BAM: A German Portal to Libraries, Archives, Museums

Cultural Heritage Initiatives In The European Union – An Overview

During recent years, the European Union (EU) has been sponsoring several programs to promote the online accessibility of cultural content as “culture is a key dimension of the Information Society. The exchange of information on the world’s cultural heritage will help people from different cultures around the world to understand each other better” (quote from Pascon, 1997, p. 57). In addition to the cultural aspect, the EU also considers digital cultural content to be an important contribution to the development of a multimedia industry (cf. the so called Bangemann Report, 1994). Therefore the EU has initiated a number of projects, for example ECHO¹, MICHAEL-Culture², MINERVA eC³ and i2010 Digital Libraries⁴ to name just a few. In addition to the EU initiatives there are also many national projects by the EU member states where national libraries, archives and museums organize projects to create and collect cultural content, for example the British Library⁵, the National Archive of Germany⁶, the portals Gallica of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France⁷ and Joconde of the Ministère de la culture de France⁸, the Italian portal cultura italia – un patrimonio da esplorare⁹ of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali to mention but a few examples. All these distributed databases will be integrated into a European portal presenting the diversity and the common traditions of European cultural heritage in all branches of knowledge.