page 1iii seedi international conferencecetinje, 13th september 2007 michael: a network of portals...

III SEEDI International ConferenceCetinje, 13th September 2007

MICHAEL: a network of portals promoting online access

to digital culture

Giuliana De Francesco Ministero per i beni e le attività [email protected]

The third SEEDI International Conference:Digitization of cultural and scientific heritage,

Cetinje, Montenegro, September 13-15, 2007

South-Eastern European Digitization Initiative


MICHAEL

Objective:

Launching a European online service to enable

European cultural heritage to be promoted to a worldwide audience

Multilingual Inventory of Cultural Heritage in Europe


MICHAEL visionConnecting people to collections

from museums, libraries, archives, any cultural and scientific

organisation across Europe

Susan teaches music in a primary school

St John’s College Cambridge: Manuscript collection

Play burmese musical

instruments online: Museums Open

Learning Initiative


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


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 …


The project

Funded by the eTen programme (deployment)

Spin-off of the MINERVA project. Based on:

• the work of the MINERVA working groups on Inventories, 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


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


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

A single multilingual access pointto European digital cultural

collections

MICHAEL European portal launched December 2006


http://www.michael-culture.fr/

Th

ree natio

nal p

ortals o

nlin

e


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


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


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


http://www.michael-culture.pl/ http://www.michael-portal.de/

More national portals underway


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


1 national database > > 1 portal

Phase 2, MichaelPLUS (2006-8):

Czech Republic Finland Germany Greece Hungary Malta The Netherlands Spain Poland Portugal Sweden

Phase 1, MICHAEL (2004-7):

ItalyFranceUnited

Kingdom

18 +1 MICHAEL portals

Recently: Belgium Flemish CommunityEstoniaSlovak Republic

Bulgaria


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


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.

Digital collections


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



Terminologies• ISO: Language (ISO 639); Spatial coverage (ISO 3166 Countries)

• 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)



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

OAI Target

OAIHarvester

PNDS

Request to get the

metadata records

Returns records

OAI Target

OAIHarvester

PNDS

Request to get the

metadata records

Returns records



RightsMICHAEL 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


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


MICHAEL software is being published open source on Sourceforge.net


MICHAEL users

Many different user communities– Education

– Research

– Cultural tourism

– ‘Co-ordination’

– Creative industries

– Cultural services

– General public


INTERNET

CONTENT CONTENT

utente

MICHAEL NATIONAL

INSTANCE

MICHAEL European portal

MICHAEL NATIONAL

INSTANCE

MICHAEL NATIONALEiNSTANCE

CONTENT

CONTENT

MICHAEL Users


UK

It

Fr

http://www.michael-culture.org


• Human translation of static pages and editorial content

• All languages spoken in partner countries• User may choose in which language to browse the

portal

Multilingual access


Translation of European standard terminologies.

Local terminologies are mapped into the European ones

Multilingual access


Free text fields in the record’s original language

Multilingual access


Automatic translation tool

Multilingual access


Multilingual access


Keywords appear in the language chosen for browsing

Multilingual access


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


http://www.michael-culture.euMICHAEL project website


MICHAEL and the European Digital Library


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


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

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



• MICHAEL provides a catalogue of the digital collections, Europe-wide, covering all sectors

• MICHAEL locates 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




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


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


Thank you for your kind attention!

Giuliana De Francesco

[email protected]

page 1iii seedi international conferencecetinje, 13th september 2007 michael: a network of portals...

Documents

digital collections

countries michael

michael portals

europe slide

michael service

michael vision

michael project

small slide