"Knowledge by Networking / Wissen durch Vernetzung. Digitisation of cultural assets in Germany and Europe"
Press release from 06/25/2007
The conference, organised by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation together with the MICHAEL partners, focused on the current state of digitisation and in particular the role of portals in the cultural and scientific sector in Germany and Europe. Over 400 participants from 26 countries came to the Berlin State Library on 21 and 22 June 2007.
The focus was on the questions of how small and large institutions can work together in networking projects, how shared knowledge can be created and how synergy effects can result from this. It became clear that common data standards need to be known and used to an even greater extent than has been the case to date so that data and sources can be accessed in international cooperation projects. Another central component of the conference was the topic of the sustainable use and long-term archiving of digital data, which also includes the definition of generally applicable quality standards and the establishment of an institutionally supported infrastructure.
It became clear that there is already a high level of activity in the field of digitisation, but that these activities are often not yet networked. The aim is to remedy this through increasing cooperation and effective PR measures.
One of the projects presented was the multilingual European portal MICHAEL, which aims to provide centralised access to digital European cultural assets at collection level. The national portals of Italy, France and the UK are already networked in the European portal, with a further 15 European countries - including Germany - to follow.
The "European Digital Library" will enable joint digital access to European cultural heritage by bundling digitised material from archives, libraries, museums and other cultural institutions in one portal and making it accessible. A first version should be available in 2008. MICHAEL is one of the pillars on which the "European Digital Library" is based.
Information on the conference, the abstracts and presentations of the speakers can be found on the conference website. The papers will also be published on the website as soon as they have been made available by the speakers.
The international conference was sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Further sponsors were: Siemens, Adlib, zetcom, robotron, startext, Gallery Systems, OCLC PICA, IMDAS-Pro, Land Software, Mikro-Univers/Zeutschel.