Digitisation cluster

Rationale

This initiative aims at maximising the impact and effectiveness of some activities and projects funded by the European Commission, in the framework of the IST programme, and the Member States on digitisation of cultural and scientific content.
Following the initiative launched by the Greek Presidency, the “Digitisation of Cultural Content” workshop in Corfu on 28 June 2003 http://www.minervaeurope.org/events.htm, and the Italian Presidency with the meeting of cultural networks at Bibliocom in Rome on 30 October 2003 at Bibliocom in Rome on http://www.minervaeurope.org/events.htm, and under the auspices of the European Commission, the MINERVA project organised the “Meeting of Culture Networks and Projects” at the EVA Florence conference on 31 March 2004.
The main goal of the initiative is to set-up a cluster of projects working on the digitisation of culture in order to avoid duplication of efforts, encourage exchange and promotion of good practice and results in a sort of cross-fertilisation within the group.

The main objectives of the initiative can be resumed in:

1. sharing knowledge and exchanging experience;
2. promoting results like studies, reports, guidelines;
3. adopting common standards and agendas;
4. avoiding duplication of activities and wasting of resources among projects;
5. merging efforts together to maximise the impact of the single projects;
6. creating a large community of users.

The initiative is open to any other project or workgroup. The next meeting of the cluster is scheduled in autumn, probably in Strasbourg.