Digital Archives and Libraries.

  • Launch of European digital library "on track"
    On 27th November 2007, a high level group on digital libraries met Commission officials in Brussels to discuss progress towards launching the European digital library. A European digital library foundation has recently been created. This formalises the agreement of European archives, museums, audiovisual archives and libraries to work together and to provide a common access point to Europe's cultural heritage online.
  • DELOS International Summer School on Digital Preservation 2008
    The 2008 DELOS Summer School on Digital Preservation in Digital Libraries will run from the 8th to the 14th June 2008. It will take place in Italy. It will be co-sponsored by DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE), the Digital Curation Centre (DCC), PLANETS, and CASPAR. The DELOS SS08 Summer School website will be accessible from 1 October 2007.
  • eContent Award 2007 - Italy
    Italian eContent Award 2007 is organised by Fondazione Politecnico di Milano and MEDICI Framework and inspired by the WSA - WORLD SUMMIT AWARD in order to select quality e-content and promote creativity and innovation in new media applications in Italy. This multi-aim award, encourages creativity, drives Young Talents toward international contests, nominates the eight best Italian eContent products (one for each category: eCulture, eScience, eGovernment, eEntertainment, eHealth, eInclusion, eLearning, eBusiness) to next edition of the World Summit Award (2007).
  • DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE) announces its Research and Industrial Exchange Programme (DPEX)
    DPEX aims to encourage innovative practice through research collaboration and to build bridges between practitioners and researchers. Twenty-five DPE Exchanges will propagate knowledge, capacity and innovation as well as foster better cooperation among research institutions and industrial partners working on meeting pressing challenges in digital preservation.
    Exchanges should typically last for four weeks and the DPEX support of up to 3500 euros per exchange can be used to meet partially the costs of accommodation, subsistence, and travel.
    There will be three deadlines for applications under what we hope will be the first phase of the DPEX Programme: October 2007, January 2008, June 2008.
  • Coordinating digitisation in Europe: progress report of the National Representatives Group
    For the year 2006 has started the data collection, in order to public the fourth volume.
    The reports are published to give visibility to the 'Digitisation Initiative', based on the Lund Principles and to NRG, in order to make easier for National Representatives to get support, resources and infrastructures to implement the Lund Action Plan.
    Target users of the Report may be at different levels, but mainly we aim to reach policy-makers, decision-makers and managers responsible or involved in the field of new technologies applied to cultural and scientific content, from the digitisation process up to the fruition on Internet.
  • Openarchives.eu
    Openarchives.eu is the European guide to OAI-PMH compliant digital repositories in the world. This is not a search engine to find metadata stored in the repositories but a searchable index of the repositories themselves. This portal uses repositories and collection descriptions harvested from the University of Illinois OAI-PMH Data Provider Registry. The search engine and other editorial contents that complete the originary database have been developed by Horizons Unlimited srl (Bologna – Italy).
  • CARE - Italian Coordination Group on Access to Electronic Resources - Market Survey
    CARE is the co-ordination group for access to electronic resources established by CRUI, the Italian Consortia and the other Groups operating in the market for electronic licenses. Stipulating nation-wide agreements with publishers is one of CARE’s tasks. CARE intends to collect information about negotiating agents specifically acting in the European area as consultants for the purchase of electronic licences for scientific journals, or directly carrying out negotiations with publishers on behalf of users.
  • European (Digital) Library
    The "European Library" is a portal which offers access to the combined resources (books, magazines, journals... - both digital and non-digital) of the 45 national Libraries of Europe. It offers free searching and delivers digital objects - some free and some priced.
  • Call for tenders for study on European efforts and progress in digitisation of culture
    The European Commission's Directorate General for Information Society and the Media has published a call for tenders for the development and testing of a framework and associated methodology for the collection and analysis of data on digitisation of material by libraries, archives and museums in the EU. The aim is to be able to better identify the total European digitisation effort and progress, make international comparisons, and stimulate further digitisation.
  • European Commission steps up efforts to put Europe’s memory on the Web via a “European Digital Library”
    The European Commissions’ plan to promote digital access to Europe’s heritage is rapidly taking shape. At least six million books, documents and other cultural works will be made available to anyone with a Web connection through the European Digital Library over the next five years. In order to boost European digitisation efforts, the Commission will co-fund the creation of a Europe-wide network of digitisation centres. The Commission will also address, in a series of policy documents, the issue of the appropriate framework for intellectual property rights protection in the context of digital libraries.
