European Cultural Content Interoperability Framework

 

Coordinator

Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), supported by SRFG, STIS, ICCS, MCESR, HM and MKEE

In short

• It is aimed to work on standards issues
• It will identify competence centres where they exist, both at national and international level and will establish an informal network of centres
• It will produce reports about standards, their use, the benefits in using them, etc.
• It will organise events (seminars, workshops, etc.) mainly devoted to promote the results of the MinervaEC work on standards and to disseminate information about the network of competence centres

Objectives

The objective of this work package is to provide clear guidance on the creation, use and management of cultural content across Europe, and will lead to the development of a European Cultural Content Interoperability Framework. The Work Package will also establish an informal network of the competence centres funded at a national level across Europe, and enable them to start working coherently together. The Work Package will:

• Establish an informal network of the competence centres funded at a national level across Europe, and enable them to start working coherently together.
• Build on the expertise developed in the MINERVA, CALIMERA and Digicult Projects to bring together Content Enrichment projects.
• Work with the other projects that are funded under eContentplus to examine areas where further standards work is required and to identify areas of best practice.
• Co-operate with the research and commercial sectors to ensure that standards can be widely deployed.
• Contribute to the organisation of tutorials to support the management of digitisation projects and services; legal aspects: IPR, copyright and data protection; technical issues: digitisation process, cataloguing and management, including metadata

Description of the Work

The project will build consensus on an interoperability framework that can be used to bring together content from a range of eContentplus projects. The initial basis for this activity will be the existing MINERVA Technical Guidelines, but they will be reviewed, updated and extended as necessary as an interim measure as part of the development of the wider Interoperability Framework. MinervaEC will work with a wide range of projects, and particularly with TEL – The European Library. The project will also work on Content Enrichment projects that are funded under the eContentplus call, as well as FP6 research projects such as DELOS and BRICKS and with Competence Centres. In addition, the Work Package will establish links with the Thematic Networks established in other areas of the eContentplus programme covering areas such as e-Learning and GIS to ensure that their requirements are supported by the Framework, and to explore the potential of developing a Framework that can be applied across the eContentplus programme.

The MinervaEC project will build on the expertise developed in the MINERVA, CALIMERA and DigiCULT projects to develop a strong ethos of collaboration between the content enrichment projects in the eContentplus programme. This will be achieved by working at both European and MemberState levels, encouraging contact between European projects and national initiatives undertaken by the National Representatives group. Initially, this collaboration will be developed through the work on Technical Standards, and will extend towards investigating the potential for defining interoperability trials. The trials will not be carried out in the frame of the MinervaEC project, but they will be possibly integrated in the work of other projects (both at national and European level) and further developed as new project proposals. The Work Package will also collaborate with thematic network in other areas of the programme, particularly in e-Learning and GIS, where there is a strong history of common interest.

The Work Package will establish an informal network of nationally-funded competence centres, covering areas such as collections management, metadata, ontologies, multimedia, 3D and virtual exhibitions. The Competence Centres will also cover the digitisation of specific types of materials, including 2D and 3D objects, literary works, documents, audio, still and moving images. The network will begin with the basic work already started within the previous MINERVA project, which identified and grouped the competence centres present in the 25 Member States, Bulgaria, Romania, Norway, Israel and Russia. This informal network will assist in the development of the Interoperability Framework and will also seek to further encourage the sharing of good practice. It is envisaged that this informal network of competence centres will prepare itself to establish itself as a European Network of Competence Centres. MinervaEC will act as the interface between this informal network of competence centres and existing MemberState priorities and programmes. The key objectives of the informal network will be to create a pool of expertise and good practices, able to provide expert advice, increasing the visibility of innovative solutions, and running benchmarking exercises. This will enable the competence centres to operate more effectively, giving consistent high quality advice and guidance to projects within Member States and operating at a European level. If such a competence centre network was established within the framework of FP7 this MinervaEC activity would then act as an interface between the formal (FP7) network and the MinervaEC members and network.

Projects that form part of the eContentplus programme will be implementing leading edge technologies and, as a direct result, may identify areas where standards development may be required. The network will collaborate with international initiatives such as the DLF and DCMI as appropriate. In addition, MinervaEC will collaborate with Thematic Networks in e-Learning and GIS, building on existing relationships at national and European levels. This will also require close co-operation with the research and commercial sectors, to ensure that the standards can be deployed in a number of sectors. A particular focus will be on IPR and DRM, and will include engagement in the development of metadata standards for Rights Expression in collaboration with other international projects such as Editeur, DLF and commercial publishers INDICARE. In addition, the network will identify issues that arise from personal publishing, such as folksonomies and automatic metadata extraction, that may require future standards or technical research.

The network will developing quantitative indicators that can be used to provide baseline measures of the effect of European co-operation on digitisation, and demonstrate the take-up of good practices, as signalled in the I2010 Digital Libraries Communication.

The experience and expertise developed within the Work Package will contribute to the organisation of tutorials to support the management of digitisation projects and services; legal aspects: IPR, copyright and data protection; technical issues: digitisation process, cataloguing and management, including metadata creation. As an example, the issues of IPR and DRM will examined in a tutorial that will look at open business models, which balance enabling access to information with commercial exploitation in order to sustain digitisation and on-going digital service provision. These tutorials will inform policy and project development within Member States, and will support the planning and development of the European Digital Library.

The activity in the Work Package will be developed, where possible, using online tools, such as email discussion fora, video-conferencing and wikis. However, a programme of meetings will be established, particularly with other Thematic Networks and the Content Enrichment projects to ensure that the informal network is able to identify key issues for the development of the Interoperability Framework.