Virtuality 18 November 2001

1. Scottish Architects' Papers ProjectThe Grand Hotel at St Andrewshttp://www.rcahms.gov.uk/exhibition/monro.htmlref no. SC 542324 Virtuality18 November 2001 ERPANET , the Lund Principles, & the Brussels Quality Framework Dr Seamus Ross Director, Humanities Computing & Information Management Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute--HATII

2. Humanities Advanced Technologyand Information Institute (HATII) http://www.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/ • Undergraduate & Postgraduate Teaching • Systems & Laboratory Development and Management • Research (e.g. digital preservation studies, ICT in the heritage sector, evaluation studies) • Consultancy • Summer Schools, Conferences & Workshops Seamus Ross -- s.ross@hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross

3. EU Experts Identified Digitisation Needs • improve and reinforce the co-ordination of digitisation activities across Europe; • enable the efficient and effective use of digitisation to open up Europe’s unique and significant wealth in its cultural and scientific heritage; • reduce, if not eliminate, redundancy and fragmentation of effort, divergence of technical approaches, and waste of financial resources; • facilitate the creation of Europe’s eContent industries; • capitalize on the investment made digital resources creation; • ensure visibility and interoperability of the resources; • deliver digital assets that promote and reflect cultural diversity; and, • bring cohesiveness and shared vision to what is currently a fragmented area of activity. ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross

4. The Lund Meeting of EU Experts4 April 2001 • Aimed to enable a visible, accessible and sustainable heritage • Support for cultural diversity, education and content industries • Digitised resources of great variety and richness • Need for evidence of best practices and business case models Details of the Lund Meeting can be found at: http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ka3/digicult/home.html ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross

5. Concluding Messages from LUND • Avoid duplicate initiatives – co-ordinate activity • Digitisation is a chain of activities of which selection is one small part--but it is an essential part • Digitisation creates new assets, but it consumes scarce resources. A balance must be struck. • Don’t be a lemming--the rush to digitise makes us followers not leaders • Focus on high quality resources (QA & evaluation) • Accurate, authentic, reliable, and complete • Planning (e.g. Workflow) and Project management key steps • Focus on economic sustainability of resources • Skills base -- invest first See for example: (http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ka3/digicult/en/newsletter.html). ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross

6. Benchmarking • Exchange good practice, define indicators, identify policy and implement effectively • methods of evaluating and establishing priorities • funding routes and budget responsibilities • Effective management of policy implementation • use and competencies of personnel and their structures • productivity targets and volumes of digitised output • impact in terms of value added to the base service • technical achievements and quality of the output Benchmarking is a continuous exercise essentially aimed at evaluating and understanding where improvements are needed and how “best practices” can be transferred and implemented.--Benchmarking can help policymakers to improve national performance ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross

7. Measuring Quality • The Lund Action Plan has the objective 'to optimise the value and to develop shared visions of European content.' • At Brussels work began to develop ‘quality criteria for sites delivering cultural content is a core issue’ See: http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ka3/digicult/en/eeurope.html ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross

8. Measures of Quality • agreed vocabulary for describing quality features of web sites • automated tool for expressing these characteristics in a machine readable way • encouragement for system of self-registration of web sites • endorsement of descriptions of web sites by system of approval ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross

9. Brussels Quality Framework • The Commission working with nominated experts should develop a framework for quality criteria, capable of being adopted by Member States, covering: • scope (coverage, purpose, audience), • authority and accuracy, • usability, • multilingualism and • technical and descriptive standards • Actions necessary for translating the framework into requirements and guidelines for a self-labelling approach for cultural content sites should be identified • Member States should identify possible strategies and approaches for validating information quality (eg self-evaluation by toolkits/checklists on how the quality data was derived, by third party organisations, by peer review) ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross

10. Training • Lack of information about training needs • Lack of information as to training approaches of different countries • Need for training strategies and measurements for quality of training • Mechanisms to assess the impact of training • Ensure the availability of quality training • Perhaps establish a Cultural Informatics Certificate along the lines of the ECDL ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross

11. Outcome of Brussels • More work on standards: quality measures, benchmarking, training, metadata. • Fora for active exchange of information between those who have experience in digitisation and those who are seeking to embark on the process should be established – encouraging further work on standards and guidelines. • Member States should make existing and accepted guidelines visible and link this with policy profiles. • Guidelines emerging with a high level of acceptance across different Member States or different professional bodies should be clearly identified. Collaboration between Member States essential ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross

12. Recurring Value of Electronic Records • Industry dependent • Product liability • Competitive advantage • Recurring value through reuse • Commercially valuable information a candidate for preservation • Corporate memory • Costs of re-creation vs storage Seamus Ross, The British Academy ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross

13. Key Preservation Issues • Medium • storage media naturally decay • Technological (e.g. hardware/software) • hardware and software obsolescence makes data/information inaccessible • Intellectual • validation of integrity and authenticity • Contextual • avoid loss of meaning with metadata • Legal Impediments ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross

14. Obsolescence & degradation • Hardware (including access devices) • Software • Operating Systems • Device drivers • Applications • Media developments & degradation • Contextual divergence • Legal impediments • Documentation & system divergence • Distributed Networks ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross

15. Obstacles to accessing surviving digital resources • Loss of functionality of access devices (e.g. lack of drivers or interface functionality) • Media degradation (e.g. temp & hum, disaster, manufacturer defects) • Loss of manipulation capabilities (e.g hardware, software, applications) • Loss of presentation capabilities • Weak links in creation chain (capture, manipulation, storage, dissemination) ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross

16. ERPANET • 1.2 million EURO Project over 36 months • EU Funding of 900,000 Euros • Swiss Government Funding of 300,00 Euros • Four key partners • HATII, University of Glasgow • The National Archives of the Netherlands • The National Archives of Switzerland • The University of Urbino ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross

17. ERPANET • ERPANET will enhance the preservation of cultural heritage and scientific digital objects through nine core objectives. • raise awareness of sources of information about DO preservation • appraise and evaluate information sources and developments in digital preservation and make available results of research; • provide an enquiry and advisory service on preservation issues, practice and technology; • implement six development workshops ; • hold a suite of eight training seminars; • Conduct sixty case studies; • stimulate research and encourage the development of standards in the areas of digitisation and digital preservation from within existing EU supported projects and with Europe; • build an online community; and, • stimulate awareness among software producers of the preservation needs of the user community. ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross

18. ERPANET • Started on 5 November 2001 with Launch Meeting in Glasgow • Official Launch to happen on 21 November • First Event in Madrid 17-18 January 2002 co-sponsored under the Spanish Presidency ERPANET: www.erpanet.org ERPANET, Lund & Brussels: Seamus Ross