed knowledge on Digital Cultural Content • Target users: Researchers and professionals, schools, Cultural associations, University Professors, exhibit curators • Business Model: B2E • Small and Medium Museums • Application goal: to improve and distribute knowledge and good practices on Museum and Culture Management • Target users: Small and Medium Museums • Business Model: B2B Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy

10. Application scenarios • Living Memory • Application goal: to facilitate interaction between users/visitors and Multimedia Art Objects in order to create a living European memory • Target users: general public, visitors of real andvirtual exhibitions • Business Model: B2C • Scriptorium • Application goal: Facilitate fruition and management of Distributed Digital Texts • Target users: Scientific professionals: Universities, Cultural research centres, libraries and archives. • Business model: B2B Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy

11. Roof: the sustainability From a Project to a Factory • Exploitation • Dissemination • Training Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy

12. A. Exploitation Objectives: • Critical mass: the Bricks Open Community • Business planning: guidelines for building business • New investments: investment and resources attracted to enlarge the community and the results • integrationandre-usabilityof results already achieved within National and European funded projects Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy

13. BRICKS is… • Integrated • Open • Innovative Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy

14. Open Project • BRICKS will use of open standards and the open source software development approach • BRICKS is based on an open community to enlarge and enforce its resources and input from researchers, scientists, art professionals and users • BRICKS is open to expansion, by inserting new application scenarios and other project results in a "plug and play" manner. Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy

15. Innovative Project • BRICKS employ a service-oriented approach, focusing on the right added value for the user, in contrast to the traditional content-oriented approach • BRICKS relies on a distributedopen infrastructure, in order to reduce the cost of development and deployment of new services by maximising the re-use of existing results, and to reduce maintenance costs by eliminating the need for a centralised organisational and/or technical infrastructure. • BRICKS uses an Innovative Finance structure: “project financing” approach. Attracting new funds in order to empower the project results. Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy

16. The BRICKS Community (BC) What is the BC? The BC istheaggregationof a large open community of users, composed of content providers, art professionals, and art researchers, but also of students, citizens, tourists, etc. in order tobuild the consensus and interest around the BRICKS initiative Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy

17. The BRICKS Community (BC) Why the BC? • To involve acritical massin the BRICKS network. BC members are potential cutomers • the dimension of the BC, in terms of number of actors and acceptance, will have impact on thesuccess of the BRICKS business model Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy

18. The BRICKS Community (C) HOW to become part of the BC? • 1st level: aggregation of users and building consensus and interest on the BRICKS concept and idea (30 partners) • 2nd level: active participation in the development of the BRICKS project (5 partners) Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy

19. BRICKS Community Members’ in the Baltic Area • Tallinn City Museum • Lithuanian Museums Associations • Others??? Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy

20. Conclusions Design, develop and maintain a services oriented shared European Digital Memory • Build an open scalable infrastructure • Develop the application services (Access to digital Culture, Management of Culture, Creation of Culture, Editions of digital Text) • Use an effective sustainability model (aggregation of the BRICKS Open Community, Sustainability plan, Definition of the organisational structure) Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy

21. THANK YOU Massimo Bertoncini Engineering Ingegneria Informatica http://www.eng.it R&D Direction Roma – Italy Tel.: +39 06 49201425 Mob: +39 335 1038042 Email: massimo.bertoncini@eng.it Silvia Boi. MetaWare, Italy