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MINERVA Plus
Starting from February 2004, Minerva Project is enlarged to
MINERVA Plus initiative, already approved by the European Commission
in the 6FP.
Contract number: 507083
Project acronym: MinervaPLUS
Project name: Ministerial NETWORK for Valorising
Activities in digitisation PLUS
Priority/Priority Component: Technology-enhanced
learning and access to cultural heritage
Total cost (€): 840,000.00
Commission funding (€): 840,000.00
MinervaPLUS intends to enlarge the existing thematic network
of European Ministries to discuss, correlate and harmonise activities
carried out in digitisation of cultural and scientific content,
for creating an agreed European common platform, promoting recommendations
and guidelines about digitisation, metadata, long-term accessibility
and preservation.
It starts from the need to extend the good results already achieved
by the present network, and pave the
way to a full integration of new countries in the existing European
mainstream. It aims to co-ordinate national programmes, and its
approach is strongly based on the principle of embeddedness in
national digitisation activities.
Key issues
The key objectives are to:
- provide an organisational framework in Europe to promote
the digitisation of cultural and scientific heritage in a sustainable
way;
- facilitate the adoption of the principles set up in Lund,
both in EU Member States and other European countries, within
the set of actions launched by the eEurope initiative, and
increase and amplify the impact of eEurope in partner countries;
- set-up and animate an international Forum where different
points of view can be debated, supporting collaboration on
scientific research in this field;
- identify user needs, define training requirements and develop recommendations;
- propose and implementthe model for a benchmarking methodology about
policies for digitisation, to compare and improve current practices,
promoting good practices across Europe and beyond;
- exchange skills and good practice in the field;
- make available test-beds, to define mechanisms for evaluating models,
methodologies, techniques and approaches, to select guidelines for harmonising
activities and to reach agreement among partner countries, on a common
basis;
- promote awareness, information, dissemination and training activities
at national level, both in countries directly participating in the working
groups to be set-up by the network and in other interested countries,
together with the organisation of plenary meetings every six months;
- identify research areas suitable for activities to be launched in
the near future.
Technical approach
The technical approach followed to achieve the previous objectives includes activities
aiming to:
- animate work groups to provide the political and technical framework for
improving digitisation activities of cultural and scientific contents;
- facilitate the adoption of the Lund principles, in EU Member States, accession
countries and other European countries, to amplify the impact of the eEurope
initiative;
- support and foster collaboration on scientific research, encouraging joint
agendas and programmes;
- increase the dimension, make visible, promote and exchange information
about National Policy profiles concerning digitisation;
- implement users’ needs requirements for accessibility and usability
of web sites, define training schemes and develop recommendations;
- make available test-beds, defining mechanisms for evaluating models, methodologies,
techniques and approaches;
- implement the existing benchmarking framework on digitisation, able to
compare and improve quality of national approaches and promote good practice
across Europe and beyond;
- promote concertation events open to both EU and other national projects,
to create clusters of projects;
- promote dissemination and training activities at national level, acquisition
of new skills and access to existing resources.
Expected achievements/impact
The project has the overall objective to promote the creation of National
Committees to discuss, correlate and harmonise activities carried out in the
sector, establishing contacts with international organisations, associations,
other networks, international and national projects involved in the sector
of digitisation of cultural and scientific content. For its nature, it
will not carry out scientific research, but will rely on existing actions
to identify and integrate good practices in a pan-European framework.
A first effect of this proposed coordination is an integration of fragmented
and isolated research groups towards agreement on a common, even if minimum,
set of recommendations and a technical platform across sectors all over Europe.
The project is based on the principle of embeddedness in national digitisation
activities and this can only be guaranteed by the direct involvement of the
national Ministries of Culture who participate in Minerva and MinervaPLUS.
The high added value of the project consists of its effectiveness to developagreed
evolutionary strategies for the digitisation of cultural contents, based on
commonly shared objectives (i.e. the implementation of the Lund principles)
and then to direct and focus the national investments towards these objectives.
The project includes detection of users needs and regular collection of feed-back
through Users Groups, but keeps a top-down approach in its close connection
with national cultural and socio-economic policies: it is by definition open
to the collaboration and integration with other users-led “bottom-up” networks,
seeking support from public authorities and integration with national policies.
It is clear that apart the contribution requested to the European Commission
for animating the group, there is a large amount of efforts– estimated
in several person years – which will be mobilised by the partner Ministries,
and by other Governments which will be involved in the discussion, therefore
providing a clear example of real European added value, where the common activities
supported by the European Commission are finalised to develop an integrated
harmonised approach to the digitisation policy. |
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