ATHENA Access to cultural heritage networks across Europe

ATHENA Access to cultural heritage networks across Europe Rossella Caffo Giuliana De Francesco Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali, Italy MICHAEL: Perspectives on cultural sector resource discovery London, Royal Institute of British Architects London, 23 May 2008 Friday 23 May 2008

Aim ATHENA aims at bringing together museums for building the European Digital Library and achieving its targets London, 23 May 2008

The project ATHENA is a network of best practices • funded by the e. Content. Plus Programme • coordinated by the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities • building upon MINERVA and MICHAEL network and results • currently under negotiation London, 23 May 2008

Partnership 22 partner countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Rep. , Germany, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, UK Italy - Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali Belgium - PACKED vzw Bulgaria - Централна Библиотека на Българската Академия на науките - Central Library of the Bulgarian Academy of sciences Cyprus - Cyprus Institute Czech Rep. - Narodni Muzeum Czech Rep. - Cross Czech a. s. Czech Rep. - Devoteam Group Estonia - Eesti Vabariigi Kultuuriministeerium Finland - Museovirasto France – Association Dédale France - Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication Germany - Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz Germany - Bibliotheksservice-Zentrum Baden-Württemberg Greece – NTUA Erevnitiko Panepistimiako Institouto Epikoinonion & Ypologiston. Ethniko Metsovio Polytechnio Greece - Hellenic Ministry of Culture Greece - Panepistemion Patron Hungary - Petőfi Irodalmi Múzeum London, 23 May 2008 Hungary MR - Magyar Rádió Zrt. Israel - Israel Museum Jerusalem Israel – MAKASH, Advancing CMC Applications in Education, Culture and Science Italy– Amitié srl Latvia - Valsts aģentūra "Kultūras informācijas sistēmas" Luxembourg - Ministère de la Culture, de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche Malta - Heritage Malta The Netherlands - Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiedenis The Netherlands - Stichting Rijksmuseum Amsterdam Poland - Stowarzyszenie Miedzynarodowe Centrum Zarzadzania Informacja Slovakia - Ministerstvo kultúry SR Slovakia - Cordia a. s Slovenia - Ministrstvo za Kulturo Republike Slovenije Sweden -Luleå tekniska universitet UK - MDA EDL - Stichting European Digital Library Michael - Michael Culture AISBL

Goals ATHENA’s main goals are: • To foster, reinforce and support the participation to the European Digital Library by museums and other heritage institutions • Stimulate wider access and use of digital content belonging to European museums • To contribute to the integration of digital content produced by different types of cultural institutions, in cooperation with other projects focussed on libraries and archives, with the overall objective to merge all these different contributions into the EDL London, 23 May 2008

Goals ATHENA will: • Develop MINERVA activity targetted to find common approaches, standards and shared guidelines in the field of digitisation, cataloguing, and on-line accessibility of cultural content • Build upon the experience achieved by EDLnet, MICHAEL and the national portals (like Cultura. Italia, Culture. fr, Kulturerbe Digital etc. ) • Contribute to the creation of the European Digital Library on the basis of shared standards • Improve interoperability, multilingual access, semantic technologies and quality services for the final user London, 23 May 2008

Goals ATHENA will: • survey, analyse and compare cataloguing standards, metadata schemata and terminologies adopted across the partner countries • encourage more museums and heritage institutions to join the ATHENA network ATHENA will not: • Research for new technologies • Develop new standards • Digitise new content London, 23 May 2008

Main activities • Mapping metadata schemata • Mapping controlled terminologies and thesauri • Identification of ontologies in the field of cultural heritage • Survey of technologies and promotion of technical standards • Integration of data in the structure of the European Digital Library • Coordination of content and establishment of a competence centre in each partner country • Possible solutions to copyright problems for museums and heritage institutions • Development of a prototype London, 23 May 2008

Expected outputs A set of shared recommendations, guidelines, and scalable ready to use tools, focussing on: • Metadata and data structures • Multilingualism and semantics • IPR They will be used by museums • To support internal digitisation activities • To facilitate the integration of their digital content into the EDL • To improve accessibility to their content London, 23 May 2008

Expected output Any museum and other cultural institution wishing to share its data and get visibility through EUROPEANA will be able to: • Create its own content using international standards • Use the own descriptive and cataloguing standards, and map them into domain-specific Dublin Core applications profiles • Use the existing terminologies and thesauri, publish them using SKOS and achieve semantic interoperability with EDL • Describe their own content and services and make them visible at international level using MICAHEL inventory London, 23 May 2008

Strategic cooperation Strategic partnership will be built with other projects, such as: • EDLNet, expected to provide the specifications how to deliver the ATHENA results into Europeana • MICHAEL, the European catalogue of digital cultural collections • MINERVAe. C, developing guidelines and handbooks • Multi. Match and Treble. CLEF most challenging research projects on technologies supporting multilingualism for digital libraries • The new projects submitted in the same Call for Proposals as ATHENAa, supporting the participation of cultural institutions to Europeana (such as EDLocal) London, 23 May 2008

Work Packages 1. Project management, monitoring and evaluation 2. Awareness and dissemination: enlarging the network and promoting the service 3. Identifying standards and developing recommendations 4. Integration of existing data structure into the EDL 5. Coordination of contents 6. Analysis of IPR issues and definition of possible solutions 7. Development of plug-ins to be integrated within the European Digital Library London, 23 May 2008

Thank you for your kind attention! www. athenaeurope. org Rossella Caffo rcaffo@beniculturali. it Giuliana De Francesco defrancesco@beniculturali. it London, 23 May 2008