EDLnet project &EDL Foundation

Archivi, Knjižnice, Muzeji 11. seminar, Poreč, 21-23

studeni 2007

Summary

• The European Commission action towards a European Digital Library – The EDLnet project – The European Digital Library Foundation

• EDLnet program of work and organisation

• Work achieved so far

‘In the context of our i2010 - Digital Libraries initiative the European Commission envisages the creation of a European Digital Library: a unique resource to Europe's distributed cultural heritage, ensuring a common access to millions of great paintings, historical writings, ancient manuscripts, diaries of the famous and not so famous, personal photos, and important national documents from Europe's libraries, archives and museums.’

Horst Forster , Director Digital Content & Cognitive Systems, EUROPE'S CULTURAL AND SCIENTIFIC HERITAGE IN A DIGITAL WORLD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE, BERLIN 21-22 FEBRUARY 2007

The Vision of the European Commission

The Vision of the European Commission

Across Museums, Archives, Libraries initially – then other data or audio or visual repositories in the cultural heritage arena . A Thematic Network The European Digital Library

Centres of Competence

Access

Digitisation

Preservation

EDLnet - An inter domain network

• To establish trust between the institutions – Thematic Network Partner Group – EDL Foundation

• To make recommendations for future research to continue to ensure access to the digital heritage of Europe.

• Propose practical implementation of the European Digital Library.

• The network is open for lifetime of the project to all relevant cultural heritage institutions.

• EDLnet Office, in the KB (NL)• Thematic Network Partner Group

– Across 4 domains Museums, Libraries, Archives and Audio-visual Archives

– Creating the political and technical environments necessary to work effectively together

So Therefore:

• Determines Organisational Structure for the European Digital Library

• Creates a coalition of the willing and consensus on a roadmap

• Tackles domain level interoperability issues

• Builds prototypes against stakeholder and user requirements

EDLnet - a thematic network for cultural heritage domains

Thematic Partner Network, the Workgroups & the Network Advisory Board

WG1 Human, Political & Intercommunity

WG2.1 Standards & Interoperability of Standards

WG2.2 Semantic & Multilingual Interoperability

WG2.3 Technical Architecture

WG3 Users & Usability

EDL Foundation

Network Advisory Board

ThematicPartner Network

A Foundation for Cross-Domain Governance

• to provide cross-domain access to Europe’s cultural heritage.

So the Foundation will: • facilitate formal agreement across museums, archives,

audio-visual archives and libraries on how to cooperate in the delivery and sustainability of a joint portal. 

• provide a legal framework for use by the EU for funding purposes and as a springboard for future governance.

Purpose:

a. European Associations (legal entities) of Content Holders;

b. National Associations (legal entities) of Content Holders;

c. International Associations (legal entities) for the benefit of a European branch (non legal entity) of this association;

d. relevant individual institutions (legal entities) for one of the Domains, and

e. natural persons for the benefit of a relevant individual institution or association for one of the Domains, which is not a legal entity.

Foundation Members can be:

• to provide cross-domain access to Europe’s cultural heritage.

So the Foundation will: • facilitate formal agreement across museums, archives,

audio-visual archives and libraries on how to cooperate in the delivery and sustainability of a joint portal. 

• provide a legal framework for use by the EU for funding purposes and as a springboard for future governance.

Purpose:EURBICA

FIATACEEMFCENL

LIBER

MICHAEL

KBICOM EuropeCERL

European Regional Branch of Intl. Council on Archives

Intl. Fed. of Television Archives

Association Cinémathèques Europeennes

European Museums Forum

Conference of European National Librarians

Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche

Multilingual Inventory of Cultural Heritage in EuropeNational Library of The Netherlands

International Council of Museums Europe

Consortium of European Research Libraries

Martine de Boisdeffre

Edwin van Huis

Claudia Dillmann

Massimo Negri

Elisabeth Niggemann

Hans Geleijnse

Christophe Dessaux

Wim van Drimmelen

Pan European Association Board of Participants Executive Board

• June 29 - Small meeting of major European Associations to discuss concept and first draft of statutes for Foundation

• Summer 07 – agreement on Articles for Foundation

• September 12 - Founder Meeting and nominations for Executive Committee

• November 07– Legal Foundation in place• Statutes to Commission 27 November 07• Next Board Meeting 28 November 07, Brussels

Timeline to date

– Apenet Archives– Arrow Rights Management

Libraries

& Publishers– Athena Museums– EDLlocal Local & Regional Museums,

Libraries, Archives– EFG Film

Projects agreed on to date:

