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Coordinating
digitisation in Europe
Progress report of the
National Representative Group: coordination mechanisms for digitisation
policies and programmes 2002
Anne Grady
Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism
Annette Kelly
An Chomhairle Leabharlanna/The Library Council
National Report: Ireland
Policy
Policy scenario for digitisation
In Ireland, responsibility for cultural heritage is divided
between three main departments:
- the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism, through its
Cultural Institutions Division, provides the legal and policy
framework and the Exchequer funding for the operation of Ireland’s
national cultural institutions. It promotes the development of
these institutions through many initiatives including digitisation
programmes;
- the Department of Environment and Local Government which
has responsibility for libraries, museums and archives at local
level as well responsibility for the natural and built heritage;
- the Department of Education, which has responsibility
for academic libraries including third-level institutions.
Branching Out
These stakeholders are united by their membership in the Branching
Out Steering Committee, a co-ordinating body with responsibility
for implementing the recommendations of the 1999 Branching Out
report (available from http://www.environ.ie). This report sets
out a range of recommendations for cultural heritage policy in
the library sector, including substantial coverage of digitisation
aspects.
The most significant policy development in 2002 was the setting
up of a Cultural Heritage Panel by the Branching Out Steering
Group with the remit to examine the whole area of digitisation
and digital preservation and to make recommendations in relation
to a national funding programme. In October 2002, the Cultural
Heritage Panel began a six-month pilot project, which has three
main thrusts:
- establishment of national nodes of expertise in the digitisation
of diverse forms of cultural content (newspapers, 3-D material,
manuscripts, audio, video, etc.). This is being achieved by five
pilot projects, each focusing on a particular type or types of
content and addressing issues such as selection criteria, hardware
and software requirements, handling and conservation of originals,
preservation of digital master material, Web publication, meta-data
and IPR/copyright. Libraries, archives and museums are carrying
out the pilot projects. Training and site set-up is complete for
these projects; as are the phases of selection, copyright investigation
and digitisation systems set-up;
- a national programme of digital content generation on a single
theme, with each local authority (32 bodies in all) participating.
The “national thematic network” is a vehicle for establishing
essential fundamental skills in digitisation and Web publication
at a grass-roots level in the local cultural bodies, as well as
showcasing highlights of the rich local studies material held
in the institutions. Training has taken place, with significant
uptake by local bodies;
- databases or gazetteers of information relevant to digitisation.
Three databases are available for (public) online searching and
(access controlled) editing. These cover:
- online digitised content held by cultural organisations,
including meta-data profiles of the content and links to the online
item;
- profiles of special collections of particular significance
held by cultural bodies; the information held includes overviews,
links to copyright statements, contact details, cataloguing status,
keywords, etc.;
- a national profile database of all digitisation and related
initiatives in which cultural bodies are involved. Like the other
databases, this can be edited and viewed in real-time, thus addressing
the problem of a rapidly changing landscape in this active area.
This will also provide profiles of, and links to, other relevant
policies and programmes.
The Web templates are in place and training on their use has
been undertaken. The content generation and population phase is
now operational. When fully completed, the project and its Website
will be an important national asset to the ongoing digitisation
objective and will deliver guidelines on standards and best practice
for a national programme. Already, the project provides a valuable
and focused forum for the exploration and discussion of national
priorities in digitisation.
The project Website http://www.askaboutireland.com
will be launched in March 2003.
Other programmes
ORION
The National Museum of Ireland, under the umbrella of the Department,
is a participant in the ORION project. The ORION project is a
Fifth Framework funded EU project. It comprises a consortium of
six archaeological museums in different European countries. The
project is led by the National Museums of Scotland and the museum
partners are joined by a number of high profile technical participants
who are researching at the cutting edge of new development in
the world of 3D. The museum partners are currently networking
in their own countries with other museums and with interested
professional practitioners in the interests of producing a research
roadmap with which to brief the technical partners. It is hoped
that this will lead to an expanded programme with concrete results
for the participants. The Irish ORION partner is the National
Museum of Ireland, which is joined in the project by major archaeological
museum partners in Scotland, France, Germany, Spain and Greece.
An Irish national ORION workshop was held in the National Museum
of Ireland on 5 December 2002 and featured forty technical, museum
and academic delegates, several presentations and a discussion
forum. The National Museum will host an E.U. Commission review
of the project on 7 February 2003. This will serve to review progress
and to focus the research roadmap towards the upcoming Sixth Framework,
which holds prospects of funding in the area of 3D research.
