European cultural institutions and e-infrastructures: strategies and future perspectives - ABSTRACT
Rossella Caffo, as director of the Central Institute for the Union Catalogue (ICCU) that has the mandate to promote and coordinate cataloguing and digitisation activities for the Italian libraries and to implement European digitisation projects, illustrates the Italian strategy for digitisation and its relationships with a the international context.
ICCU takes the responsibility of the main Italian digital platforms for cultural heritage: at first the National Library Service (SBN), which gathers over 4,500 libraries and gives access to over 12 million bibliographic descriptions; then Internet Culturale, the gateway of the digital collections of the Italian libraries, and CulturaItalia, the Italian culture portal that has a cross domain approach. Culturaitalia is the national aggregator for Europeana.
ICCU manages also a series of European projects that can be grouped in two main lines: aggregation for Europeana (Linked Heritage above all) and e-infrastructures for digital cultural heritage: DC-NET that promoted the harmonisation of the national research programmes in digital cultural heritage, INDICATE that addresses the Euro-Mediterranean cooperation, and DCH-RP for a roadmap on digital preservation.
All these activities are in the framework of the Joint Programming Initiative for Cultural heritage (JPI-CH) that, under the joint leadership of the Italian Ministries for culture and for research, has the role of defining the scientific research agenda on tangible, intangible, and digital cultural heritage.
