Ministerial NEtwoRk for Valorising Activities in digitisation

1. Ministerial NEtwoRk for Valorising Activities in digitisation EVA Florence 2004 MINERVA Project Antonella Fresa Technical Co-ordinator

2. A NETWORK OF MEMBER STATES’ MINISTRIES to discuss, correlate and harmonise activities carried out in digitisation of cultural and scientific content; for creating agreed European common recommendations and guidelines about: digitisation, metadata, long-term accessibility, preservation. What is MINERVA

3. June 2000: eEurope endorsement by EU Member States April 2001: meeting in Lund to discuss co-ordination mechanisms for digitisation programmes across European Member States Lund Principles to be developed through the Lund Action Plan MINERVA is the instrument to support the implementation of the Lund Action Plan Foreground

4. NRG – National Representatives Group: Composed by representatives officially nominated byMember States authorities; NRG is the 'guardian of the Lund Principles‘; Meets on a six-monthly basis, hosted by the Presidency of the Union in turn; Minerva hosts the secretariat of the NRG. National Representatives Group

5. Due to the involvement of EU governments, MINERVA aims to co-ordinate national programmes and to establish contacts with: other European countries, international organisations, associations, networks, international and national projects involved in the cultural sector. Aims

6. The original Partners of the MINERVA project • Italy, coordinator (Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali); • Belgium • Finland • France • Spain • Sweden • United Kingdom

7. The elargement of Minerva MINERVA PLUS project • Italy is still the coordinator • Austria • Germany • Greece • Ireland • Portugal • Czech Republic • Estonia • Hungary • Malta • Poland • Slovenia • and • Israel • Russia

8. Policy Scenario • The main aim of MINERVA is to support the European framework made up of NRG, Lund principles, Lund Action Plan and Presidencies of EU in the field of the cultural heritage digitisation. • The members agreed to give the highest visibility to the Lund principles in their countries, by setting-up national structures in charge of disseminating the results of the Minerva project. • The Charter of Parma.

9. National Resources • All the member states agreed on the opportunity to invest on MINERVA project their own funding in addition to the budget provided by EC • National and trans-European initiatives are generated within the MINERVA framework, which acts as the catalyst of national investments in the area of the cultural digitisation

10. What MINERVA does • Working Groups; • Publications (guidelines, reports, case studies, etc.); • National Policy Profiles concerning digitisation; • Harmonising activities; • NRG meetings; • Workshops; • Co-operation with other projects; • Enlargement of the network.

11. The project structure • Working Groups • Benchmarking • Enlargement • Dissemination, training and publications • Project management and coordination

12. The MINERVA Working Groups • To provide political and technical framework for improving digitisation activities of cultural and scientific contents • To contribute at the definition of a common European platform for the harmonisation of national initiatives

13. Working Group: Inventories, discovery of digitised content, multilingual issues • ·inventories of past, on-going and planned digitisation projects; • · technical infrastructure for coordinated discovery of European digital collections, including a common set of metadata for description; • multilingual issues. It has represented the incubator for the MICHAEL project

14. Working Group: Interoperability, Service Provision and IPR • analysing, identifying and evaluating activities on metadata, registries and schemes; • discussion on standards, conformance testing centres, agreed terminologies, common metadata schema, middleware specifications; • examination of related issues, such as IPR; • to develop the European Guidelines for cultural digitisations.

15. Working Group: User needs, contents and quality framework • Aim: • To agree on quality criteria for the digitised content as well as cultural and scientific web sites; • The layers of instruments: • Handbook for Quality of cultural web sites; • the 10 Principles; • Criteria and Check-lists to interpret and implement the 10 Principles (under implementation)

16. Working Group: Good practices Aim: to select and to promote good practice examples from Member State programmes and projects in order to exchange experiences, skills and to collect consensus from different communities of users. First selection presented in Alicante, June 2002. New selection launched now. Lessons learnt are gathered and illustrated within the MINERVA Handbook on Good Practices.

17. Benchmarking • Horizontal activity: • To exchange comparable information between Member States on programmes and policies; • To give visibility to national activities in order to share similar experiences and skills; • To promote the adoption of the benchmarking framework as a key tool for coordinating and harmonising national activities as well as to develop measures to show progress and improvement.

18. The Global Report • Progress report of the National Representatives Group • Two editions: • 2002/3 (available), • 2003/4 (under printing) • It includes also the annual revision of the Lund Action Plan, giving the opportunity to create synergy with on-going activities in the same sector.

19. The Global Report Aim: To give visibility to the 'Digitisation Initiative', based on the Lund Principles and to NRG, in order to make easier for National Representatives to get support, resources and infrastructures to implement the Lund Action Plan. Target users are the top level Authorities, to remark their commitment to the initiative and to reinforce their national support.

20. Network enlargement • Which enlargements for MINERVA: • to get involved ALL the 25 MS + Russia and Israel • to co-operate with the other running projects • to settle the Minerva Users Group • to create the conditions for a stable and sustainable European framework.

21. The instrument to join MINERVA: the Co-operation Agreement, to formalise the participation of interested organisations to the Minerva Users Group. Network enlargement

22. Network enlargement • Who can participate: • the industry, • the research, • the local administrations, • the cultural associations, • any other subject who is interested in contributing to the implementation of the Lund Principles.

23. Reasons to join Minerva Why should an organisation invest in order to bring its activities under the MINERVA framework ? to share knowledge and experiences, avoiding to duplicate mistakes, to co-ordinate national/local initiatives within a European approach, being prepared for larger exploitation to share technological platforms and tools, saving efforts and money in replicating what already exists, to contribute to the necessary and ambitious common goal of implementing the Lund Action Plan.

24. www.minervaeurope.org The site is divided in two parts: the Intranet, for internal use by the Minerva partners the public section, an extensive source of information. Minerva Web Site

25. in the short term - to promote the Lund principles as well as the activities and the results of the project - to promote the project’s partners - to become a “gate” to access to other linked initiatives in the long term - to become an essential instrument for the sustainability, to resarch information on digitisation, metadata, long-term accessibility, preservation, etc. Minerva Web Site

26. Ministerial NEtwoRk for Valorising Activising in digitisation www.minervaeurope.org Minerva Secretariat: minerva@beniculturali.it Thank you !