The ORION Website can be viewed at http://www.orion-net.org.
Irish Census of Population Returns for 1901 and 1911
The National Archives of Ireland and the Public Record Office
of Northern Ireland are co-operating in work related to the proposed
Internet publication of the Irish Census of Population Returns
for 1901 and 1911. The original returns for all 32 counties are
held in the National Archives, but microfilms already exist and
duplicates of the microfilms for the 6 counties of Northern Ireland
are held in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. In addition
to the existing North-South co-operative element of this project,
there is also scope for East-West co-operation with the British
Public Record Office and the Scottish General Register Office,
and for international co-operation with the National Archives
of Canada, which will enable the Irish partners to benefit from
the experience gained in digitising census returns in other countries.
Irish Social Data Archive
The recent establishment of the Irish Social Science Data Archive
within the Institute for Study of Social Change at University
College Dublin fills a long recognised need in Ireland. It will
hold, process and harmonise machine-readable data from surveys,
census material, geographical data bases, election results and
other sources, and will make them readily available to users in
the academic, public and commercial sectors. University College
Dublin and the Economic and Social Research Institute manage it
jointly. The National Archives and the Central Statistics Office
were also actively involved in work leading to its establishment.
It is a member of the Council of European Social Science Data
Archives and the International Association for Social Science
Information Service & Technology.
Dúchas the Heritage Service
Dúchas is the State body charged with the protection and
presentation of the natural and built heritage in Ireland. A recently
redesigned Website offers major heritage data sets and is available
at http://www.hertagedata.ie
in digital format. This site provides a simple way of accessing
the heritage information managed by Dúchas, including information
relating to the following:
- sites and monuments record;
- recorded monuments record;
- monuments in State care;
- natural heritage areas;
- special areas of conservation;
- special protection areas (Birds’ Directive);
- nature reserves and national parks.
As the Website is not designed for the general public, it does
not offer browsing or viewing facilities. The data comprises the
key data sets resulting from Dúchas activities as legal
custodians of the national heritage and is therefore aimed at
researchers, academics, consultants, planners, developers and
other such organisation or individuals who are involved in physical
change in the landscape in the widest sense. It will be expanded
to include the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage -
Town and County Surveys. One county, County Clare is already on
the Website and five more will follow shortly.
The National Library of Ireland
The National Library of Ireland has concentrated its digitisation
work on the visual collections, photographs and prints. To date
about 5,000 digital images are available through their Website
at http://www.nli.ie.
Also of note are the Library’s Gaelic manuscripts. Selected
manuscripts have been included in the “Irish Script on Screen
Project”, managed by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.
They can be viewed on the ISOS Web site at http://www.isos.ie.
A review of the Library’s digitisation programme and procedures
is currently in progress. The aim is to advance from putting a
representative selection of items online to a programme covering
large parts of collections, with benefits for access and conservation.
Terms of reference and National policy profile
The formal adoption of the terms of reference of the NRG is
ongoing. However, awareness of the Lund Principles and consensus
building at a practical level is progressing well, with significant
dissemination in this area well established.
The national policy profile is under construction at the http://www.askaboutireland.com
Website. Metadata fields and content are being finalised and will
be available when the site goes live. The project has identified
up to thirty major digitisation projects involving national, academic
and cultural organisations. All these bodies are supplying data
on their progress of their initiatives which incorporated into
the Website.
Co-operation activities
Co-ordination of national networks
Co-operation and co-ordination has been achieved on two levels;
a national high-level policy network and a grass-roots network
of co-operating digitisation centres.
The Branching Out Steering Committee Cultural Heritage Panel is
a high-level policy network, which is concerned with digitisation
issues. This is an active panel of the national policy committee
mentioned earlier and includes:
- a county librarian, representing the Library Association
of Ireland;
- an assistant keeper of the National Library of Ireland,
representing the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism;
- The director of the National Centre for Technology in
Education, representing the Government’s Department of Education
and Science;
- representatives of the Department of the Environment and
Local Government;
- representative of the Branching Out Steering Committee;
- representative of the Heritage Council;
- the assistant director of an Chomhairle Leabharlanna/Library
Council (Chair).
The Panel thus includes representatives from all aspects of the
cultural sector, from those whose primary focus is on policy through
those who focus on innovation and new services to those whose
major emphasis is on service delivery to the end user.
