Debate 3Perspectives on collaboration in heritage
Heritage institutions increasingly cooperate on providing access to collections and developing applications. Sometimes collections occupy a central place in this cooperation, sometimes it is determined by geography. However, cooperation is not automatic. This debate looks at the conditions needed for successful cooperation and at the experiences of the participants. Four speakers will participate in this debate. ---------------------------------------------------------------------
STAP Strategies for collaboration and/or Business strategies
Research of the Netherlands Institute for Social Research has shown a vast interest in and continual growth of the popularity of cultural heritage in general and more specific an interest focused on family history and local history.
In accordance to that two national thematic websites are (being) developed by STAP. One on the topic of family history and one on location based history. Both project are the result of a collaboration of more than thirty cultural heritage institutes and co-financed by the Dutch state.
A binding criteria for the co-finance by the Dutch state is the development of sustainable business models. Meaning that the projects must at least show a break-even scenario on the short and long term.
The paper will go into:
- the benefits of (national) collaboration
- the benefits of national platforms
- the process of business model development in a not for profit sector
with a governmental rather than a entrepreneurial culture
- the benefits of business model development and the outcomes
Debater: Geert Souvereyns
The Flemish Art Collection (Vlaamse Kunstcollectie) is a structural partnership joining three museums of fine arts in Flanders: the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, the Groeninge Museum in Bruges and the Ghent Museum of Fine Arts. One of the core projects of the partnership is the creation of a online collection catalogue. Cit delivered the technologies and the experience to realise this project.
In the presentation Geert Souvereyns of the Flemish Art Collection and Arthur Hanselman of Cit will give a lively account of all the difficulties they met in accessing and combining data from the three museums collection databases and which solutions they figured out to overcome these difficulties. In particular the conversion of mono-lingual data to a bilingual searchable object repository demanded creativity.
Not only can the objects of the three museums been shown in one single collection catalogue, they also can be shared easily in other joint projects.
In fact the data of the Flemish Art Collection are already included in the prototype of Europeana, by using OAI-PMH (Open Archive Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting). CollectionConnection, the software developed by Cit, also works in accordance to other international standards as Dublin Core, SRU (Search / Retrieval via URL) and XML.
Forced by limited funds, Cit and the Flemish Art Collection always choose for pragmatic and cost/time efficient solutions. For this reason we believe that this paper and the lessons to be learned will be interesting for both single institutions and co-operative partners looking for a way to get connected.
Debater: Ingeborg Verheul
IFLA, the international NGO for libraries and library associations, is mainly active in the digital field in the area of strategic awareness raising and advocacy . For the international library world IFLA has recently drafted a manifesto on digital libraries that will be on the agenda of this year's UNESCO meeting for endorsement. This Manifesto is meant to help institutions to bring the urge of digital library developments and activities on the political agenda of their national governments and thus to raise not only awareness, but also create funding opportunities.
Apart from that an international IFLA working group is currently working on a set of general high level guidelines on digital libraries. These guidelines have their counterpart in the IFLA UNESCO Guidelines for the preservation of digital preservation that were published in 2003. The purpose of the guidelines is to provide guidance once a library would like to start working on digitisation and building digital libraries, whether the library has much experience in the digital field or little.
To put digital libraries firmly on the agenda of the various international IFLA working groups, the IFLA Professional Committee has organised a special one day conference on digital libraries and users , during the IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Milan in August 2009. See: http://www.ifla.org/en/events/digital-library-futures-user-perspectives-and-institutional-strategies
In November 2008 IFLA took up the initative to set up an international working group on convergence , consisting of representatives of the international cultural heritage NGO's (management level). In this group the following NGO's are represented: ICA (archives); ICOM (museums); ICOMOS (monuments & sites); IFLA (libraries); CCAAA (audiovisual archives); ICSTI (scientific). CDNL, the Conference of Directors of National Librarians is involved in this group as well. The group identified 5 topics on which they want to work together more closely. One of these topics is "digital library strategies", which covers: digital continuity, digitisation, global digial libraries - standards; strategies; guidelines and cooperation. IFLA has taken on the secretariat for and the coordination of this international convergence group for the coming two years.
This presentation gives an overview of the current activities and future plans of IFLA regarding digital strategies on an international level, not only for the library world but also for the cultural and scientific heritage sector as a whole.
The presentation should feed the following possible discussion topic: how to advantage and feed international practice with theoretical high level strategic tools.
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 Ingeborg Verheul is currently Communication & Services Director of IFLA, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions. She also holds for IFLA the coordination and secretariat of the LAMMS Group, an international group of international NGO’s of libraries, archives, museum, monuments & sites meet, to further cooperation in areas of mutual interest.Till 2008 she worked at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands, where she has been active in the field of preservation, digitisation and digital preservation. The topic of convergence came on her path in her job as coordinator of the strategic national cooperation group of libraries, archives and museums in the area of sustainable preservation (paper preservation and digital preservation) and as programme manager of Memory of the Netherlands, the Dutch digitisation programme for collections of libraries, archives and museums.
Debater: Bart de Nil
From April 2007 to April 2009, several research teams and heritage organisations in Flanders have been involved in a research
trajectory called ‘Heritage 2.0’, in which problems regarding the on-line distribution of digital cultural heritage are analysed. One of the
main challenges of the project was the development of a generic metadata exchange model for the whole Flemish heritage sector.
While it spans the different heritage sectors, the target is not to create a centralised database, but rather to facilitate communication
among existing databases and metadata standards. Out of this combination of information, heritage professionals can create new
cultural heritage stories and can distribute much richer information to their audiences. The two major components of the Heritage 2.0
research project were: on the one hand, the creation of a communication layer on top of existing databases, and on the other hand, the presentation of heritage by means of mobile technologies (for example, a PDA).
This paper aims at unveiling the way the project results were used for a follow-up research project called 'EPICS' (E-learning Platform
In the Cultural heritage Sector), which aims at developing an e-learning platform for digital cultural heritage in Flanders.
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Frans Hoving is programmemanager culture participation at The Netherlands Institute for Heritage. Before this position, he was working for a national archives organization. He began specialized in management development and e-culture expertise. 
Bart De Nil is a historian who worked in 1998 at the Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature. From 1999 until 2007 he worked at the Institute for Social History. There he combined the tasks of researcher, archivist and coordinator oral history. Currently he’s senior staff member at FARO, Flemish interface centre for cultural heritage, mainly working about digital heritage and archives. Within the context of FARO Bart supports research projects about cultural heritage in Flanders. He is also engaged within the heritage sector as volunteer. Bart has published numerous articles and books on various subjects.
