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Minerva project newsletter

July 2006, n.10
edited by Minerva Editorial Board

We are sending you the tenth issue of the newsletter and we thank you in advance for your attention. Please, send us any suggestions writing to minerva2@beniculturali.it.

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News

Table of content



Publications

  • Coordinating digitisation in Europe: third progress report of the National Representatives Group
    The report, including 25 countries papers, is published 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.
    http://www.minervaeurope.org/publications/globalreport/globalrep2005.htm

  • Cost reduction in digitisation
    The effective utilization of resource is amongst the most important management activity in developing digital content and establishing digital collections.
    This guide is a practical instrument for cultural institutions to support decision making and planning for digitisation initiatives. It covers the key parameters to be taken into account to assess and monitor the cost of digitisation, how to model the cost of a given initiative, and ways in which the cost of digitisation can be reduced.
    Draft version 1 available at:
    http://www.minervaeurope.org/publications/costreduction.htm

  • Multilingualism and Thesaurus
    Published the Final Plan for using and disseminating knowledge and raise public participation and awareness Report on inventories and multilingualism issues: Multilingualism and Thesaurus, edited by the MINERVA Plus Working Group 3 Inventories, discovery of digitised content, multilingualism issues Working group. Multilingualism and thesaurus Subgroup.
    This document was created for cultural institutions to emphasize the importance of multilingualism, and to provide them information and tools for establishing multilingual access to their collections.
    There are two versions available: a longer one to be consulted on the web [pdf 817 kb], and a printed one [pdf 272 kb], more sinthetic

  • Published the Arabic version of the Quality Principles for cultural Web sites: a handbook
    MEDCULT project [http://www.medcult.org/] is based on the results achieved by the MINERVA project, with particular regard to the activities concerning the Quality of Cultural Websites.
    Final aim of MEDCULT is to improve the quality of cultural and educational Websites in the Mediterranean countries. This aim will be pursued by providing a methodology and by establishing a support network, where organisations from the cultural and educational sectors of the Mediterranean countries can find information, advice and tools to improve the quality of their Websites.
    Up to now, the most important result achieved is the translation of the MINERVA Handbook on Quality Principles for cultural Web sites, agreed by Egypt, Jourdan and Morocco.
    http://www.minervaeurope.org/publications/qualitycommentary_ar.pdf



News

  • MICHAELPlus: eleven EU Member States join the trans-European portal of culture
    Last 1st June the kick off meeting of the MICHAELPlus project was held in Rome. MICHAEL Plus, a deployment project funded by the European Commission through the eTen programme, will last 24 months and will extend the MICHAEL service from 3 to 14 countries, through the participation of 31 organisations with partners in Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom. The aim of the project is to promote and give quick and simple access to digital collections of museums, libraries and archives from different European countries for education and research, creative industries, tourism and other purposes. MICHAEL and MICHAELPlus are based on national initiatives on digitization and the creation of culture portals, apply MINERVA reccommendations and guidelines and are aligned with the NRG Dynamic Action Plan. Further information can be found visiting the project website
    http://www.michael-culture.org


  • 11th NRG Meeting Conclusions [.pdf 60kb]
    Last NRG Meeting took place in Salzburg, on 23 June 2006.
    Here the summary of the Conclusions:

    Conclusion 1: The NRG supported the idea of establishing an own NRG website for the purpose of branding and to make the NRG more visible. They agreed on the proposed time schedule to implement the website, to be up and operational at the German NRG meeting in February 2007.

    Conclusion 2: The NRG confirmed the launch of five Action Groups, following the action areas for the implementation of the Dynamic Action Plan (DAP) 2006-2007. These Action Groups are: A. Users and content. Chair: France, Co-Chair: The Netherlands; B. Technologies for digitisation. Chair: Greece, Co-Chair: Spain; C. Sustainability of content: Chair: Italy, Co-chair: Poland; D. Digital preservation. Chair: Sweden, Co-chair: Estonia; E. Monitoring of progress. Chair: UK, Co-chair: expressions of interest from Malta and Germany All delegations are requested to submit their expressions of interest for co-operation to the Action Group chairs by Friday, 16 July 2006.

    Conclusion 3: The NRG confirmed their readiness to provide the assembled expertise of 25 member states (plus observers) in the co-ordination of digitisation to European institutions at all levels. The NRG confirmed their interest in the co-operation for the strategic development of European digitisation projects and the i2010 digital libraries initiative.

    Conclusion 4:
    The NRG confirmed the need for establishing a permanent “spokesperson” in form of an (extended) NRG Executive Committee (the presidency troika and, when needed, the chairs of the Action Groups) to communicate with the European Commission and other strategic bodies on a regular basis. A suggestion for how this process should be structured to ensure that all NRG are included in the information flow and decision making will be worked out under the Finnish Presidency.

    Conclusion 5:
    The NRG expressed the opinion that Michael could play an important role for integrating museums and archives in the EDL. Both the NRG and the representative of TEL expressed interest to cooperate.

Minerva project Secretariat
Ministero per i Beni e le Attivitą Culturali
c/o Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea
Via Michelangelo Caetani, 32
00186 Roma, Italy
Tel. 06 68281768, fax 06 68281770
minerva2@beniculturali.it

   

Copyright Minerva Project 2004-05, last revision 2006-07-11, edited by Minerva Editorial Board.