Cultural Heritage and the 6th Framework Programme

1. Cultural Heritage and the 6th Framework Programme Bernard Smith Head of Division Preservation and Enhancement of Cultural Heritage

2. Cultural Heritage in IST Moving from: “access to scientific and cultural contentthrough the networking of libraries, archives and museums” To: “intelligent systems for dynamic access to and preservation of tangible and intangible cultural and scientific resources" 5th Framework Programme (1998-2002) 6th Framework Programme (2002-2006)

3. Why culture in IST? • The Treaty provides for research (Art. 163) and culture (Art. 151) • Bring common cultural heritage to the fore • Encourage cooperation ... safeguarding of cultural heritage of European significance • Take cultural aspects into account in other policies • Cultural institutions are guardians of some fundamental societal values • Cultural assets are one of the key riches of European society • Culture is an excellent "reality check" for technology developers • Cultural is an integral part of the knowledge economy and a major owner of digital assets

4. Building on ….. • Initiatives on eEurope (e.g. Lund), employment, social inclusion, .... • European Council Resolutions, .... • Existing national and EU-funded projects • Recent reports, e.g. DigiCult • ISTAG vision on “ambient intelligence” • Institutional and industry roadmaps, e.g. • DELOS EU-US working groups • AIIM industry white papers • ... • Topic workshops, conferences, e.g. • PRESTO • TEL • EVA conferences (Florence, Berlin, Moscow, ...)

5. New eCulture Landscapes • Council Resolution on film heritage • Council Resolution on the “Role of Culture in the European Union” • Council Resolution on “Culture and Knowledge Society” • Council Resolution on “Digital Preservation: preserving tomorrow’s memory” • eEurope 2002 and the Lund Principles for digitisation • eEurope 2005 and culture and tourism Policy basis:

6. eEurope • eEurope initiative • Helsinki summit December 1999 • Lisbon special summit March 2000 (dot.com summit) • eEurope action plan • Feira summit June 2000 • eEurope progress report • Stockholm summit March 2001 • eEurope+ (accession countries) • Göteborg summit June 2001 • eEurope 2005 • Barcelona Council May 2002

7. Digitisation programmes Europe's cultural and scientific knowledge resources are a unique public asset forming the collective and evolving memory of our diverse societies and providing a solid basis for the development of our digital content industries in a sustainable knowledge society Conclusions of the Lund expert meeting

8. Area 1: Improving policies and programmes through cooperation and benchmarking Area 2: Discovery of digitised resources Area 3: Promotion of good practice Area 4: Content framework Coordination of digitisation mechanisms: The Action Plan • Actions:

9. Create a shared vision of quality European content and an implimentation framework Access to quality European content Area 4: Content framework • Objective: An approach for a European eCulture infrastructure Identify added-value and quality criteria Establish the Brussels Quality Framework Identify an implimentation route, e.g. Charter, MoU, etc.

10. Ensure that digitised cultural and scientific content is available over time Sustainable access to content Area 4: Content framework • Objective: Scope and identify core problem areas Need to apply good practices and standards Establish a research agenda on long-term presevation Involve industry and archival community

11. Digitisation • Progress to date: Policies now exist is many Member States, and internal coordination networks have been established Some best practice projects have been identified, but more are needed that are useful for small/local institutions A EU-wide status report will be produced (early 2003) on digitisation policies and programmes A EU-wide Quality Framework is needed for cultural content

12. Long-term Digital Preservation • Issues: What is the cost and scale of the problem? How to ensure that governments and institutions are fully aware about the problem? What guidence is needed? Focus on data creators Recognise the skills deficit, and decide what new skills will be needed Build a large-scale multidisciplinary and multi-institutional collaboration Take collective responsibility for long-term access

13. New eCulture Landscapes • Focus ~1500 man-years of research effort on digital culture • Fund 110 projects since 1999 • 688 participants • 506 different organisations from museums, libraries, archives, industry, government and research (40% cultural actors, 30% industry, 30% research) • Partners from 35 countries • >90 M€ funding in cost-shared projects • Av. funding 1.6 M€ for RTD (75% of budget) • Av. funding 0.55 M€ for AM (12%) • Av. funding 0.75 M€ for TN (8%) • Av. funding 0.172 M€ for take-up (5%) What we do:

