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Coordinating
digitisation in Europe
Progress report of the
National Representative Group: coordination mechanisms for digitisation
policies and programmes 2002
Josè Luis Esteban
Ministry of Culture
National Report: Spain
Policy
Policy scenario for digitisation
During 2002, the following activities associated to the Lund
Action Plan were carried out in Spain.
On the first semester, Spanish Presidency period, the following
activities were accomplished:
- preparing the Spanish Resolution on digital preservation,
including CAC meetings in Brussels and preparatory activities
in collaboration with EC;
- NRG Meeting in Alicante;
- Archives meeting in Valladolid;
- DLM-Forum in Barcelona;
- Culture Council on May 23rd with positive decision regarding
the Resolution;
- setting up the Ministerial Commission on Digitisation
(CMD), with members belonging to the following bodies:
- Subdirección General de Coordinación Bibliotecaria;
- Subdirección General de Archivos Estatales;
- Subdirección General de Museos Estatales;
- Subdirección General de Protección de Patrimonio;
- Subdirección General del Instituto de Patrimonio
Histórico Español;
- Filmoteca Española;
- Biblioteca Nacional;
- Museo del Prado;
- Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía;
- Instituto Nacional de las Artes Escénicas y de
la Música;
- Secretaría de Estado de Educación y Universidades;
- Centro Nacional de Información y Comunicación
Educativa;
- Dirección General de Programación Económica,
Personal y Servicios (Subdirección General de Tratamiento
de la Información);
- Subdirección General de Cooperación Cultural
Internacional;
- Gabinete del Secretario de Estado de Cultura.
The Commission (CMD) met three times and set up mechanisms to
build up tools as mailing listserv,
Web portal etc. During Presidency also, it took place in Toledo
the first ERPANET Seminar.
During the second semester, the activity is mainly related with
strategic design and future development of the Lund activities.
In this direction, decision is made about the following topics:
- other public institutions could be incorporated to the CMD
works as needed and following their interest (i.e. Real Academia
de la Lengua, Instituto Cervantes, Residencia de Estudiantes,
Patrimonio Nacional etc.);
- private sector companies will also be invited to join the
Commission works;
- the Science and Technology Department (MCyT) will be contacted
to start collaboration regarding activities related with Lund,
as the project of building the “Cultural” Portal
for Spain: Patrimonio.es (Heritage.es);
- regarding the building up of the inventory of digitisation
projects in Spain, the MCyT started a profiT project to collect
data about institutions & companies with digitisation projects
& needs. The idea is to collect info about projects and programmes
as well as to locate best practices and experts to feed the collaboration
schema derived from the Lund Action Plan. More than 165 projects
have been identified up to now.
Terms of reference and National policy profile
The Secretary of State for Culture – in Spain, the Ministry
is responsible for Education, Culture & Sport (MECD) –
supports the Terms of reference and will carry out the task needed
to achieve the defined objectives. The starting of the Commission
for Digitisation (CMD) on November 30th, 2001 is a part of this
commitment.
The Secretary of State for Culture appointed the national representative
for Spain and has also accepted the terms of reference for the
National Representative Group. The national representative chairs
the CMD and works closely with the office of the Secretary of
State in the implementation of the task associated with Lund,
from the date of the appointment (November 2001).
The terms of reference have been disseminated to the national
co-ordination group (CMD) as one of the means to create widespread
visibility and consensus around the Lund principles.
The first draft of the Spanish National Profile has been published
at: http://www.mcu.es/mensup/digi/
nationalpages-1-es.html.
We are in the process to obtain more information to complete this
report and such a page will be included in the recent task initiate
to re-design the Department portal with a new image and improving
content (during 2003).
The contact persons for the NRG and the profile in Spain are:
- José Luis Esteban (Spanish National Library), National
Representative, e-mail jose.esteban@bne.es
- Isabel González (Department of Education, Culture and
Sport – Secretary of State for Culture), e-mail isabel.gonzalez@dgs.mcu.es
Co-operation activities
Co-ordination of national networks
In Spain, Culture is an area of activity covered by all the
Public Administrations: the General State Administration, the
authorities in the Autonomous Communities and the Local Corporations.
The de-centralisation of Spain’s Administration implies
that the measures for the protection and communication of our
country’s heritage represent a responsibility shared by
all of the Authorities involved.
As a result, the implementation of a national digitisation programme
for cultural and scientific contents implies the co-ordination
of the owners of and parties with responsibility for all properties
belonging to Spain’s artistic and historic heritage: the
State, regional and local authorities, private individuals and
the Catholic Church, as well as the Ministry of Science and Technology
as the unit responsible for promoting the Information Society.