VideoActive 2NaturalisArt & Architecture

Projects in the pipeline

EDLnet Work plan 5 Work Packages

• WP1: Human, Political & Intercommunity Interoperability led by ABM Centrum, Sweden (Mats Lindquist) and MLA, UK (Chris Batt & David Dawson)

• WP2: Technical & Semantic Interoperability led by Stefan Gradmann (University of Hamburg, Germany) which formerly led also the EU Interoperability Group & Makx Dekkers with help from Carlo Meghini (ICSTI, Italy)

• WP3: Users and Usability led by Daniel Teruggi, with help from Philippe Poncin from the Institut National d’ Audiovisuel, France

• WP4: Concertation and Dissemination, led by Eremo s.r.l• WP5: Management and Coordination, led by the Koninklijke

Bibliotheek, the host of The European Library who will execute the work together with new project staff within EDLnet Office.

CIMEC

Organisation Map

EDL

ABM utvikling

MICHAEL

ABM Centrum

EUBAM

MLA

Heritage Malta

RUNAS

Apenet

A&ANaturalis

TEL

EFG

AthenaEDL

Local

VideoActive

British Museum

INA

Rijks Museum

Beeld en Geluid

CervantesLibrary

Gottingen Univ. Lib.

TATE

EuropeanArchive

National Portals or Aggregators Domain Portals

Web Service or API

Large Independents

The harvestible

rest

Michael

Recommendations:Phase 1• All content partners encouraged to use an aggregator –

national portal (both cross and single domain) or vertical aggregrator or portal to deliver their content to the European Digital Library– Cross domain are portals such as MLA, ABM Centrum– Single domain are German Film Inst, INA– Vertical are The European Library and proposed portals such

as European Film Gateway, APEnet• To undertake further research to establish all the single

domain portals in each country and encourage participation in EDLnet and the EDL

• Data needs to be normalised at a national or Aggregators level

EDL Hybrid Organisation Modelin 2 – 3 phases

Recommendations:Phase 2• All content partners not belonging to a national

or vertical aggregator or portal may submit content using a set of standards and a tool kit to create those standards. Must conform to the minimum terms – need to sell the benefits of standardisation across the sectors

• A third phase is also envisaged where EDL actively harvests or crawls interesting content.

EDL Hybrid Organisation Modelin 2 phases

• EDL creates both a single portal and is able to make the information available to other portals or learning environments

• Need to deal with as low a level of granularity as is possible therefore need to be able to deal with complex objects

• EDL ‘Play’ page – Results screen click to Play page including digital image –full version of the digital image can be displayed next but so can all the peripheral linking, suggestion information.

Other Recommendations (1)

• Landing page should be in native language where feasible – so automatic translation

• EDLnet editorial– Needs to be automatically generated by the portal– Can also be generated by the expert or trusted

user– It should be possible to separate out the user

generated content from the institutional.

Other Recommendations (2)

• All new portals funded by the commission should insist on the standardisation recommendations of EDLnet

• Cannot loose sight of Interoperability as the long term goal. Data needs to work with all others in order to produce the results the user is looking for

• Architecture should be built on preferred approach

• About Digital content but need to consider related records for which there is no digital content – filter at aggregator level in delivering digital content only, but could change this later, so EDL needs to able to deal with catalogue records as well.

Other recommendations (3)

Maquette & Prototype

• Prove of concepts for a user oriented common interface for search, discovery and use across all domains contents– Results of search are digital objects or surrogates (copyright

management)– Multilingual interface + multilingual search features– “Innovative, modern features that are suitable for all visitors”

(European Parliament Resolution 27 September 2007) = some realistic vision on where we could be tomorrow

• Social web, semantic web, personalisation, collaboration, accessibility

• Maquette by January 2008 • Prototype by November 2008. 2 million objects• Selected theme: the CITY

– Cities of the future/cities of the past ; migration and diaspora ; urban cool and urban chic ; death, disease and drainage ; archeology and architecture ; utopias and cities of the imagination ; riot and disorder ; palaces and politics.

European Digital Library

Interaction of EDL with providers

• aggregators

• Object models

• Metadata

• Ingestion/Delivery Methods

• Rights Management

• Commercial aspects

• Versioning

Object Models

• Objects vs. Representations / Surrogates• Add abstractions (formerly Metadata)

– TOC+Index– Full text index items– Extracts / Aggregations– Links to semantic nodes– Thumbnails– Music / video abstractions: colour histograms,– Shape abstractions– Signatures

EDLnet Architecture Group

Preliminary conclusions