At the grass-roots level, the Cultural Heritage Project outlined
above is enabling the active involvement of the personnel of cultural
bodies across the country in practical digitisation and Web publication
of unique material. This serves both to underline the value of
digitisation as an avenue for access to rarely used material and
its potential for contributing to the preservation of delicate
or over-used items. The project, the Website templates and the
tools which it provides to all those involved, provide encouragement
and facilitation to cultural bodies who are taking their first
steps in digitisation.
Relationships and co-ordination with other national initiatives in connection with eEurope, e-government, e-learning
The Cultural Heritage Project is funded by the Information Society
Fund through the Department of the Environment and Local Government.
The project addresses several of the points made in the third
report of the Information Society Commission, as well as the new
report on Building a Knowledge Society (available from the Information
Society Commission Website at http://www.isc.ie).
Members of the Panel listed above are working closely with and
within the relevant Government Departments and also with the working
groups of the Information Society Commission in the areas of e-learning
(especially adult education and life-long learning), cultural
and community services.
European and international co-operation
The Euro-Focus on The Cultural Heritage is the Irish National
Node with responsibility for the dissemination of information
on the European Digital Heritage and Cultural Content of the Information
Society Technologies (IST) programme.
The Euro-Focus on The Cultural Heritage represents libraries,
museums, galleries and archives in Ireland as well as the relevant
Government Departments. The Euro-Focus is a core member of the
Cultural Heritage Applications Network (CULTIVATE) initiative,
which links representatives of the cultural communities across
Europe and Israel. In addition to Euro-Focus itself, its constituent
bodies are themselves active in sectorally relevant initiatives,
activities, projects and networks in Europe and beyond. The following
are among the Euro-Focus members which have established international
profiles in their own right:
- National Museum of Ireland;
- National Library of Ireland;
- University College Dublin;
- An Chomhairle Leabharlanna;
- Trinity College Dublin;
- Enterprise Ireland.
Ongoing activity such as the Cultural Heritage Project outlined
above has also led to spontaneous contact being made with external
cultural bodies, such as the National Library of Australia.
Benchmarking
The aims of the NRG working group on benchmarking are closely
mirrored by the objectives of the Cultural Heritage Project in
the collection of information about ongoing and proposed digitisation
policy programmes and projects. The Cultural Heritage Project
has implemented a data gathering solution based on a Web-enabled
database, which allows any authorised body to create, update and
edit record, which are relevant to the benchmarking process. This
database is being validated at present, and its fields and profile
elements brought into line with the NRG survey, as appropriate.
The Cultural Heritage Project team is undertaking a consultative
process with all relevant cultural heritage institutions in relation
to their digitisation programmes and also to investigate opportunities
for collaborative work such as shared access to digital collections.
The project team has also been invited to play an active role
in the EU’s MINERVA project’s benchmarking group.
Inventories and resource discovery
Available inventories
The Cultural Heritage Project Website provides three types of
inventories, from a gazetteer of digitised online objects to a
database of existing special collections (not yet, or not yet
fully, digitised or even catalogued) to the profiling of digitisation
initiatives outlined above. All of these inventories are available
and active at present. Population of the initiatives is ongoing,
with the initial focus on the special collections inventory.
ACTIVATE is a one year EU project (ended July 2002) managed by
An Chomhairle Leabharlanna. It established a national thematic
network in the area of local studies and cultural material, and
created templates and procedures which facilitated the creation
of digital collections, and the showcasing of non-digital material
on the Web. The project was a significant success, with takeup
from bodies in Ireland and abroad who wished to establish themselves
online. The project provides templates, procedures and tools for
the creation of simple portals and content sites, linked in a
thematic network, for any purpose, including cultural applications.
ACTIVATE can be accessed at http://www.activate.ie
RASCAL (Research and Special Collections Available Locally) is
a project hosted by Queens University Belfast. It includes a valuable
inventory of special collections held in libraries in Northern
Ireland. Links are provided to the content providers, some of
whom have significant accessible online material. The RASCAL project
provided valuable input to the Cultural Heritage Project in specifying
the inventory for special collections.
Metadata and interoperability for resource inventories
Each of the five pilot projects which are spearheading the Cultural
Heritage Project is examining the issue of meta-data in its own
particular area (libraries, museums and archives). This work is
reflected in the structure of the online resource inventories,
which have been, and will be, adjusted in response to best practice
and standards which are judged to be relevant by the project.
Import and export of data to and from the online databases is
available (export) or planned in the immediate future (import).
This facilitates both the participating cultural bodies, who in
some cases have MARC or other records which they do not wish to
duplicate, and also bodies which might wish to amalgamate the
Cultural Heritage Project records with their own.
