Digitisation of culture and heritage
One of our priorities as President is to develop, with a working group of experts and other Presidencies, a new action plan for digitisation of cultural heritage. This will succeed the current plan (the "Lund Principles").
The new plan will focus more on increasing user access and participation, and increasing access to culture.
The UK has already invested in e-learning and providing digital access to the cultural heritage. Currently, important programmes are Curriculum Online, our own Culture Online and the New Opportunities Fund (NOF) Enrich programme. We will consider these approaches alongside best practice in the EU.
National Representative Group (NRG) Digitisation Conference
(Incorporating the eLearing conference, the action plan launch, and the NRG meeting.)
Some 200 people from across the EU (Government departments, large and small museums, public bodies etc.) attended the conference, held in Bristol on 16 November 2005. Keynote speakers discussed eLearning in practice, illustrated by several current projects, and also policies and strategies.
The speakers were: Harriet Nimmo (ARKive), Susan Eddisford (Virtual Victorians), Jane Finnis (24-Hour Museum), Adrian Hall (Department for Education and Skills) and Keri Facer (NESTA FutureLab) from the UK; Ulf Lundin (Sweden), Maria Sliwinska (Poland), Nikitas Kastis (Greece), Lars Egeland (Norway) and Pat Manson (European Commission).
Later in the evening, Minister for Culture David Lammy launched a dynamic new action plan to make Europe's cultural heritage more accessible through the Internet, providing "rich and diverse cultural resources to support education and research, tourism and the creative industries".
The NRG meeting was attended by some 80 delegates and others. Member States expressed their key areas of interest in taking forward the implementation of the action plan. The UK, Austrian and Finnish Presidencies agreed to establish working groups to lead the four areas of the plan, and an additional working group on measurement.
Other key outcomes included:
- Working rules for the NRG were agreed, including mechanisms for decision-making, subject to minor amendments
- A paper granting observer status was agreed
- Austria, Finland and Germany agreed to chair a working group to look at the issue of a permanent secretariat for the NRG
- The NRG agreed to prepare a common response to the Commission's i2010 Digital Libraries Communication, based on responses being prepared by Member States
- Austria and Finland outlined their plans for the NRG under their Presidencies
- Austria is to hold the 10th NRG meeting in Salzburg in June 2006, as well as a conference on digital preservation
- Finland will hold the 11th NRG meeting in Helsinki in October 2006
On 14 November 2005, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Tessa Jowell, chaired an exchange of views regarding the European Commission's proposals to develop further European digital libraries. All Member States spoke in support of further work on European digital libraries and the majority supported the commission's proposed approach of developing a network of digital libraries, rather than supporting a single, central library. Most preferred to build on ongoing work.
Cooperation with other Member States would avoid duplication and allow common standards to be developed so that digitised material could be shared more easily.
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