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By Concha Fernández de la Puente - May 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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These last months since the last issue of Cultivate Interactive and, therefore, since the last DIGICULT column, we have been very active and many initiatives have been launched.
In June 2000, an action plan for eEurope was agreed by the European Council at the Feira Sumit. In order to follow up on some of the agenda issues, a panel of national experts from most Member States were invited by the European Commission to a meeting in Luxembourg on 15-16 November 2000. The main objective was to develop strategies to improve the co-ordination mechanisms for Member States' digitisation programmes, in particular in the field of cultural heritage. The participants, agreeing that improved co-ordination was needed, came up with the idea of creating an inventory of the existing initiatives. As a first step, a questionnaire on digital policies was established
In January 2001, Sweden took up the Union’s Presidency for six months. They supported our initiative in the field of digitisation by holding our follow-up meeting in conjunction with a meeting under the Swedish Presidency in April in Lund. The meeting in Lund was extremely successful, achieving major objectives. The initial results of the responses to the questionnaire were presented and discussed. The Member States' representatives proposed tools to keep the data updated over the longer term. Benchmarking was identified as a sound mechanism to exchange good practice across Member States and to improve national practices in the field of digitisation policy. The countries who will next be holding the Presidency (Belgium and Spain) have already expressed their wish to continue supporting this important initiative.
Meanwhile we have continued with the day- to- day running of our cultural heritage programme. As a result of the opening of Action Line III.1.5 Trials on new access modes to cultural and scientific content of the 2000 Work Programme, a total of 53 proposals were received last December and 254 of them have been selected for funding. On the 6th February 2001, a meeting was held in Luxembourg with all the successful projects to brief them on the next steps in the contract negotiation. The meeting also gave the participants the opportunity to exchange experiences and discuss co-operation options for the future. We expect these projects to start this summer.
As mentioned in the last DIGICULT column, the IST work programme 2001 contains two action lines for the digital heritage sector: ALIII.1.2. Heritage for All and ALIII.1.3 Next Generation of Digital Collections. Both action lines were published on a call opened in January and closing in April [2]. The projects selected from this call are expected to start at the beginning of 2001. This will probably be our last major call under the 5th Framework Programme.
In the framework of this call, and especially of the action line on digital libraries, the Cultural Heritage unit has signed a co-operation agreement [3] with the Digital Libraries programme of the National Science Foundation (NSF) USA for collaborative work in the on RTD projects.
Other interesting action lines open in this call were ALIII.5.1 xcontent futures, that aims to provide opportunities for high payoff breakthrough research within the scope of the Key Action, yet with a focus on issues not covered at present by its Action Lines. And, ALIII.5.2 Competence building, that aims to support the acquisition of multimedia skills and to enhance the access to competence in multimedia: provide access to advanced emerging technologies and services, knowledge and competence relevant to multimedia systems and services, via world class competence centres already existing or emerging in Europe. These access measures could be very useful for cultural actors to reinforce their portfolio of expertise.
The EU funded DELOS network of excellence organised an EU-DL All Projects concertation meeting on 7 and 8 February 2001 in Luxembourg in cooperation with the Cultural Heritage Applications unit. Planned as part of a series of meetings to bring together representatives of relevant initiatives in the field of digital libraries, the objectives were to exchange information about the projects, to identify areas of synergy, to jointly promote standarisation and dissemination activities and to provide the IST Programme with a global view of the evolution of Digital Libraries technologies.
We have launched a study on Technological Landscapes for Tomorrow’s Cultural Economy (DigiCULT) [4]. This is a strategic study on the state of the art of use, development and research of information and communication technologies in the cultural (and associated) sectors in Europe. The objective of the study is to provide a clear set of action recommendations for cultural institutions Europe-wide. In order to achieve this goal, DigiCULT will provide an in-depth analysis of the state-of-the art of technologies, content, cultural services and applications as well as (user) demands and policies in the European cultural sector. Starting on 1 January 2001, the study will be coordinated by Salzburg Research over a period of 12 months, and will involve a consortium of nine highly acknowledged European cultural organisations.
The eCulture newsletter is now in its 8th issue. This has proved to be a very efficient communication tool for us, triggering many encouraging comments. The newsletter Web page [5] is among one of the most visited in CORDIS!
Also within the communication area, during the first quarter trimestre of 2001, we have restructured the digicult Web site [6]. It now offers new features such as a clustered approached to our projects and a more dynamic home page. Have a look and send us your comments.
The Commission is already working on the preparation of the next Framework Programme for RTD (FP6). In order to get wide input from the IST community, a web-based consultation system has been set up [7]. You are invited to reflect on future priorities and express your opinion using this tool.
The other interesting EC activity in the field of electronic record management is the DLM-Forum. Its goal is to investigate possibilities for wider co-operation in the field of electronic archives both between the EU Member States and at Community level. Thus the 1st and 2nd DLM-Forums (Brussels, December 1996 and October 1999), organised by the European Commission and the EU Member States, hosted some 800 experts and decision-makers from public administration, archives, ICT-industry and research. The DLM-Monitoring Committee and its special working party plan to organise the 3rd DLM-Forum 2002 during the forthcoming Spanish EU Presidency (1st half of 2002). This will provide an interdisciplinary European platform to present best practices and concrete solutions and to promote, with the support of DG Information Society, the European Network on Electronic Archives.
The EU eContent [8] programme was finally adopted by the Council on 22 december 2000 for the period covering the years 2001 to 2004 and with a total budget of 100 Meuro. The programme covers three main strands of action: improving access to and expanding use of public sector information, enhancing content production in a multilingual and multicultural environment, and increasing the dynamism of the digital content market. As a result of the call for proposals [9] for preparatory actions published on 20 April 2000, 28 projects have been chosen to stimulate the development and use of European Digital Content on the global networks and to promote the linguistic diversity in the Information Society. Some of the selected projects relevant to the cultural heritage area are: MNM (Minority Newspapers to New Media) and MUDICU (Multilingual Digital Culture Web Project). A complete list of selected projects is also available [10].
As we have already informed you, Culture 2000 [11] is a European Union financial support programme established to support cultural co-operation projects in all artistic and cultural sectors. In 2000, this Community programme provided aid for 219 projects amounting to over EUR 32 million [12]. The programme published a new call for proposals in January 2001, closing at the beginning of May. This year the focus is on projects which are aimed at young people, people with disabilities and disadvantaged sections of society and which promote their social integration and projects which combine artistic, cultural and scientific quality and are accessible to the general public. In order to extend the impact of the programme, the Commission presented on 12 March 2001 a proposal for a Council Decision on the participation of Central and Easter European Countries in the programme. This requires a decision by association boards, which the Commission hopes will be taken soon enough for CEECs to participate in cultural projects backed by the European Union in 2001. The same conditions and procedures will apply to CEECs as to Member States.
On 14 February 2001,14th the European Parliament approved the Common Position on the EU Copyright Directive [13]. Libraries were successful in lobbying their interests during the preparation of this directive and managed to have the most harmful amendments for the libraries rejected. The next stage after adoption by the Council of Ministers (which should go through) will be the process of the Directive's enactment in the different Member States.
As in previous issues, we have reviewed the main developments of the work done by the Commission in the cultural heritage sector over the past months. In the next issue we will be able to tell you more about the Sixth Framework Programme developments and some of the initial results of the projects funded under our current programme. Keep in touch with this column.
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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
4, 7th May 2001
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue4/digicult/>
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