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By Concha Fernández de la Puente - October 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 pinpoint the latest developments in programmes, projects and activities and to give a clear picture of progress in the area since the last issue. 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 eCulture Newsletter, published by the European Commission, DG Information Society, Cultural Heritage Applications Unit [1].
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Over the summer, we have seen something of a slowdown in a number of the Commission's activities, however, we have greatly advanced in others.
As I have mentioned in earlier columns, the eEurope 2002 Action Plan defines one of its objectives as the stimulation of European content in global networks in order to fully exploit the opportunities created by the advent of digital technologies. This gave us a basis to organise a meeting on 4 April in Lund [2], supported by the Swedish Presidency of the European Union, that brought together experts from the Member States to identify ways in which a coordination mechanism for digitisation programmes across the Member States could be put in place to stimulate European content in global networks.
A second meeting of Member States' representatives was held under the aegis of the Belgian Presidency in Brussels on 17 July 2001. This meeting discussed a number of topics arising out of the previous meeting and continuing work. These included benchmarking as a means of providing support for improving policies and programmes, identification of standards and of guidelines in support of good practice and interoperability and national programmes and support for training and skills.
A major outcome of the Brussels meeting was the consensus that quality criteria for sites delivering cultural content is a core issue, supporting confidence and trust from the user and enabling institutions to express the work done in developing their sites and the high quality of their content in a discoverable way. The objective is not to regulate cultural content on the Web, but to provide a framework that describes quality in terms of the underlying technical characteristics provided by individual sites or subject gateways and in terms of the quality of service provided to the users. The Spanish participants in these meetings have shown great interest in this initiative and there is an strong will to continue supporting it during the Spanish Presidency (1st half 2002).
In conjunction with the eEurope activities, the Belgian Presidency and the European Commission are jointly organising a high-level ministerial Conference on eGovernment: "From Policy to Practice" [3], that will take place in Brussels from 29-30 November 2001. The conference aims to show how citizens and businesses can reap concrete benefits from on-line public services and to demonstrate where Europe currently stands in this fast moving field, as well as provide a framework to address eGovernment issues beyond the 2002 eEurope Action Plan. Finally, it will see the launch of the European eGovernment Prize contest.
Meanwhile, the eEurope+ Action Plan [4], launched last June targetting the CEE countries, is similar to the action plan covering the EU Member States, but with additions and changes of objectives, actions and timetables to reflect the economic and social situation of the candidate countries.
In 2000, we called for proposals on an action line entitled: Trials on new access models to cultural and scientific content. This focused on launching trial actions across Europe to encourage take-up of results and stimulate the implementation of innovative new products and services in the cultural heritage sector. From this call, we have selected 25 take-ups that are now starting work [5]. They cover some of the main issues related to local and regional memory organisations: virtual conservation of Irish sites of cultural and historical importance, Italian heterogeneous historical archives, a Web-based resource on European puppetry, inter-library loan of old and rare books, 3D photographic internet access to Italian research laboratories, digital recording to provide a Web resource displaying European historic gardens and parks, etc.
This call for trial actions has been considered by many as a very worthwhile initiative that has the potential to create European-wide momentum for innovation in cultural institutions. Our intention is to ensure replicability of results by concertation of trials during the life-time of these projects and to encourage case studies or examples of good practice and dissemination of results.
In this connection, we are launching TRIS, a specific support measure aiming at bringing all these projects together in the most effective way, by ensuring that the different projects meet, exchange their experiences and develop common approaches to key challenges facing their institutions.
In June we evaluated the 6th IST call for proposals, the call for the cultural heritage sector had two action lines: AL III.1.2 Heritage for All, that invited proposals to present projects that would foster sustainable online communities in creating and documenting the digital record of their societies, including safeguarding its accessibility for the future; and AL III.1.3 Next Generation digital collections, that invited proposals in the area of advanced digital libraries applications, including integration of virtual reality (VR) and visualisation technologies into DL models, with a focus on access to distributed cultural and scientific collections and on thematic and collaborative use of these collections. A continuous submission scheme area was also open. In total, 89 proposals were received for the cultural heritage sector and 15 have been retained (10 RTD and 5 support measures). These projects are in negotiation and will start at the beginning of 2001.
