IST Project
n° 2001-35461

The MINERVA project

The MINERVA project, in the European framework outlined, supports the activities of the NRG with the objective of accomplish the Lund Action Plan.

MINERVA is a project financed by the European Commission in the ambit of the IST programme (Technologies for the Information Society) and the 5th Framework Programme; it was born thanks to the close collaboration between the Commission and Member States with the goal of facilitating the creation of a common European vision in the definition of actions and programmes in the domain of accessibility and exploitation of cultural heritage through the Web.

Therefore, MINERVA was born as a network of the Ministries of culture of the Member States, coordinated by the Italian one, with the objective of harmonising the digitisation activities carried out in the field of scientific and cultural heritage. The project started in March 2002 and will end in January 2005.

MINERVA, therefore, operates on two levels, political and technical. The political level guarantees a close collaboration among Member States through high-level institutions, the Ministries of culture, that have responsibility of the cultural heritage, and between these and the European Commission.

Moreover, in this perspective MINERVA intends to give visibility to national initiatives, to promote the exchange of good practices, and to ensure the diffusion and awareness of community policies and programmes at both national and local levels.

Finally, the technical level concerns the creation of a common European platform made up of shared recommendations and guidelines, metadata, standards related to digitisation, long-term preservation and accessibility of contents, quality of cultural Web sites.

• The MINERVA project
  http://www.minervaeurope.org

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Maria Teresa Natale, Andrea Tempera

Moscow 27 November 2004