The MICHAEL project in the UK, France and Italy

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The MICHAEL project in the UK, France and Italy
Kate Fernie, Richard Blandin and Giuliana De
Francesco
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About us

• MLA is the English lead strategic agency for the
  museums, libraries and archives sector and UK
  government advisor on digitisation
• MCC is the French government ministry responsible
  for preserving and developing the cultural
  inheritance. Its remit ranges from encouraging
  creation of works of art to promoting access to
  culture and includes galleries, museums and
  heritage sites
• MiBAC is the Italian government ministry
  responsible for preservation of and access to
  cultural heritage and for promotion and
  enhancement of cultural activities, performing
  arts and sport. Its remit includes state museums
  and galleries, archaeological sites, built
  heritage, libraries, archives and the intangible
  heritage.

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MICHAEL

• Launching a European online service to enable the
  European cultural heritage to be promoted to a
  worldwide audience

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The beginnings

• MICHAEL project
• Funded by the eTEN programme
• 36 months to June 2007
• France, Italy and the UK
• 33 m euros National investment in digitisation
• 3.3 m euros from the EU
• 3 national agencies and
• Dédale, AJLSM and Amitié

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Investing in digitisation

• Since the 1990s
• France - State and local authority programmes
  involving hundreds of cultural institutions in
  digitising their collections.
• Italy - MiBAC, regional and local organisations
  have invested in the digitisation of cultural
  collections from across the sectors
• UK - funding from various sources - NOF,
  Digitise, Renaissance in the Regions, Designation
  Challenge Fund, RSLP, AHRB and others enabling
  digitisation of collections by museums,
  libraries, archives

Building a diverse digital offer
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Revealing collections

• In the UK the 1997 Treasures in Trust report
  called for a way of recognising the richness and
  diversity of our collections
• Cornucopia catalogue of physical collections held
  by museums and public libraries
• Similar catalogues in France and Italy

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Digital collections

• Shared need for retrieval tools
• MINERVA work on Inventories
• France Catalogue des fonds culturels numérisés
• SDX platform

Building blocks for MICHAEL
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MICHAEL

• A common approach for digital cultural heritage
  inventories
• A tool for revealing national digital offer
• Support for multilingualism

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A distributed platform

• Open source software
• National instances with national databases
• Sharing metadata to contribute to European
  services

http//www.michael-culture.org/technology.html
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Progress

• Implementations in France, Italy and the UK
• Sharing expertise to prepare system and user
  documentation
• National strategies for data collection underway
• Public interfaces about to be launched!

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MICHAEL in France

• Key dates
• 2001 Creation of the Catalogue
• of digital cultural collections
• 2004 Start of MICHAEL
• 2005 New version of the data base
• and public interface

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Some facts about the French catalogue

• Records
• 394 institutions
• 956 collections
• 134 services

User statistics 10-12,000 visits per
month 200-300,000 pages views per month
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Institutions by type

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Collections by type of institutions

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Main type of digitized documents

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Patrimoine numériquewww.numerique.culture.fr
New web sites
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Place
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Showcase
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Professional space
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News
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Dossiers
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MICHAEL in Italy

• MiBAC is coordinating national activities and
  implementing the platform in partnership with
  CASPUR
• No comprehensive inventory of digital collections
• A varied landscape
• Several dispersed data bases online and offline
  describing institutions, digital and physical
  collections
• Several unpublished data based on local surveys
  and census
• MICHAEL offers the opportunity to give unique
  public access to all this data

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Sharing data

• We will share data with ongoing initiatives
  including
• Internet Culturale
• Digital collections belonging to State libraries
• Anagrafe delle biblioteche italiane
• 15,000 libraries
• Anagrafe degli archivi
• 137 State Archives (SIAS)
• Non-State archives (SIUSA)

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Next steps

• Migrating data from existing data bases
• Archaeology DC survey (about 100 digital
  collections belonging to Archaeology Offices)
• Integrating MICHAEL into national initiatives
  underway
• National Archival Service (SAN)
• Italian Culture Portal
• www.culturaitalia.it

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Populating the system

• Bringing together three separate domains
• regions, universities and ministry institutions
• Tools bilateral agreements and partnerships.
• Survey existing inventories and digital
  collections all over Italy
• Enter new data into the MICHAEL system
• Update data regularly

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Italian Regions

• Regions and MiBAC share responsibilities on
  preserving, cataloguing and enhancing the local
  heritage

• 10 Regions are submitting projects
• describing digital collections belonging to
  cultural institutions on their territory from
  January 2006
• All 20 Regions will be involved later

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Universities

• 77 public and private Universities with both
  museums and libraries

CRUI is in charge of university libraries and
museums census and provides expertise and
support Ministry of Education, University and
Research will ensure dissemination of MICHAEL for
educational purposes
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Ministry institutions

• 420 museums, monuments and archaeological sites
• 134 archives and sections
• 47 libraries
• Significant investments in digitisation over the
  last 10 years
• All digital collections funded by MiBAC will be
  described in MICHAEL by the end of 2006

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MICHAEL in Italy

• Technical Advisory Group
• Made up of experts and professionals from the
  three sectors involved
• Currently dealing with
• IT Manual for Collection Description
• Public interface functional requirements and
  design
• Terminology

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MICHAEL-IT Access
Public interface a first draft
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MICHAEL in the UK
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Resource discovery?
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MICHAEL in the UK
http//www.michael-culture.org.uk
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Information services

• UK-wide database
• Implementing standards and agreed vocabularies
• Working with partners
• Welsh language interface
• Multiple information services
• UK-wide
• Regional, subject specialist views
• Libraries, archives, museums views
• European services

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MICHAEL in Europe
Content harvested from France, Italy and the UK
Support for multiple languages Gives users easy
and quick access to content from trusted
sources Future expansion...
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Any questions?
Kate.Fernie_at_mla.gov.uk richard.blandin_at_culture.gou
v.fr defrancesco_at_beniculturali.it
http//www.michael-culture.org/