MICHAEL: a network of portals promoting online access to digital culture

1. MICHAEL: a network of portals promoting online access to digital culture Giuliana De Francesco Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali defrancesco@beniculturali.it The third SEEDI International Conference:Digitization of cultural and scientific heritage,Cetinje, Montenegro, September 13-15, 2007 South-Eastern European Digitization Initiative

2. MICHAEL Multilingual Inventory of Cultural Heritage in Europe Objective: Launching a European online service to enable European cultural heritage to be promoted to a worldwide audience

3. MICHAEL visionConnecting people to collections from museums, libraries, archives, any cultural and scientific organisation across Europe St John’s College Cambridge: Manuscript collection Susan teaches music in a primary school Play burmese musical instruments online: Museums Open Learning Initiative

4. MICHAEL vision The MICHAEL vision (2003-4): • To give visibility and make available the richness of the European Cultural legacy • To provide a single high level access point to the whole European cultural and scientific heritage through the Internet • To allow access to all sectors of society, including the young, the elderly, the disadvantaged, the educated, the serious researcher and the ‘merely interested’; MICHAEL project was seen as a first step to unlocking the digital items held in databases from across Europe

5. Cross domain approach MICHAEL aimed since the beginning at bringing together every cultural and scientific sector… • Archives • Libraries • Museums • Heritage cataloguing and preservation offices • Audiovisual • Scientific heritage and research • Education… … and scientific and cultural institutions of all kind and scale • National • Regional • Local • Public and private • Large and small …

6. The project • Funded by the eTen programme (deployment) • Spin-off of the MINERVA project. Based on: • the work of the MINERVA working groups onInventories, discovery of digitised content and multilingualism (wp3), Interoperability and service provision (wp4) • the software platform of the French Catalogue des fonds culturels numérisés • MICHAEL (UK, FR, IT) started June 2004 • MICHAELplus (+ 11 countries) started June 2006

7. The partnership Ministries and national agencies, universities, cultural institutions, technical support companies from 16 countries • MICHAEL: 3 countries, 5 partners • MICHAELplus: 14 countries, 38 partners More European countries are currently implementing the MICHAEL service on the basis of their own investment, without any EC funding: • Belgium Flemish Community • Estonia • Slovak Republic Total: 18 countries, more than 40 partners Bulgaria

8. A single multilingual access point to European digital cultural collections MICHAEL European portal launched December 2006 http://www.michael-culture.org/

9. Three national portals online http://www.michael-culture.fr/

10. http://www.michael-culture.org.uk/

11. http://www.michael-culture.it/

12. MICHAEL national portals FR 1450 digital collections 500 institutions 250 services-products 766 digital collections 616 services 321 projects 306 institutions UK 2588 digital collections 1396 institutions 1404 services/products 1520 physical collections 423 projects/programs IT

13. More national portals underway http://www.michael-portal.de/ http://www.michael-culture.pl/

14. http://www.michael-culture.gr/ http://www.michael-culture.nl/

15. 1 national database > > 1 portal 18 +1 MICHAEL portals Phase 1, MICHAEL (2004-7): • Italy • France • United Kingdom Phase 2, MichaelPLUS (2006-8): • Czech Republic • Finland • Germany • Greece • Hungary • Malta • The Netherlands • Spain • Poland • Portugal • Sweden Recently: • Belgium Flemish Community • Estonia • Slovak Republic Bulgaria

16. Digital collections What is a digital collection? Dublin Core definition: “The term 'collection' can be applied to any aggregation of physical or digital items” • A digital collection is an aggregation of digital items: • collections of digital surrogates of physical items, • collections of 'born-digital' items • catalogues of such collections

17. Digital collections Contents of a digital collection might include: • Aggregations of digital images, text, audio, video, 3D objects, mixed media • Databases • Collections of web resources • Internet directories and subject gateways • Digital archives • Digital inventories, catalogues, finding aids etc.

18. International standards Metadata for collection description • RSLP, Dublin Core Collections AP • MICHAEL data model is suitable for describing digital collections belonging to every sector of cultural heritage and for recording related and context information: • Institutions (creator, owner, keeper, manager) • Projects / programmes (funding) • Services / products (giving access) • Physical collections (represented full or in part) • MICHAEL DM is an agreed international standard; a MICHAEL-DC AP is available

19. International standards Terminologies • ISO: Language(ISO 639); Spatial coverage(ISO 3166Countries) • DCMI: Digital type(DCMI Type) • UNESCO thesaurus: Subject (UNESCO) • W3C/WAI:WAI(WAI/MICHAEL) • MINERVA and MICHAEL • Digital format(MINERVA/MICHAEL) • Period(MICHAEL) • Institution type(MINERVA/MICHAEL) • Access type(MINERVA/MICHAEL) • Access conditions(MICHAEL) • Audience (MINERVA/MICHAEL)

