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