MINERVA / MINERVAplus - Ministerial Network for Valorising Activities in Digitisation
MINERVA / MINERVAplus coordinated a network of Member States' cultural ministries in order to facilitate the adoption of the Lund action plan. Its activities were geared towards harmonising national programmes in the field of digitisation of cultural and scientific content.
- Project type: Co-ordination Action
- Start date: 1 February 2004
- Duration: 18 months
- Funding: € 840 000
- Number of partners: 21 (see list below)
- Project co-ordinator: Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali (Italy)
- Contact: Rosella Caffo
What and who
MINERVA (2002-2005) was set up as a network of European ministries or cultural agencies with the purpose to discuss, correlate and harmonise national programmes and activities carried out in the field of digitisation of cultural and scientific content. With the EU enlargement, the network was extended to MINERVAplus (2004-2006).
Overall, the network has brought together representatives from the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sveden, the United Kingdom. Israel and Russia have been present as observers.
Activities
The principal goals of the network were to create a common European platform for issues around digitisation, metadata, long-term accessibility and preservation, and for promoting recommendations and guidelines.
Work towards these goals included activities to:
- facilitate the adoption of the Lund principles and the Lund Action Plan, in EU Member States, accession countries, and other countries;
- support and foster the collaboration on scientific research, encouraging joint agendas and programmes; to increase the dimension, make visible, promote and exchange information about national policy profiles concerning digitisation;
- define a business model for digitisation projects, including technical guidelines and specific tools for the management of IPR and related issues;
- set up dissemination and training activities at national level, acquisition of new skills and access to existing resources;
- animate work groups to provide the political and technical framework for improving digitisation activities of cultural and scientific contents;
- implement users' needs requirements for accessibility and usability of web sites, define training schemes and develop recommendations, make available test-beds, define 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.
Results
During 2004 and 2005, the MINERVAPlus project team organised a number of workshops and presentations in the member countries and continued the editorial collection of MINERVA in order to promote the results of its working groups and the activities of the National Representatives Group (NRG) on digitisation. Among the publications issued are a handbook on 'Quality principles of cultural Web sites', technical guidelines, good practises guides, a guide to legal issues (IPR and other) and the NRG progress report 2005 'Coordination digitisation in Europe'. All publications are available from the MINERVA website.
Consortium
- Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali (Italy)
- University of Patras (Greece)
- AMITIE SRL (Italy)
- Ministrstvo za Kulturo Republike Slovenije (Slovenia)
- The Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism (Ireland)
- The Centre of Information in the Sphere of Culture of Ministry of Culture of Russia (Russia)
- An Chomhairle Leabharlanna - The Library Council (Ireland)
- Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur (Austria)
- Ministrstvo Kultury Ceske Republiky (Czech Republic)
- National Széchényi Library (Hungary)
- Kuulturi-Ministeerium (Estonia)
- Ministério da Cultura (Portugal)
- Heritage Malta (Malta)
- Biblioteca Nacional (Portugal)
- Stiftung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Germany)
- Ministry of Science and Technology (Israel)
- Ministerstwo Kultury (Poland)
- Jewish Agency of Israel (Israel)
- Salzburg Research Forschungsgesellschaft mbH (Austria)
- AcrossLimits (Malta)
- Dédale (France)