http://www.michael-culture.org/ Maria Śliwińska, ICIMSS (Wisła November 9th 2006

Vision

Launching a European onlineservice (A European Culture Portal)

to enable the European cultural heritage to be promoted to a

worldwide audience

Europe’s cultural heritage

• Digital content from museums, libraries, archives, galleries and other sources

• from across Europe • accessible in multiple languages• for people to use and enjoy

Investing in digitisation

Since the 1990s:• Across Europe State and local authority

programmes invested in the digitisation of cultural collections from across the sectors, involving thousands of cultural institutions and private organisations.

• Identified the need for a way of promoting access to the richness and diversity of our collections

Building a diverse digital offer

Revealing collections

• MINERVA WP3 work on inventories lead to– Specifications for inventories of digitised contentSpecifications for inventories of digitised content– Agreed by NRGAgreed by NRG– Based on international standards and main inventory Based on international standards and main inventory

projects across Europeprojects across Europe

Catalogue des fonds culturels numérisés in France and the SDX platform

MICHAEL project - beginnings

MICHAEL project:• Funded by the eTEN programme• Began June 2004• France, Italy and the UK

– 33 m euros National investment in digitisation – 3.3 m euros from the EU

• Ministries of Culture in France and Italy• Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, UK with• Dédale, Amitié and AJLSM

MICHAEL Plus

• eTEN funding• Extends MICHAEL to 11

new countries• 32 partners• 24 months• Started 1st June 2006

MICHAEL Plus

• MICHAELplus partner countries: – the Czech Republic– Finland– Germany – Greece– Hungary– Malta– the Netherlands– Poland– Portugal– Spain– Sweden

MICHAEL Plus Partners Belgium: Menon Czech Republic: Ministerstvo Kultury Finland: Helsinki University UH.HUL Finland: Kansallisarkisto Finland: Museovirasto Germany: SPK Germany: Bundesarchiv Germany: Bayerische SB Germany: Deusche Nationalbibliothek Germany: Deutsches Museum Germany: Landesarchiv BW Germany: Senckenbergische Gesellsch. Greece: ICCS-NTUA Greece: Elliniko Ypourgeio Politismou Hungary: Nemzeti Kulturális Örökség

Minisztériuma Hungary: Informatikai és Hírközlési

Minisztérium

Hungary: Neumann Italy: IBACN Malta: Heritage Malta Malta: Across Limits Netherlands: Ministerie van

Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap Netherlands: Koninklijke Bibliotheek Poland: Ministerstwo Spraw WiA Poland: ICIMSS Portugal: MC Segretaria-Geral Spain: Biblioteca Nacional de España Sweden: Uppsala University

UK: MLA France: MCC France: Dédale Italy: MiBAC Italy: Amitié

MICHAEL

• A common approach for digital cultural heritage inventories

• A tool for revealing digital collections • Supports multilingualism• Project’s website: http://www.michael-culture.org

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

TECHNOLOGY USED

• A production module allows users to create, modify, import and manage records that describe aspects of the digital cultural heritage. All of these functions are available using a standard Web browser. Data is stored using a powerful and flexible XML database, which is based

on the MICHAEL data model.

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

• A publication module provides an intuitive interface to enable end-users to search with their Web browser. This module uses an XML search and display engine, which can be customized to allow institutions to adapt the interface to meet their particular needs.

TECHNOLOGY USED

• Open source software• Apache Cocoon: an XML

infrastructure for complex Web applications. Cocoon provides services such as a robust catching mechanism, XSLT transformations, a server-side scripting environment and a flexible environment for building Web forms, used for data creation and modification;

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

• eXIST an XML database management system. The database can be accessed by different standard protocols, such as WebDAV, XMLRPC and the xmldb protocol directly from a Cocoon environment.

TECHNOLOGY USED

• Xdepo: a Cocoon environment to manage data stored in an XML database using Web forms. Xdepo provides the link between Cocoon, eXist and the Web browser for the MICHAEL platform production module

Using Java technologies, the MICHAEL platform can be deployed on wide variety of systems.

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

• SDX: a search engine for large collections of XML documents. Based on the stable and largely used Apache Lucene search engine, SDX provides an easy tool to use API to build search and display services for XML documents, in a Cocoon

environment.

• Implementations in France, Italy and the UK

• National strategies for data collection underway

• Public interfaces now being launched!

• Implemention started in the 11 MICHAELplus countries

Progress

• Prototype of the European service to be launched at MICHAEL international conference (Rome, December 4th-5th 2006)

MICHAEL International Conference

“Museums, Libraries and Archives Online” -Rome, December 4th-5th

European Services

• Content will be harvested from each of the 14 partner countries

• A simple search interface

• Supports multiple languages

• Gives easy and quick access to content from trusted sources

New opportunities

• MICHAEL services will open up access to the digital cultural heritage for people– in their homes – in schools, colleges and universities– in public libraries and online centres

Diversity and accessCase studies

• Using MICHAEL a teacher will be able to – access a rich diversity of cultural heritage

resources from across Europe– use online resources in the curriculum– promote cultural diversity and– increase digital skills and competences of

children in the class

Diversity and accessCase studies

• Through MICHAEL a mother will be able to – plan a visit to a museum– finding offline resources – to enjoy with her child– promoting learning

Diversity and accessCase studies

• Using MICHAEL a tourist is able to – learn about places online– plan an itinerary for her holiday and– to learn more when she returns home