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By David Fuegi - February 2002
CULTIVATE-Russia is a new addition to the Cultivate Cultural Heritage Applications Network (CULTIVATE) which supports the cooperation of memory institutions (archives, libraries and museums) under the European Commission's Information Society Technologies Programme (IST). It brings Russia into the network and completes the network in its present form. CULTIVATE-Russia starts in January 2002 and runs for 18 months. More information will be available shortly from the Cultivate Web site [1].
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From 1st January 2002 the Cultivate family of projects will be
completed as CULTIVATE-Russia comes on stream funded by DGINFOS.
The project's kick-off meeting will be held in Moscow in
mid-January [2] and the Russian partners plan to get up to speed
rapidly. The project will run for 18 months so that it ends
around the same time as the rest of the Cultivate network, which
includes Cultivate EU and Cultivate CEE. Although it is formally
a separate project with its own contract, budget and partners it
will aim to work very closely with the other Cultivates. It will
join their joint management meetings and workshops including
those planned for Barcelona in May, contribute to Cultivate
Interactive and to the policy monitoring and awareness raising
activities of the network. But primarily it will expend its
energies in Russia because Russia is very big and Russia is a bit
different.
CULTIVATE-Russia will contribute to the overall strategic need to link Russia to Europe by building important human networks and helping to integrate the Russian cultural heritage network into the European network. Russia has a great wealth of cultural heritage and ICT expertise, which is still mostly inaccessible to EU citizens. CULTIVATE-Russia will play its part in ensuring that the European Commission has reliable information on trends and developments in the archives, libraries and museums in Russia, an informed international human network of participants in the IST Programme and informed political support for the Programme.
In Russia, with its enormous territory and low income population, it is impossible to hope that multimedia computers and access to Internet will be found in each family in the near future. This is why any broad access of the population to electronic resources, and the overcoming of the "digital divide" is first and foremost connected with public places of access in libraries, museums, and information centres. Libraries, museums and archives in Russia are entering the electronic age. Practically all the regional libraries, as well as a majority of city libraries in Russia have electronic reading rooms or are going to organise such rooms in the near future. Central libraries of the country, including the Russian State Library, the Science and Technology Library, the Library of Foreign Literature and other libraries of large cities have Internet connections.
A Russian node to represent the IST Programme to the cultural heritage domain has not previously existed and this will be remedied through CULTIVATE-Russia , which will aim to create a cadre of influential staff who are knowledgeable about the programme and keen to build on its outcomes. Language, distance and a comparatively poor IT and telecommunications infrastructure mean that achieving these objectives in Russia will be challenging. CULTIVATE-Russia expects to have to make a good deal of material available in Russian (including a Russian equivalent of Cultivate Interactive) and to use paper-based communication on a larger scale than in other countries. Because of the country's vast size, events will need to take place in major regional centres and not only in the capital.
CULTIVATE-Russia has 7 partners. The British Council (Moscow) is the principal contractor and responsible for the administrative/financial co-ordination function. The Council has enormous experience of running projects in Russia and will support the project in many ways, making full use of its extensive network of regional contacts and offices. The five Russian partners, representing the 3 main cultural heritage domains, have leadership positions and a wide geographical spread within Russia, which is, of course, a huge country. David Fuegi of MDR Partners, which is responsible for the management of CULTIVATE-CEE will also manage CULTIVATE-Russia. This will ensure continuity and close liaison between the projects. Monika Segbert will work closely with MDR and the principal Russian partners on key issues including publicity. To help achieve close personal and professional liaison within the Cultivate group of projects, many of the technical partners in Cultivate CEE and Cultivate EU will lead workshops in Moscow linked to the kick-off of Cultivate Russia.
The Russian partners are the Russian Cultural Heritage Network, Department for Archives of Khabarovsk Regional Administration, Chelyabinsk Regional Universal Library, Smolensk State Union of Museums and Centre PIC. Three of the Russian partners represent major players in the three main sectors represented within the cultural heritage domain - libraries, museums and archives. The fourth (Russian Cultural Heritage Network) is a cross-sectoral body based in the beautiful Darwin Museum in Mosocw. Centre PIC, which is also Moscow based has extensive experience in managing the prestigious EVA conference and will organise a major conference in Russia as parto f the CULTIVATE-Russia activity.
The Russian Cultural Heritage Network [3] [4] works closely with a wide range of cultural heritage institutions across Russia and brings together many regional and international partners. RCHN has substantial experience of information collection and dissemination and has built up large web-sites for the cultural heritage domains. Based in modern offices in the Darwin Museum, the Network has staff with high levels of technical and managerial expertise. Amongst the websites created by RCHN are All-Russian Museums Registration, Russian Museums and Galleries Online, Russian State Library, Russian Culture and Zoos of Russia.
The Department for Archives of Khabarovsk Regional Administration is an independent institution that is engaged in the process of archive administration under the statute of Khabarovsk region "Archive's stock, archives and the practices Act". Chelyabinsk Regional Universal Library is one of the oldest libraries in the Urals region founded in 1898. Nowadays the library is involved in many different activities and as a result it has significant human networks. The library ranks as one of the large regional libraries of Russia with about 2 million stock items and plays an important role in the cultural life of the Chelyabinsk region where it functions as the regional depository and methodology research centre for all libraries in the area. Smolensk State Union of Museums is one of the largest unions of museums in the Russian Federation and is involved in a wide range of activities including seminars and workshops on art and culture issues and has strong connections with museums and their associations and regional authorities and has been heavily involved with IT applications since 1994. Centre PIC - the Centre for Informatisation in the cultural sphere of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation - was established in 1992. Its primary objective is to investigate new information technologies and to apply them in the cultural area.
Centre PIC is a state research and design body subordinate to the Ministry of Culture and works under contracts with this Ministry, with the Ministry of Science and Technological Policy, and with Russian museums and other cultural institutions. In 1995 the Ministry of Culture of Russia set up the Centre of Multimedia Technologies (as a subsidiary of Centre PIC) to co-ordinate the efforts of different bodies connected with multimedia publishing and distribution in culture and art. The Centre's services include evaluation of proposed projects and works-in-process. In addition, the Centre prepares drafts for laws in the area of rights and ownership of cultural properties. Centre PIC monitors and analyses new information and communication technologies in culture and art and presents annual reports on the topic. In 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001Centre PIC organised EVA Moscow, a leading international event in Russia and Eastern Europe on new information technologies in the cultural area.
It is intended that more details about the project will appear shortly on the Cultivate Web site.
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David Fuegi
david.fuegi@mdrpartners.com
http://www.mdrpartners.com
David Fuegi manages Cultivate CEE. He is a partner in MDR Partners, a consultancy company established to engage with strategic IST developments in Europe and specialising in international work involving libraries. He is joint author of "Library Performance Indicators and Library Management Tools" (1995) and of "Study of Library Economics of Central and Eastern Europe" (1998) both published in Luxembourg by the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.
He is currently project manager for LIBECON and is joint author of the project’s Millennium Study. Other major recent projects include business planning for the TACIS Russian State Library Project in Moscow and drafting public library standards for England for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. He manages the IPF public library benchmarking clubs and is special adviser to the UK Committee on Public Library Statistics. Other European library projects in which he has worked include the Publica Project (DG13), ISTAR (DG5), PLDP (DG16), PULMAN, TACIS TELRUS etc. Formerly he was Library Advisor to UK government ministers responsible for Libraries and held senior positions in public libraries.
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For citation purposes:
Fuegi, D. "Russia Joins the Cultivate Family", Cultivate Interactive, issue
6, 11 February 2002
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue6/russia/>
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