14. ……. and Access to Cultural Heritage Objective: To develop advanced systems and services that help improve access to Europe‘s knowledge and educational resources (including cultural and scientific collections) and generate new forms of cultural and learning experiences. Improving accessibility, visibility and recognition of the commercial value of Europe's cultural and scientific resources, by developing:

15. Digital library services • Advanced digital libraries services, providing high-bandwidth access to distributed and highly interactive repositories of European culture, history and science • Focus on shared test-beds and increased cultural-research cooperation • Building on existing portfolio of projects • Including digital memory management • Remember broadband objectives of eEurope 2005

16. Intelligent heritage and tourism • Environments for intelligent heritage and tourism, re-creating and visualising cultural and scientific objects and sites for enhancing user experience in cultural tourism • Focus on enhancing user experience • Addressing the common needs of Europe’s museums, monuments, sites, etc., and not a specific museum, monument, site, .... • eLearning, tourism, eCommerce can support the core focus on culture • An effective network should include take-up in networks and/or “demo” projects under STRP

17. Preservation and digitisation • Advanced tools, platforms and services in support of highly automated digitisationprocessesand workflows, digital restoration and preservationof film and video material, and digital memory management and exploitation • Focus on structuring new research communities around preservation • Substantially reduce the cost of digitisation • Lower barriers for institutional investment in long-term digital preservation • Provide an industrial platform for film and video restoration and preservation

18. What kind of Project?

19. Where is the research focus?

20. Schedule of the 1st Call • Publication: 17th Dec. 2002 • Closing deadline: 24th April 2003 • Evaluation: 12-24 May 2003 • Hearings: 9-14 June 2003 • Negotiations: starting July until Sept. 2003 • Commission decision: from Oct. 2003 • Projects start: Dec. 2003 or Jan. 2004 Highly competitive & demanding process …

21. Out of Scope • Physical protection and conservation of objects, monuments, sites, etc., except where they direct link to digitally enhanced user experiences • Generic technology development without any context or relevance to the problems of Europe’s cultural actors • Projects addressing a particular object, monument, site, or dealing with specific thematic collections • Projects trying to cover everything – eLearning, tourism, eCommerce, etc. • Projects lacking strategy/policy impact

22. Possible topics for future calls • Work programme 2005-2006 • NoE’s and STRP’s are incubators for new ideas • Issues not fully included in present work programme: • New forms of community memory • Culture and tourism, learning, etc. • Long-term preservation of very-large collections of highly dynamic objects and collections • and …..

23. Access to Cultural Heritage • Measurable impact: • Establish a stable pan-European infrastructure for distributed repositories of digital content and community memory within 5 to 10 years, through a Europe-wide approach to depositing new digital content and to Web archiving • Reduce by 50% the cost of digitisation and modelling of cultural objects, monuments, sites, etc. within 5 years • Develop technologies and systems to provide assured protection from loss within 10 years, thus providing long-term accessibility and preservation of significant cultural digital resources

24. Integrated projects • Generate knowledge and critical mass needed to achieve ambitious clearly defined scientific and technological objectives • Increase competitiveness and/or address a societal challenge • Support object-driven research, where the primary deliverable is new knowledge • Expected to also have a structuring effect Judged on impact, scientific excellence and quality of consortium

25. Integrated projects • Key messages: • No lower threshold on size, just ambition • Ambition: tangible significant impact on a wide spectrum of core stakeholders • Generate knowledge, and new collaborations • Integration for DL: value-chain, existing “national” collections, public-private funding, training, end-user involvement • Integration for preservation: public institution-private company, multidisciplinary, demonstration, international cooperation, institutional buy-in, building a research community Should be THE project in the field

26. Networks of excellence • Multidisciplinary and oriented to long-term objectives which are not predefined in terms of products, processes or services • Strengthen scientific and technological excellence • Progressive, lasting integration, addresses fragmentation of European research • Must includes spreading of excellence Judged on impact, quality of participants and degree of integration

