Giuliana De Francesco

(Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities, Rome)

TOWARDS AN AGREED EUROPEAN COMMON PLATFORM

FOR DIGITISATION OF CULTURAL AND SCIENTIFIC HERITAGE:

THE MINISTERIAL NETWORK

FOR VALORISING ACTIVITIES IN DIGITISATION (MINERVA)

Abstract. MINERVA is a project funded by the European Commission IST Programme in the ambit of the 5th Framework Programme. It has created a network of EU Ministries and other agencies in charge of cultural policies and programmes, which is open to enlargement to new countries and new sectors of the civil society. The network discusses, correlates and harmonises the activities carried out in the field of digitisation of cultural and scientific heritage, aiming at creating a common European platform made up of agreed recommendations, guidelines, standards. The network acts also at a political level, fostering collaboration between European Commission and Member States, ensuring awareness of European policies at national level, giving visibility at European level to main national activities, coordinating national programmes in order to embed in national digitisation activities the technical results achieved by the network. MINERVA promotes cooperation among other EU funded projects dealing with digitisation of culture. Some main outcomes of the activities are presented.