While we are negotiating the 6th IST call, the 7th call has been launched and will close on 17 October 2001 [6]. Although there aren't any actions open directly for the cultural heritage area, our sector might be involved in some of the open ones: AL.III.4.1 Semantic Web echnologies, aiming at enabling users to access, retrieve and filter information from the Web relevant to their interests and needs; AL.III.5.1 x-Content futures, aiming at providing opportunities for high payoff breakthrough research covering issues not covered at present by KA3; AL.III.5.2 Competence building; or AL.VIII.1.6 Enabling RTD cooperation with Newly Associated States. This last action line allows the extension of existing IST contracts with CEE partners. The objectives are to build awareness of IST and facilitate the formation of project consortia that include partners from the Newly Associated States, to better link the Newly Associated States' IST research base to that of the EU and vice versa and to support and develop more efficient means of co-operation with these countries. The types of actions addressed are research and development, demonstration and combined projects, thematic networks and accompanying measures.
The IST programme is also expanding in geographic terms. Negotiations of the agreement associating Malta were concluded last December. Since 1 March 2001, this country is eligible to participate to the programme and benefit from EU funding. Also, the EC and the Mexican National Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT) have signed an agreement for cooperative research between Mexican and European organisations under the IST programme.
IST is now preparing its work programme for 2002. One of the emerging topics for culture is creativity. A workshop on Technology Platforms for Cultural and Artistic Creative Expression [7] took place in Darmstand (Germany) on 21 May 2001. The conclusions highlighted the importance of interfaces allowing users to interact directly with content, respect for local culture, the need to involve artists in projects, the necessity of focusing on end users, and the need for a network of excellence in this area to support and catalyse exchanges between cultural/artistic and technical communities. The recommendations from the workshop will be used to help establish future priorities in this area.
The Commission is also preparing the definition and content of the Sixth Framework Programme. A Web-based consultation process has been set up for FP6 [8]. If you think that eCulture is an important topic, then this is one of the places where you can express your opinion.
In order to gain ideas for the cultural area of FP6, the 1st workshop on "Intelligent Cultural Heritage under FP6" [9], Rostock (Germany) 21 September 2001, had the objectives of facilitating information exchange and community building among IST projects under FP5 addressing intelligent cultural heritage and of encouraging discussion and gathering input from research, cultural heritage actors and national/regional policy makers with regard to Intelligent Cultural Heritage (ICH) research themes and priorities under FP6 (2002-2006).
At the recent EVA Conferences, the EC has encouraged the participants to give their opinions on future European research in the cultural heritage area. The input has been collected in The Florence Agenda [10]. This document was presented and discussed during the EVA Glasgow Conference that took place last July and we are just about to produce The Glasgow Response.
The third edition of the DLM-Forum on electronic records, with the title DLM - FORUM 2002: @ccess and preservation of electronic information: best practices and solutions, and its exhibition, will take place in Barcelona (Spain) from 7 to 8 May 2002. The DLM-Forum on Electronic Records [11] is an international and multidisciplinary forum which aim is to promote projects for the improvement of electronic records management and long-term preservation in the organizations. The DLM-Forum is also a reference point for the coordination of electronic records management's policies carrying out in the member states of the European Union, for the establishment of access and long-term storage standards, and for the implication of private sector agents in searching solutions for electronic records problems. The 2002 forum is being organised by the Secretariat for the Information Society of the Catalan government together with other Catalan institutions and departments of the Spanish central government, and with the support of the European Commission. The forum sessions will be concentrated around a number of key topics: the Memory of the Information Age: Preservation, Migration & Long-term Availability; The Use of Public Information: Security, Protection & Control; The Improvement of Knowledge Access: Education for Experts & Public Users; Exploring Records & Archives: Metadata & Standardisation; Dissemination of Content: Best Practice in Solution Scalability & Easy-to-Use-Access; and Capturing Knowledge: High Volume Information Transformation & Automatic Indexing.
Moving to the latest developments of the eContent [12] programme, as a result of the call for proposals 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: PSINet, that will build on the European Green Paper on Government Information in the Information Society, to provide a clear definition and typology of public sector information, to explore access issues and identify good practice, and to establish a framework for a future European Public Sector Information Network; MNM (Minority Newspapers to New Media); and MUDICU (Multilingual Digital Culture Web Project).
In the last five DIGICULT columns I have attempted to give you an overview of the EC initiatives addressing cultural heritage in a digital environment. These initiatives have been reviewed as perceived from the Cultural Heritage Applications unit of the DG Information Society where I have worked for the past five years and where I have gained considerable experience of the sector. Now it is time for me to move on and I am leaving DG Information Society to take up a post in another Commission service. I would therefore like to say goodbye to all those who have followed this section and thank you for your loyalty and support in my work. In October 2001, I will be joining EuropeAid - Cooperation Office, where I shall be working in the area of regional programmes for the Southern Mediterranean and Middle East countries [13]. I hope I will have the opportunity of working with you or addressing you again in the framework of my new responsibilities.
Goodbye!
Concha Fernández de la Puente
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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
5, 1 October 2001
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue5/digicult/>
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