20. International standards Technology • XML records/databases • OAI-PMH protocol for metadata harvesting • National instances make XML metadata records available through OAI-PMH • The European service has no content component of it own but is the sum of records created and maintained by each constituent country • MICHAEL EU Service OAI repository retrieves metadata across the Internet from the national instances

21. International standards Rights MICHAEL metadata are made available to the public under a Creative Commons ‘Attribution Non-commercial’ (by-nc) licence. • This means that everyone can copy, distribute and re-use the metadata for non-commercial purposes, provided that the source is mentioned

22. Open source software MICHAEL software platform consists of two modules working together: • A Production module (creation, editing, importing and managing of records through web forms) • A Publishing module (interface to allow user access through web browser) The platform is built on top of well known open source components such as: • Apache Cocoon • eXist • Xdepo: • SDX, Apache Lucene search engine

23. MICHAEL software is being published open source on Sourceforge.net

25. MICHAEL users Many different user communities • Education • Research • Cultural tourism • ‘Co-ordination’ • Creative industries • Cultural services • General public

26. MICHAEL Users utente MICHAEL European portal CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT INTERNET MICHAEL NATIONAL MICHAEL NATIONAL MICHAEL NATIONALE iNSTANCE INSTANCE INSTANCE

27. http://www.michael-culture.org UK It Fr

28. Multilingual access • Human translation of static pages and editorial content • All languages spoken in partner countries • User may choose in which language to browse the portal

29. Multilingual access Translation of European standard terminologies. Local terminologies are mapped into the European ones

30. Multilingual access Free text fields in the record’s original language

31. Multilingual access Automatic translation tool

32. Multilingual access

33. Multilingual access Keywords appear in the language chosen for browsing

34. MICHAEL Culture AISBL In order to guarantee the sustainability and evolution of the service after the end of the project, MICHAEL partners established (July 2007) an international not-for-profit association under Belgian Law (AISBL), MICHAEL Culture • Founder members: MCC; MiBAC; Dédale; Amitié • Already joined: MLA; SPK MICHAEL Culture aims at getting membership from all countries willing to join the MICHAEL European Service and to share its cross-domain vision

35. MICHAEL project website http://www.michael-culture.eu

36. MICHAEL and the European Digital Library

37. The European Digital Library EC Communication: i2010: Digital Libraries (30th September 2005) • a common multilingual access point to Europe’s distributed digital cultural and scientific heritage • all types of cultural material • texts, audiovisual, museum objects, archival records etc • held in different places by different organisations • targeted at delivering rapidly a critical mass of resources to the users

38. The European Digital Library Bruxelles, 13th November 2006 Ministerial conclusions on “Digitisation and Online Accessibility of Cultural Material, and Digital Preservation”. In order to build the European Digital Library, two are the main building blocks: • “The European Library” (TEL) as a gateway to the collective resources of national libraries across Europe” • MICHAEL-MICHAELplus and the work ongoing in describing and linking digital collections of museums, libraries and archives from different Member States and providing access to these collections

39. MICHAEL and the European Digital Library MICHAEL takes part to the process of building the European digital library : • MICHAEL and MICHAEL Plus partners are participating in EDLNet project (eContent+ / 2007-2009) and are leading the workpackage on ‘human and political interoperability’ • MICHAEL / MICHAEL Plus has contributed to the Interoperability Working Group set up by the Commission • MICHAEL Culture AISBL is one of the founder members (representing Ministries and cross-sector interests) of EDL Foundation will be created in 2007 – supported by the EDLNet project

40. MICHAEL and the European Digital Library • MICHAEL provides a catalogue of the digital collections, Europe-wide, covering all sectors • MICHAELlocates digital collections from across Europe that will be collected into the European Digital Library • MICHAEL holds all the technical details needed to enable machine-to-machine services • MICHAEL holds details of interoperability protocols supported by different databases • Z39.50, OAI-PMH, Web Services • MICHAEL holds details of terminologies used by different databases

41. MICHAEL and the European Digital Library MICHAEL established a comprehensive network of thousands of European cultural and scientific organisations: • Large, medium and small • National, regional or local • Public and private • Every scientific and cultural sector (Museums, Libraries, Archives, Catalogue and preservation offices, Education, Research institutes etc…) The network successfully tested cooperative approach and working methods

42. MICHAEL and the European Digital Library Diagram developedat TEL / MICHAELmeeting, Frankfurt,March 2006 European Digital Library MICHAEL TEL National Library collections Collections Items National & Regional Museums, Audio-Visual, Archives and Libraries National Libraries

43. Thank you for your kind attention! Giuliana De Francesco defrancesco@beniculturali.it