The MINERVA frameworkThe MINERVA frameworkAntonella FresaAntonella Fresa Berlin, 31 Berlin, 31

August 2004August 2004

Ministerial NEtwoRk for Valorising Activising in digitisation

The MINERVA project is the operative section of a wider framework made up with the Lund Principles, the LUND

Action Plan and the National Representatives Group (NRG)

The MINERVA framework

Lund Meeting – 4th April 2001 Representatives and experts from

the Member States gathered in order to identify ways in which “a coordination mechanism for

digitisation programmes across the Member States” could be put in

place to stimulate European cultural content

on global networks.

National Representatives GroupThe NRG is made up of officially nominated

experts from each Member State:• to coordinate digitisation policies and

programmes;• to facilitate the adoption and

implementation of the Lund Action Plan;• to monitor progress regarding the

objectives encapsulated in the Lund Principles.

National Representatives GroupThe NRG meets every 6 months to share

national experiences under the aegis of the presidency in turn.

The “rolling agenda”

In order to guarantee the continuity of the initiatives undertaken, the past, present and future presidencies of the EU commonly define the so-called “rolling agenda”.

What is MINERVA

MINERVA is the operative arm of the National Representatives Group.

It is a network ofMember States’ ministries /

agencies,. It is financed by the European Commission, IST Programme.

Original Partners• Italy, coordinator (Ministero per i Beni e le

Attività Culturali)• Belgium (Ministère de la Communauté

française)• Finland (University of Helsinky)• France (Ministère de la Culture et de la

Communication)• Spain (Ministerio de Educaciòn, Cultura y

Deporte)• Sweden (Riksarkivet)• United Kingdom (The Council for Museums,

Archives and Libraries)

New Members of Minerva PlusGreece Czech Republic

Austria HungaryGermany MaltaIreland SloveniaPortugal Estonia

PolandRussia and Israel

MINERVA missionThe network has been created to:The network has been created to: to discuss, correlate and harmonise

activities carried out in digitisation of cultural and scientific content;

for creating agreed European common recommendations and guidelines about:

– digitisation, – metadata, – long-term accessibility,– preservation.

Activities• to contribute to the creation of a broad

consensus on the European framework derived from the e-Europe initiative;

• to contribute to start up new national programmes of digitisation of cultural heritage;

• to contribute to create a process of institutional collaboration among the presidencies of the European Union;

• to create new opportunities of cooperation among the members of the network.

How MINERVA works• 4 Working groups at European

level• Networking activities (workshops,

on-line training, WEB site, newsletter, benchmarking, cooperation with other projects)

• Publications (guidelines, reports, handbooks, brochures)

• Enlargement of the network

The Working Groups•To provide political and

technical framework for improving digitisation activities and scientific contents

•To contribute at the definition of a common European platfoprm for the harmonisation of national initiatives

The Working Groups• Inventories, discovery of digitised content, multilingual issues

– Multilingualism and thesaurus

• Interoperability and Service Provision– Business Models

• Identification of user needs, content and quality framework for common access points– Small cultural institutions

• Identification of good practices and competence centres– Cost reduction

Benchmarking and National Policy Profiles on

digitisationTo exchange comparable information between Member States on programmes and policies;To give visibility to national activities in order to share similar experiences and skills;To promote the adoption of a benchmarking framework as a key tool for co-ordinating and harmonising national activities as well as to develop measures to show progress and improvement.

Minerva Web sitewww.minervaeurope.org

• To promote the Lund Principles, the acitivities and the results of the project

• To promote the project’s partners• To be a “gate” to other linked

initiatives• To be an essential instrument on Web

quality, digitisation, metadata, long-term preservation, accessibility

New toolsThe Newsletter:The subscription to the English

newsletter is now possible through the MINERVA web site: a constant updating about the MINERVA news.

The MINERVA mailing list:To distribute information to users

interested in the digitisation issues

Digitisation ClusterCooperation among European cultural projects:• sharing knowledge and exchanging experience; • promoting results (studies, reports, guidelines); • adopting common standards and agendas; • avoiding duplication of activities and wasting of

resources among projects; • merging efforts together to maximise the impact of

the individual projects; • creating a larger community of users.

Projects participating to the Digitisation Cluster

BRICKSCALIMERADELOSDIGICULT FORUMEMII-DCFEPOCHERPANET

Euromed Heritage IIEVAHEREINMINERVAMUSICNETWORKPRESTOSPACESCRAN

PublicationsMinerva publishes handbooks and

guidelines on digitisation, edited by its working groups, and an annual progress report of the NRG:

• 1st and 2nd Progress Reports of the National Representatives Group (2002 and 2003)

• Good practice handbook • Quality criteria for cultural web

applications• Technical Guidelines

The Global report

The Global report aims at diffusing MINERVA results to a wide public on politics, programmes, projects on digitisation of cultural and scientific content in the 15 Member States

The good practice handbook

Provides useful information to the establishment, execution and management of digitisation projects.

It is a reasoned organisation of lessons learnt by the analysis of the data collected across Europe until May 2002.

The Handbook is enriched with on-line complementary information, and in particular a selection of existing guidelines on digitisation.

The structure of the HandbookIntroduction and background (Lund Principles and

the Minerva project)

10 sets of practical lessons learnt and information gathered by the Minerva project best practice team. A collections of practical ‘rules of thumb’, to be considered by organisations who are establishing, executing or managing digitisation projects in the cultural sphere.

Complementary on-line information (addresses of existing guidelines and references to examples of good practices in the various sectors)

Practical GuidelinesThe material is broken down in accordance

with the stages in the digitisation life-cycle.

Each guideline description is structured as:

- Title,- Issue definition, which sets the scene and

introduces the problem(s) addressed,- Pragmatic suggestions,- Notes or commentary.

Practical GuidelinesDigitisation project planningSelecting source material for digitisationPreparation for digitisationHandling of originalsThe digitisation processPreservation of the digital master materialMeta-dataPublicationIPR and copyrigthManaging Digital Projects

The quality criteria• Proposes methods and criteria to join

content quality agreed at European level • Based on the 10 Quality Principles

announced at the international conference in Parma (Nov. 2003)

• Soon available on Minerva web site• It represents one of the actions to be

undertaken to ensure quality of digitisation process, quality of contents and quality of cultural web applications.

Network enlargementThe instruments:

• Membership agreementTo formalise the participation of Ministries from other countries in the MINERVA network

• Co-operation agreementTo formalise the participation of interested organisations (Universities, private companies, cultural institutions, etc., in the MINERVA Users Group

For further information:www.minervaeurope.org

fresa@promoter.itThank you