27. Networks of excellence • Key messages: • Clear, well-defined topic, and performance indicators for durable integration • Funding is an incentive to help overcome barriers to durable integration • Integrates existing national activities and programmes, and be seen to modify the organisation of research • Joint programme of activities – MUST include integration, re-orientation of existing activities, joint executed research, spreading of excellence, unified management structure • Joint programme of activities – exclusively of additional activities, that would not have been undertaken in the absence of the network World leadership is THE objective

28. Using the instruments

29. Ambition is not …. • Finding a way to extend an existing project • Window dressing with “sleeping” partners • Covering the map of Europe with nodes, etc. • A loose group of like minded individuals • Re-submitting a rejected proposal from past/other programmes and asking for 3-times as much funding • Trying to “federate” different groups without any coherence, just because the “Commission wants it” • Making a good small research project look like an IP by tripling everything

30. Expressions of Interest • 118 received, 97 analysed • 64% IPs, 36% NoEs (IST average) • Focusing on: • Digitisation and digital preservation (19 IP’s and 11 NoE’s) • Advanced digital libraries and content infrastructures (16 IP’s and 15 NoE’s) • Intelligent heritage and artistic expression (11 IP’s and 13 NoE’s) • Building community memories (3 IP’s and 9 NoE’s) • Strong academic focus (41% for IST)

31. On the negative side ... • Only 15-30% of ideas really took seriously the new instruments, even if they did not understand them fully • Lack of ambition with very few big “visionary” ideas • Some very big (unrealistic) project budgets • Lack of integration, with just inflated “traditional” project ideas proposed • European Research Area still misunderstood • No EU added-value and impact indicators • Many sub-critical ideas could be integrated to achieve critical mass • Lots of overlap in Networks, and joint programme of activities missing

32. Focus on describing the problem and breakthroughs expected and ensure that the key innovations are clearly described Make explicit the state-of-the-art and the institutional buy-in Keep ideas modular in scope, content and time Give realistic cost/resource estimates Use the full range of activities allowable in the new instruments Remember to factor in post-project sustainability Focus on return on investment Do ...

33. Artificially inflate IP’s or artificially adapt your ideas to inappropriate objectives Try to everything with everyone Mirror the work programme text Underestimate the project management expertise needed Participate in a multitude of competing proposals (remember a researcher can only be in one network) Forget to contextualise your objectives and put yourself in the place of the evaluator Forget the rational for EU intervention Don’t ...

34. An “Expression of Interest” workshop, Luxembourg, 18th Nov. 2002 Open day on Technology-enhanced Learning, Luxembourg, 5th Dec. 2002 An open Information event, Luxembourg, 27th Jan. 2003 A “Mapping the Future” project workshop, Luxembourg 28th Jan. 2003 Information briefings in Belgium, UK, Greece, Germany, … Other events …

35. Check relevance of your ideas with us, as quickly as possible Use the national contact points and partner finding services (intelligently) Constantly check CORDIS for progress and updates on instruments and schedules Build publically accessible agendas: Clarify your ideas, share your problems and ideas with others and subject them to public inspection Mobilise your constituencies, involve the stakeholders and listen to them Become an expert evaluator What to do next?

36. Conclusions • This is a game of quality not numbers (ambition) • Preserve your credibility - select one proposal and make it work (focus) • Remember your credibility also depends on the quality and credibility of your partnerships (excellence) • Today our constituencies are present but are still dispersed (integrate) • Remember the new programme involves a change in mind-set: • An Integrated Project should be THE project in the field • A Network of Excellence should integrate ongoing research in Member States and become WORLD LEADERS

37. For more information bernard.smith@cec.eu.int See the DigiCult Study and the eCulture newsletter • eEurope • http://europa.eu.int/information-society/eeurope/index_en.htm • IST in the Framework Programme • http://www.cordis.lu/ist/fp6/fp6.htm • Cultural Heritage in IST • http://www.cordis.lu/ist/ka3/digicult • Culture in the EU • http://europa.eu.int/culture/index_en.htm