International seminar on European culture portal and the intercultural dialogue
Assisi, 26-28 May 2005

Programme

Thursday, 26 May

• 17:30 – 18:30 Greetings and presentation of the project in the “Sala della Conciliazione” of the Assisi City Council
  
  Guy Dockendorf
  Greetings

  Antonella P. Recchia
  Director of the DG for technological innovation and promotion Italian Ministry for cultural heritage and activities
  The future ofEuropean culture in the light of the emerging technologies

Friday, 27 May

• 9:00 – 11:00 Working session I
  
  Harald Hartung
  Head of Unit - European Commission, DG EAC
  Opening

  Sylvain Pasqua
  Officer, DG Education and Culture
  Presentation of the Draft Project Plan for the Development of the European Culture Portal

  Rossella Caffo
  Italian National Representatives for the digitisation of the cultural heritage
  The digitisation of the cultural heritage across Europe: the state of the art. Coordination mechanisms, new technologies for the accessibility of the cultural heritage, services for the users, cultural web sites quality, the portals of culture: the Agenore strategy [.ppt 997kb]

  David Dawson
  Head of Digital Futures, The UK Museums, Libraries and Archives Council
  An Action Plan for the CAC – initial ideas for building better co-ordination [.ppt 1742 kb]

  Daniel Malbert
  President of the board of the UNESCO Information for All Programme
  The international cooperation and the intercultural dialogue: the role of UNESCO – IFAP

• 11:00 – 11:15 Coffee break

• 11:15 – 13:00 Working session II
  
  Christophe Dessaux
  Chef de la mission de la recherche et de la technologie Ministre de la culture et de la communication
  The role of the portals of culture. The MICHAEL project. The European alternative to Google [.ppt 2286kb]

  Projection of a demo of a possible Agenore portal (elaborated by the Italian Ministry for cultural heritage and activities with the support of META srl).
  New technologies for a wider access to the cultural heritage. IPR and copyright issues. Accessibility, usability and quality of the cultural web content. Multilingualism issues.

• 13:00 – 15.00 Lunch break

• 15:00 – 17:00 Round table
  
  Open discussion about a final document on the topics tackled

Background

• The discussion paper “Towards and Agenore project” presented to the Comité des Affaires Culturelles of the Council of the European Union on 10 September 2003 (ref. N.12163/03)
• The eEurope initiative, the Lund Principles and Action Plan, the NRG and the MINERVA/MINERVAplus projects
• The priority 1 – Lisbon Strategy of the CAC work plan for culture 2005-2006 (13839/04 – 29 October 2004)
• The priority 2 – Coordination of digitisation of the CAC work plan for culture 2005-2006 (13839/04 – 29 October 2004)
• The priority 3 - Culture Portal of the CAC work plan for culture 2005-2006 (13839/04 – 29 October 2004)
• The suggestion of the EC (“Improving and extending the use of ICT to make the most of Europe’s cultural and audiovisual heritage”)
• The message of the Presidents of the Republic or Prime Ministers of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Hungary to Mr Junker and Mr Durao Barroso about the creation of a European Digital Library

Objectives of the workshop

• To launch the discussion about the criteria for the selection of cultural content
• To discuss on how to make available through the web the major protagonists of the cultural life of each Member State and to stress the cultural diversity
• To highlight the importance of coordinated actions across Europe in the field of the digitisation of the cultural content
• To stress the role of the portals of culture as common access points to the European heritage
• To endorse what has been done about coordination mechanisms for digitisation by the EC (Lund actions, NRG, MINERVA) in cooperation with Member States
• To outline a possible European strategy about the digitisation of the cultural content in the light of the recent suggestion of the EC and the official message of some European Presidents or Prime Ministers to the Council of Europe and to the Commission
• To work closely (NRG and CAC) to elaborate the future strategy
• To ask the support of the EC in order to fulfil the goals of this initiative

The demo

The demo, prepared by META, was conceived on the basis of all the MINERVA platform made up of technical recommendations and guidelines. It is an example of a quality cultural Web application whose goal is to stimulate the debate about the topics tackled.

The character of the musician Giuseppe Verdi was chosen because of his important role both for the European culture and for the Italian culture and history, and also for the purposes that this subject will allow to present through the Web (3D reconstructions, video, music) and the technical matters related (accessibility, usability, IPR and copyright issues, multilingualism, and so on).
DEMO ONLINE - PRESENTATION