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Community Memory
Context
Both children and adults can benefit from easy access to community memory. It enables them to identify their local history and to contribute to building interesting resources for future use. Family history is often a common starting point, but users also need to establish references for their professional activities, for business or for leisure interests.
Objectives of research under FP5, action line 'Heritage for all'
The overall aim has been to produce a basis upon which different types of community heritage resources can be created, preserved and consulted using evolving digital technologies for classification, storage and access. Particular objectives of funded research have been:
- to support on-line communities in documenting and safeguarding the emerging record of their societies,
- to build replicable models for creating local cultural resources with the active participation of citizens as end users,
- to encourage take-up projects liable to contribute to services for the citizen,
- to create market opportunities based on extensive technology-enhanced services at local level,
- to combine technical expertise with professional guidance and strong end-user involvement,
- to shape an increasingly comprehensive living archive of local activities, occupations, interests and cultural attractions.
Key projects funded under FP5 include
- CHIMER - developing new models for children-based services
- COINE - creating sustainable web-based environments for local cultural activities with emphasis on a wide variety of digital objects
- CIPHER - establishing communities of interest for Cultural Heritage resources in four different regions
Support activities and take-up projects
- PULMAN and PULMAN-XT - Europe-wide network for public libraries, museums and archives
- ACTIVATE - take-up developing models for documenting local heritage
- BEASTS - take-up building cultural tourism models for SMEs
- SEAX-DAMAS - take-up introducing user-friendly interfaces for local archives
- MUSICNETWORK - stimulating new opportunities for delivering multimedia music services
Community Memory in the Sixth Framework Programme
Building on the 'Heritage for all' work in FP5, a widely scoped coordination action was launched with the project CALIMERA. It was selected from the proposals submitted to the first call addressing the IST priority in FP6 and started in December 2003. The project will co-ordinate and sensitise the stakeholders including professional networks, national and local authorities and industrial players. and increase sharing of best practice, mobilising and adding European value to IST-based national programmes. It also will produce guidelines and benchmarking tools with a special focus on the needs of local archives and museums and address the needs of the end user by identifying a framework for focused research on usability/ease of use.