HARMOTEN

1
The multilingual catalogue of digital cultural
heritage in Europe
The MICHAEL Project is funded under the European
Commission eTEN Programme
2
Strategic objective

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

3
Background

• National investment in digitisation of the
  cultural heritage
• National Representatives Group for Digitisation
  in Cultural Heritage
• MINERVA project and its resources and
  methodologies
• Technical platform of the French inventory project

4
History

• 2001 eEurope Action Plan Lund Principles -
  National Representatives Group Launch of the
  French catalogue des fonds culturels numérisés
• 2002 Minerva Project, FP5-IST
• 2004 MinervaPLUS, new Member States,
  FP6-IST June Michael project starts, France,
  Italy and the UK Google launches its digital
  library
• 2005 France launches the European Digital
  Library NRG publishes the Dynamic Action Plan
• 2006 June MichaelPLUS extension to 11 new
  countries Czech Republic, Finland, Germany,
  Greece, Hungary, Malta, the Netherlands,
  Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden

5
Why Michael?

• A common approach for digital cultural heritage
  inventories in Italy, France, the UK and beyond
• Integrates national digitisation initiatives
• A distributed platform
• Open source software
• Supports multilingualism
• eTen match funding enables European added value
  in the Michael project

6
Services

• Online European service to enable users to search
  the digital cultural heritage
• Multilingual support
• National data capture and information services
• Interoperable information systems
• Promoting collections held by small, medium and
  large institutions
• Supporting cultural tourism, education, research

7
Basic facts

• Supported by the eTen Programme
• Michael 36 months (June 2004-May
  2007) MichaelPLUS 24 months (June 2006-May
  2008)
• National investment (90)Michael 33
  MMichaelPLUS 51 M
• eTEN (10) Michael 3,3 MMichaelPLUS 5,1 M

8
Actors

• The owners/providers/maintainers of the service
  are the Public Bodies partners of the Michael
  project
• They will establish a legal entity to manage the
  service. Sustainability guaranteed by- annual
  fees provided by the members- participation to
  EU projects- revenues from commercial users
• Users include- information service providers
  (e.g. publishers, tourism agencies,
  universities, libraries etc).- people interested
  in culture (students, researchers, citizens,
  tourists etc.)
• Service will be accessible through the Internet

9
Partnerships

• France
• Working group of the "steering committee for the
  digitisation of cultural heritage", which
  represents all departments of the Ministry of
  Culture, provides expertise, monitoring of the
  French catalogue and networking with French
  public cultural institutions (400 institutions
  recorded in the French catalogue)
• Collaboration with Culture.fr portal
• Collaboration with the Ministry of Education
  (libraries and documentation)
• Italy
• Joint development with the Italian Portal of
  Culture
• Agreements signed with 17 Regions and 77
  Universities to include their digital
  collections in the system
• Involvement of all the Department of the Ministry
  of Culture and agreement with the Ministry of
  Education for using Michael in schools
• Participation of more than 600 cultural
  institutions in the project

10
Partnerships

• UK
• Michael also available through Regional portals,
  Peoples Network Discovery Service, UK Cultural
  Information Services
• English and Welsh languages
• Culture.Mondo

11
Current Status and Results

• Data model, software platform and related
  documentation
• National instances localised
• First version of the Trans-European service
• Legal framework for IPR defined
• Communication and marketing plan set-up.

12
Next Steps
13
www.michael-culture.org