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By Concha Fernández de la Puente - January 2001
This section aims to provide news of the European Commission's initiatives in the field of digital heritage and cultural content. Its objectives are to summarise the developments in programmes, projects and activities since the last Cultivate Interactive issue and to give a clear picture of progress in the area. It certainly does not pretend to be a comprehensive account of what the EC is doing in the area but rather a short summary of some of the key items. The content is based largely on the information provided in the e-Culture Newsletter, published by the European Commission, DG Information Society, Cultural Heritage Applications Unit, that can be found on the Web [1].
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The Cultural Heritage Applications unit, that runs RTD and content projects in the area of cultural heritage has been following up its activities since the last issue of Cultivate Interactive and would like to present these developments to you now after the Christmas break.
The Information Society Technologies Programme (IST) has published the workprogramme [2] that will be implemented in 2001 For the Digital Heritage sector, two action lines have been included: ALIII.1.2 Heritage for All and ALIII.1.3. Next Generation of Digital Collections. We expect to include them in the call that will be launched in January 2001. If you are interested in these action lines, keep in touch through our Web site [3]
Since the beginning of the IST programme in 1998, there have been 4 calls that included action lines for the digital heritage sector. We can now give you some figures for the first 3 calls, which show the scope and impact of this sector. We have received 174 proposals that have resulted in a total of 32 actions funded (23 RTD projects, 6 support actions and 3 grants) with a cost of 82 Mecu of which the EC funding is 43 Mecu. The average size of a RTD project is 3.3 Mecu with an average number of 8.5 participants. There are 295 participating organisations of which 258 are from EU Member States and 37 are from non-EU countries. We have also identified some emerging clusters from the funded projects: film heritage, digital libraries, metadata, virtual heritage, knowledge information chains and cross-domain issues.
As we can see, the Digital heritage and Cultural Content sector of IST has a number of activities in the area of applying new technologies for accessing and preserving film heritage [4]. The sector is also following the DG Education and Culture activities on film heritage, specifically the European Council’s resolution on the conservation and enhancement of European cinema heritage. It is participating in the “Groupe de contact patrimoine audiovisuel et cinématographique” established at the general assembly on film heritage held in Sintra.
The projects funded under the film heritage area deal both with digital restoration of film and with the development of access to digital film collections, and have in total around 20 Meuro costs, with 10 Meuro funding from the Commission. Some of the technical research areas are automatic restoration of impaired film to HDTV quality, digital film libraries accessible over the Internet, improved retrieval and identification techniques (image recognition, speech recognition) and multilingual access and multimedia system for creating and managing digital archival material and for providing access to it.
The 5th Framework Programme is expanding geographically. Switzerland is phasing in for full participation in the Programme [5]. The ratification process of the bilateral agreements between Switzerland and the European Union is currently underway in the EU member states. As soon as the agreement enters into force, Switzerland will be considered as an associated country without funding to the 5th Framework.
The other important news is that the Council adopted on 22 December 2000 the new programme eContent [6] in favour of European digital content industries. eContent is part of the eEurope Action Plan that aims at accelerating the uptake of digital technologies across Europe and at ensuring that all Europeans have the necessary skills to use them. The programme will follow actions along three lines: access to capital for start-ups, exploitation of public sector information, and linguistic and cultural customisation. Three strategic studies covering the content of each action line have already been launched and the results are published on the Web [7].
The MEDIA Plus programme [8] has been adopted by the Council on 23 November 2000 with a budget € 400 million, as proposed by the Commission. The programme covers continuing training for audiovisual professionals (adaptation to digital technology, sales techniques, training in scriptwriting, etc.), which will receive € 50 million; and development of production projects and companies and distribution and promotion of the European audiovisual sector, which has been allocated € 350 million.
On 18 and 19 October 1999, the European Commission organised the DLM-Forum 99 [9] the second multidisciplinary forum on the problems of the management, storage, conservation and retrieval of machine-readable data. Two of the major results of this DLM-Forum were the progress in the development of a reference model for the management of electronic documents and records and the decision to prepare a first module for a basic European training programme in the field of electronic documents and records management. The other important results was the elaboration of a "DLM-message" to the ICT-industry to promote best practices in public administration and provide easily applicable and cost-effective records management and digital archival solutions. The ICT industry has given an answer [10] to this message in which it readily accepts the challenge given to it by the DLM Forum and is prepared and willing to support the efforts of the European Union for the preservation and public access to archives and records in a variety of practical ways.
Finally we would like to thank in this column Ariane Iljon,
who successfully managed the Telematics for Libraries programme
for eight years and dedicated her career to the creation of a
European library space. Ariane has just retired from the
Commission. We would like to thank her for her valuable
contribution to the libraries world and wish her all the very
best for the future.
This short overview is a review of the key EC initiatives in the cultural heritage area. We are already working to prepare the Sixth Framework Programme and we will keep you inform of any developments.
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Concha
Fernández de la Puente
European Commission
DG Information Society
Cultural Heritage Applications
concha.fpuente@cec.eu.int
<http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ka3/digicult/>
The information provided does not necessarily reflect the official position of the European Commission.
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For citation purposes:
Fernández de la Puente, C. "DIGICULT Column", Cultivate Interactive, issue
3, 29th January 2001
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue3/digicult/>
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