The de-centralisation of Spain’s Administration implies
that the measures for the protection and communication of our
country’s heritage represent a responsibility shared by
all of the Authorities involved.
Relationships and co-ordination with other national initiatives in connection with eEurope, e-government, e-learning
The Spanish Department for Science and Technology is the responsible
for co-ordinating and developing at national level the activities
related with the promotion and funding of initiatives in ICT.
In this sense, it has started RED.ES, organisation devoted to
promote and develop the Information Society in Spain.
One of the projects under study is patrimonio.es (heritage.es)
where projects related with the digitisation of cultural heritage
could rely.
In this framework are scoped the contact between our two departments
(MECD and MCyT), to co-ordinate and join efforts related with
the adoption of standards as well as representation duties between
us.
European and international co-operation
Memory institutions have a well-established tradition
in co-operation with networks in their respective fields of activity.
This networks usually include European
and non-European institutions. In the Spanish case,
the collaboration with Latin-America is a must, and it’s
very common the presence of Spanish institutions at the lead of
many initiatives. In this perspective, the multi-lingualism included
in the actions related with Lund should consider as very important
the cultural needs and demands of this Spanish-speaking community
of 400 million people, as well as the “Spanish as my second
language” community all over the world.
Benchmarking
We fully support the Austrian comments about the bottom down
feasibility on the benchmarking exercise, reflected in the following
sentences: “Most relevant cultural institutions are independent
and the development of digitisation strategies lies in there own
responsibility. Therefore it is important to convince the directors
of the memory institutions and to encourage them to develop there
own strategic profiles for there institution and to support them
in doing so via the NRG members”.
Inventories and resource discovery
Attention please: about all these chapters we must say that
was inevitable to avoid some repetitions in each point, so what
we choose a method that explains all them by bring in the work
that some of our institution or departments within the Minister
of Culture are developing towards giving objective answers to
each one of them.
Available inventories
As stated before, the Science and Technology Department (MCyT)
has started a ProfiT project where a private company (Ifigenia)
will develop a first version of the inventory of Digitisation
projects.
It’s obvious the need to collaborate with others active
actors inside and outside Spain to standardise and re-utilise
experiences that can help in building up such a catalogue.
Good practice and skills
Good practice exemplars and guidelines
Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
Universidad de Alicante. Fundación Biblioteca Virtual Miguel
de Cervantes Saavedra
Digital edition of bibliographic and documental cultural heritage
– Historical books and documents. Spain and Latin-America.
Archivos Estatales en Red (AER)
Subdirección General de Archivos Estatales
Digitisation of the Spanish State Archives. 12 million images
digitised up to now. Description and images availables on Internet.
Visitas virtuales a monumentos
Patrimonio Nacional / Fundación Telefónica
Virtual visits to Spanish Patrimonio Nacional & Royal Family
places including: Palacio Real de Madrid,
San Lorenzo del Escorial, Palacio Real de Aranjuez, Palacio Real
de la Granja de San Ildefonso,
La Almudaina.
Fundación telefónica funded also the following virtual
visits: Catedral de Mallorca, Catedral de Cuenca, Catedral de
Oviedo, Catedral de Valencia, Catedral de Zaragoza y La Sagrada
Familia.
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Virtual visit to the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, including description
notes & the possibility to review/zoom the objects in the
museum.
Xacobeo
Consejería de Cultura, Comunicación Social y Turismo
de la Xunta de Galicia
Information about the Camino de Santiago including images of Galicia,
Santiago and the Camino, videos, Webcams etc. It’s possible
to follow the route in Spanish, English, French, Portuguese, Italian,
German and Gallego languages.
Main digitisation training initiatives for cultural heritage
institutions
There’s no formal co-ordination between heritage institutions
regarding training in digitisation-related activities.
But, in the Secretary of State for Culture’s training plans
(yearly), it’s always included a provision for training
in digitisation of documents.
European added value and content framework
Quality and accessibility for Web sites
Accessibility of Cultural sites, as well as quality concerns
are key issues in this sort of activities. In this context, Brussels
Quality Framework is a first step in trying to set up and standardise
the level of quality advisable for Cultural Portals in Europe.
Quality criteria should include the long-term preservation point
of view to assure the cost-efficiency and the mission-oriented
of the task (for the institutions).
Research activities on digitisation
It’s a defined task of the CMD to contact and develop a
collaboration scheme with research organisation (i.e. universities)
to collect and propose projects related with investigation in
the areas related with digitisation |