The involvement of the Cultural Heritage Project team in the MINERVA
project has proved of value in the area of interoperability.
Good practice and skills
Good practice exemplars and guidelines
A key focus of the Cultural Heritage Project is to establish
best practice and guidelines for the anticipated growing population
of digitisation and digitisation-related projects in the cultural
sector. To that end, the five Pilot Projects within the Cultural
Heritage Project have been instructed, as a key objective, to
establish methodologies and best practice reports for their particular
types of content and media. The following are the major areas
to be addressed by each project:
- selection of material to be digitised, including relevant
selection criteria, and justification for the criteria;
- verification of copyright status and IPR issues;
- investigation of particular digitisation requirements
(e.g. particular hardware or software needed, digital cameras
versus scanners, etc.);
- scanning, including handling and conservation of rare
materials, specialised environments, management of the scanning
process, digitisation tracking systems and workflow;
- profiling and tagging the scanned material, including
identification of appropriate meta-data and analysis of standards
in this area relevant to the project;
- long-term storage of digital masters, including hardware
media and use of appropriate standard file formats with long life
expectancy;
- preparation for Web publication (copyright again, file
formats for download, creation of delivery versions of large digital
masters, etc.).
The following action lines are being addressed (one Pilot Project
per action line). The action lines are those, which are most relevant
in a Irish context to the material available in Irish cultural
organizations:
- automated indexing of old newspapers;
- digitisation of printed text, manuscripts and maps;
- digitisation of images, audio and video;
- digitisation of archival records;
- digitisation of 3D articles.
An important output of the Cultural Heritage Project will thus
be set of practical guidelines, focused on the needs of other,
similar projects in the future. This will be an important driver
of the anticipated National Digitisation Programme, which is envisaged
to digitise and publish online significant portions of local and
special heritage materials, as recommended by the Information
Society Commission reports.
Competence centres
There are no formal digitisation competence centres in Ireland
at present. However, given the small size of the country and the
well-established networks of contacts across the cultural and
academic sectors, the necessary skills are made available as needed.
Informal competence centres include An Chomhairle Leabharlanna,
Trinity College Library, Dublin, and the National Library of Ireland.
Main digitisation training initiatives for cultural heritage institutions
The Cultural Heritage Project has set up and delivered a digitisation
training programme for each of the five pilot projects. Regional
training for the participants in the national thematic network
has also been delivered. In addition, the Cultural Heritage Project
team provides support and assistance to those involved in the
project, as they come to grips with digitisation.
The progress of the Pilot Projects, in particular, in the creation
of expertise in digitisation has been impressive to date.
European added value and content framework
Quality and accessibility for Web sites
The Cultural Heritage Project portal site has been designed
with universal access as an objective. Validation against the
relevant (‘Bobby’) criteria has identified certain
areas of non-compliance, which are being addressed. The project
team are confident of compliance with the fundamentals of universal
access by the time the project is completed. This also applies
to the sites of the Pilot Projects and the national thematic network,
both of which are hosted by the project team server and use templates
and tools provided by the Cultural Heritage Project.
Long-term sustainability
There is a strong consciousness of the risks involved in the
creation of digital material, and failure to ensure that the material
will be accessible after five, ten or more years. The lessons
of, for example, the Doomsday book in the UK, have been taken
into account. A focus of the cultural heritage project Pilot Projects,
as noted above, is long-term storage of digital material (whether
digitised or born digital). The project will provide guidelines
on appropriate storage media, as well as on file formats with
a long life expectancy and promising migration paths to new standards
as they emerge.
Research activities on digitisation
The most significant new research development in 2002 was the
establishment of the Humanities Institute of Ireland under the
Higher Education Authority’s Programme for Research in Third-Level
Institutions. It aims to provide a new environment for research
in the Humanities. A series of interdisciplinary research programmes
is being developed under the theme of Identity, Memory and Meaning
in the Twenty-First Century. The programme will be supported by
the development of an innovative Irish Virtual Research Library
and Archive.
Research in the digitisation of physical landscapes, both outdoor
and indoor, has been a strong focus in the Digital Media Centre
of the Dublin Institute of Technology for some years. Three-dimensional
objects and new techniques for efficient 3D modelling of the outdoors
have been particularly emphasised. The ACTIVATE project (outlined
above, Website at http://www.activate.ie)
includes an example of this type of digitisation, in this case
the digitisation of a sensitive historical environment (physical
cultural heritage).
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