The Michael/Michael+ Project is partly funded by the European Commission eTEN Programme
Antonella FresaTechnical Coordinator
MICHAEL and MICHAEL Plus deploying MINERVA results
• 2 deployment projects
• Supported by eTEN
• Involving 14 EU countries
• Based on the metadata standard for cultural inventories developed by MINERVA
• Aimed to build a unique multilingual access point to the digital collections of museums, libraries and archives in Europe
• Total investment: ˜90 million €
MICHAEL actors and roles• Ministries of culture:
coordination and financing
• Central cultural institutes: standardisation and guidelines
• Technology providers: software implementation
• Regions and Universities: surveys and local coordination of the cataloguers
• The actual cultural institutions on the territory: museums, libraries and archives to provide content
Policy links• MICHAEL and MICHAEL Plus
have strong policy links• The success of the initiative is
based on the actual political commitment at national and European levels
• Main targeted policy domains:– Culture & multilingualism– Education & training– Research & innovation– Tourism & economic
development
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 5
MinervaEC
The project phase
R&D implementation full depl.
Catalogue des fonds culturels numérises (FR)
&
MINERVAMINERVA Plus
Michael PLUS
MICHAEL The new eContent Plus initiatives:
ATHENA, EDL-Local, etc.
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 6
MICHAEL Portals
http://www.michael-culture.org
Three national portals online since 2006France: http://www.michael-culture.frUK: http://www.michael-culture.org.ukItaly: http://www.michael-culture.it
MICHAELplus partners are registering the domains for the respective national MICHAEL portals according to the same pattern
MICHAEL European Portal launched in December 2006
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 7
MICHAEL Users
• many different user communities– education– cultural tourism– research– ‘co-ordination’– and computers …
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 8
MICHAEL European portal
• Launched December 2006
• Periodical harvesting of the published national instances
http://www.michael-culture.org/
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 9
MICHAEL national portals
FR 1450 digital collections
500 institutions
250 services-products
IT 2588 digital collections
1396 institutions
1404 services/products
1520 physical collections
423 projects/programs
UK
766 digital collections
616 services
321 projects
306 institutions
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 10
Communication & Dissemination:international events
Four international conferences with high level political participation:
• Paris, 1 April 2005, with the participation of the French Minister for Culture
• Bristol, 16 November 2005, with the participation of the UK Minister for Arts
• Rome, 4-5 December 2006, with the participation of the Italian Minister for Culture and the EC INFSO Director General
• Berlin, 21-22 June 2007, under the aegis of the German Presidency of the EU
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 11
A large number of national initiatives in all the MICHAEL and MICHAELplus countries:
- Workshops
- Training sessions
- Other national and local initiatives
Communication & Dissemination:national events
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 12
The AISBL (Association international sans but lucratif) MICHAEL-Culture was created on July 2007 under the Belgian law
Founders: MCC (France), MiBAC (Italy), Amitié, Dédale
MLA (UK) and SPK (Germany) are about joining the Association
Sustainability
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 13
CoordinationAt the Ministerial level
Cooperation with other ministries and national and regional levels
• E.g. Ministry of education
• Regions
Institutions involved• Local branches of the ministry (archives, libraries, architecture and heritage,
museums, music, performing arts, theatre etc.)
• Institutions of all levels (national, regional, local)
• Universities
Organisational framework
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 14
MICHAELplus and further enlargement
The take-off of MICHAELplus gives evidence of MICHAEL success.
• 11 new countries involved• Further national investment for more than 55 million euros
More European countries are currently implementing the MICHAEL service on the basis of their own investment, without any EC funding:
• Bulgaria • Belgium Flemish Community • Estonia • Slovak Republic
Expression of interest by several other countries, both European and extraEuropean
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 15
Impact at international level: MICHAEL selected for IST
2006 and eGov 2007
MICHAEL was invited by the European Commission as a representative project on the occasion of:
- 4th Ministerial eGovernment Conference (Lisbon, 19-21 September 2007)
- IST 2006 (Helsinki, 23 November 2006)- Ministerial e-Inclusion Conference (Riga,
11-13 June 2006)- E-Government conference (Manchester, 25
November 2005)
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 16
Impact at national level: integration with national
programmesFR: Integration with http://www.culture.fr, Collections portal
(unique access point to the heritage data bases)
IT: Integration with the on-going Portal for the Italian Culture (http://www.culturaitalia.beniculturali.it)
UK: Linked initiatives• People’s Network Discover Service• 24 Hour Museum• Regional portals
and alsoGermany, Greece, Hungary, Estonia…
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 17
Impact at local level: involvement of cultural
institutionsMICHAEL established a network of thousands of European
cultural institutions:• Large, medium and small• National, regional or local• Public and private• Every heritage sector (Museums, Libraries, Archives,
Catalogue and preservation offices, Education, Research institutes etc…)
Institutions and private organisations are now asking to contribute their data into MICHAEL
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 18
Cross-domain approach
MICHAEL data model is suitable for describing digital collections belonging to every sector of cultural heritage and for recording related and context information:
– Institutions
– Projects / programmes
– Services / products
– Physical collections
MICHAEL aimed since the beginning at giving integrated access to the whole European cultural heritage through the Internet
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 19
Benefits for Ministries and Local authorities
MICHAEL proved to be a powerful tool for:• Building a road-map of what’s on in the field of the
digitisation of the cultural heritage• Planning and monitoring digitisation initiatives
undertaken or funded by ministries and other local authorities
MICHAEL allows the discovery of digitised resources and fosters synergies between projects
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 20
Through MICHAEL cultural institutions can:• Reach wider audiences at national and international level
(visibility)• Inform users about the collections they own and promote
access to them• Increase their online profile and promote their own
activities• Manage collections and large groupings of objects or data• Plan further digitisation activities basing on knowledge of
what’s available and possible synergies
Benefits forcultural institutions
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 21
MICHAEL service allows to search and browse from a single access point information on digital cultural heritage coming from:– every CH sectors: archives, libraries,
museums, heritage, audiovisual, landscape…– cultural institutions of any kind: national,
regional, local, large and small, public and private…
• on a multilingual basis• by subject, period, spatial coverage…• by institution type or location• through full text search• etc.
Benefits for final users
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 22
MICHAEL and
the EUROPEAN DIGITAL LIBRARY
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 23
High level political profile
13 November 2006Bruxelles, Council of the Ministers of Culture
Adoption of the EC Recommandation “Digitisation and Online Accessibility of Cultural Material, and Digital Preservation”: to build the European Digital Library, two are the main building blocks:
• CENL and the service “The European Library” that provides access to the national libraries collections across Europe
• MICHAEL and the European portal of the digital collections
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 24
The European Digital Library aims to involve all Cultural Heritage sectors and the largest number of institutions (national and local, large and small).
MICHAEL can be the catalogue of the European Digital Library.
MICHAEL contribution to the European Digital
Library
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 25
MICHAEL contribution to the European Digital
Library
• Catalogue of the digital collections, Europe-wide, covering all the cultural sector
• Successful cooperative approach and working methods
• Network of thousands of European cultural institutions
• MICHAEL AISBL: organisational and legal structure (detailed presentation by Christophe Dessaux).
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 26
European Digital Library
Collections
Items
MICHAEL TEL
Diagram developedat TEL / MICHAELmeeting, Frankfurt,March 2006
National Library
collections
National LibrariesNational & Regional Museums, Audio-Visual, Archives and Libraries
MICHAEL and the European Digital Library
Vilnius, 4/10/2007 Michael / Michael Plus Page 27
Thank you for your attention
http://www.michael-culture.org