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| Issue 1 Home | Editorial | Features | Regular Columns | News & Events | Misc. | ||
By Rosalind Johnson - July 2000
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What is a Cultivate national node? One dictionary described a ‘node’ as a ‘knot or knob’. This is not a bad definition – it is easy to feel quite knotted when grappling with the intricacies of the European Commission form-filling needed for the project. But the nodes can also been seen as knobs on the doorways to information, or knots holding together the strands of a net – the network of nodes that is a vital part of the Cultivate-EU measure.
The concept of Cultivate national nodes arose from the National Focal Points (NFPs) that existed in all EU Member States under the European Commission’s former Telematics for Libraries programme. The NFPs were based in a variety of organisations, including national libraries and government departments. In the UK, the British Library originally took on the tasks associated with the UK NFP, and this role transferred to the Library and Information Commission (LIC) in 1995 [1].
Many of the Cultivate national nodes continue the work done by national organisations as NFPs, often with identical personnel. This has ensured a high degree of continuity, and a strong ‘net’ that can support less well-established nodes.
The original Cultivate proposal was divided at an early stage into two proposals, Cultivate-EU for the EU Member States, and Cultivate-CEE for central and eastern Europe. At present, nodes are only established in Member States, as Cultivate-CEE has yet to launch. Twelve Member States are represented.
National nodes are established in many different organisations across Europe, and are no longer exclusively library-oriented, but include museums and archives in their remit. Although their specific task under Cultivate is to advise on the digital heritage opportunities of the IST Programme, in practice the variety of organisations and persons involved means the national node network includes expertise in many different areas, and in other European programmes. National node personnel and other project partners include specialists in digital libraries, metadata and cultural projects.
Under LIC, the UK NFP established a mailing list, lis-uknfp (now lis-european-programmes) to disseminate information on the Libraries Programme [2]. The list’s remit widened to encompass all forms of funding and research opportunities from Europe of interest to the UK libraries sector, and has now extended to the museums and archives sector. This experience was useful when the Cultivate proposals were being discussed among the NFPs, as the need for an open, public list for the Cultivate measures was seen as essential to the project. The UK node is now acting as list manager for the cultivate-list, with technical functions provided by another project partner, UKOLN at the University of Bath.
The cultivate-list was launched in the UK just before Easter 2000, and all national nodes were encouraged to publicise it within their own countries. One of the intriguing aspects of being list owner was tracking just who had posted the information where. Firstly, a large number of Norwegians joined the list, closely followed by Spanish and Finnish members. The number of new members from these countries fell after a few days, but list membership continued to rise as other countries followed. More recently, a significant number of Swedish members have joined the list and, interestingly, what appear to be UK local government members – possibly local authority archives and museums personnel. The list now has around 400 members, and the next step is encouraging more people to post news of information days, successful IST projects, and requests for partners [3].
The work of LIC, and of the Museums and Galleries Commission, was taken over on 1 April 2000 by a newly-created body, Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries[4]. Fortunately, this did not seriously affect work on Cultivate-EU or Cultivate-CEE.
The creation of Resource could be a positive change for the work of the UK node, in that it brings together an existing, and expanding, UK network of libraries, archives and museums specialists. This reflects the fact that Cultivate national nodes are no longer focussed only on libraries, but are extending their remit into all cultural heritage networks.
There are many opportunities for national nodes under Cultivate. The UK node has been primarily involved with the creation of the e-list. Other future possibilities include arranging national events, not only for those interested in applying for funding under the IST Programme, but also events disseminating the results of successful projects. The nodes may also provide limited consultancy; depending on the resources of the node.
Cultivate-EU has just begun; Cultivate-CEE should shortly be launched. As the project develops, other national nodes will report in this column on further developments and initiatives for the benefit of the European cultural heritage sector.
with
this text in the body of the message: subscribe cultivate-list
(your email address).
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Rosalind Johnson
UK National Node
Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries
19-29 Woburn Place
London
WC1H 0LU
rjohnson@willshere.freeserve.co.uk
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For citation purposes:
Johnson, R. "National Node Column: United Kingdom",
Cultivate Interactive, issue 1, 3 July 2000
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue1/nodes/>
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