  • The Bibliomediateca of Santa Cecilia in Rome
    On November 22nd, 2005 has been opened the new Bibliomediateca dell'Accademia romana di Santa Cecilia the Auditorium del Parco della musica designed by Renzo Piano.
    The Bibliomediateca includes rich and various documents, it is devoted to music: "a paper and multimedia library", publications reading, scores, programmes, and photos sight, as well as music listening in the wide space of 700 square meters with 80 reading spaces 27 of which multimedia where the connection with other national and international music institutions will available.
  • Commission unveils plans for European digital libraries
    The European Commission on September 30th 2005 unveiled its strategy to make Europe’s written and audiovisual heritage available on the Internet. Turning Europe’s historic and cultural heritage into digital content will make it usable for European citizens for their studies, work or leisure and will give innovators, artists and entrepreneurs the raw material that they need. The Commission proposes a concerted drive by EU Member States to digitise, preserve, and make this heritage available to all. It presents a first set of actions at European level and invites comments on a series of issues in an online consultation (deadline for replies 20 January 2006). The replies will feed into a proposal for a Recommendation on digitisation and digital preservation, to be presented in June 2006.
  • Approved the European Digital Library
    In a letter addressed to the current European Council President Jean-Claude Juncker and Commission President José Manuel Barroso, the French, Italian, Spanish, German, Polish and Hungarian leaders have proposed making the works contained in European libraries available online in a European digital library.
  • Access to Thousands of Archives Through UNESCO Archives Portal
    More than 7,500 websites of archives and archival resources all over the world can be accessed through the new version of the "UNESCO Archives Portal", a directory of websites related to archives and records management, that was launched in March 2005.
  • Google Checks Out Library Books
    The Libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, the University of Oxford, and The New York Public Library Join with Google to Digitally Scan Library Books and Make Them Searchable Online
  • SegnaWeb - web sites selected by Italian librarians.
    SegnaWeb is a directory of web sites selected by Italian librarians. Resources are selected for their usefulness both to reference services in the public library and to citizens themselves. Italian resources are preferred, but cooperation with similar directories in other languages and countries is welcome. SegnaWeb is a MyLibrary application: the user may open an account and manage a personal bookmark online.
  • ERPANET Site Relaunched
    ERPANET relaunches the newly redesigned ERPANET website. The website is the key tool for ERPANET's primary goal of stimulating awareness and disseminating information to the Digital Preservation community. The new dynamic pages offer simple and direct access to all of ERPANET's products and events.
  • The Italian Digital Library and the Cultural Tourist Network
    The Italian Digital Library and the Cultural Tourist Network project has been proposed on 2002 to the Minister Committee for the Information Society and has been approved on March, 18th, 2003 together with other two library projects: Library e-learning centers and Library network for school.
    The National Library Service evolution foresees to extend and to integrate, within the network structure, the actions promoted by the General Direction Heritage and Cultural Institutes - already built (e.g., Mediateca 2000) or under construction (the Italian Digital Library) - integrating them, when possible, with the more general policies of e-government, innovation, and technological development devised in the context of Cultural Heritage. In such a context, the General Direction, through ICCU, decided to expand the SBN network in order to join in a unique architecture the libraries and their catalogues, the new growing digital libraries, and the Knowledge Management centers.
  • National British Archives Digitised
    DocumentsOnline allows you online access to The National Archives' collection of digitised public records, including both academic and genealogical sources. Searching the index is free and it costs £3.50 to download a digital image of a document.
  • Launching of The DigiCon Group
    Recently at the Istituto centrale per la patologia del libro (Rome) the working group denominated DigiCon (Digital and Conservation), created with a view to pinpointing and tackling problems relating to the conservation of digital documents in libraries, was formed. The group, which is composed of people from all the fields of scientific study undertaken at the Institute, intends to gather as much information as possible on practices connectected with digitization, both in Italy and beyond, in order to be able to evaluate, for preventive purposes, any possible risks eventully arising for the conservation of digital information. Among the objectives of the DigiCon group is that of concerning itself with the drawing up of a "good practices" schedule relating to this specific area of conservation.

 

Last update: Monday, June 09, 2008