ATHENA - Access to cultural heritage networks across Europe

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ATHENA Deliverables and documents

Here you'll find the most important documents produced by ATHENA working groups.

WP2 - Awareness and dissemination: enlarging the network and promoting the service

D2.1 Website creation and initial dissemination plan (PDF, 135 kb)

This deliverable is concerned with the dissemination activities of Athena. It presents them at the initial stage therefore not all plans can be described yet in detail. It documents what has been done already but its main purpose is to explain the strategy already agreed on within the ATHENA project for dissemination activities during the life-time of the project 

D2.2 Leaflet and other promotional material (PDF, 420 kb)

This deliverable documents the dissemination material which have been designed and agreed on within the last months. They are available online .

D2.3 Set of instrument to support newcomers to join (PDF, 904 kb)

This deliverable Set of Instruments to Support Newcomers to Join presents the tools developed by ATHENA in order to enable the contribution of quality data to Europeana by the museums wishing to contribute. It describes the cooperation between Europeana and ATHENA, the requirements content provider have to comply with in order to be able to contribute their content (metadata and previews) to Europeana, the ATHENA tools that enable and facilitate the content contribution, the support provided to the institutions throughout the content ingestion phase.

D2.4 Final dissemination plan (PDF, )

This deliverable concerns the Final Dissemination Plan of Athena. In the middle of the project realisation basic experiences have been gathered that allow to recognize the needs for dissemination, and to modify the planned activities according to the real needs of the institutions ATHENA serves. The main purpose of the Final Dissemination Plan is to explain the strategy already agreed on within the ATHENA project for dissemination activities during the life-time of the project.  

D2.5 First issue of the ATHENA Journal (PDF, 255 kb)

The ATHENA journal had been planned as a supporting tool for cultural heritage promotion.

WP3 - Identifying standards and developing recommendations

D3.1 Report on existing standards applied by European Museums (PDF, 487 kb)

This deliverable is based on a survey of the content that partners contracted to provide to Europeana through the ATHENA project. The first part looks at Some basic concepts, a familiarity with these will be useful for the understanding of the rest of the deliverable. Next there is an exposition of the range key standards being used by museums in a Standards landscape. This is done in order to provide a kind of ‘snap shot' of the current situation. As with any landscape the view may vary over time, some standards may become more popular, others might disappear, but we believe that the major features will remain. The The next section looks at the results of the ATHENA Standards Survey. The analysis will answer a set of questions about the standards use in museums in Europe as exemplified by the collections in the survey. Finally there are some Conclusions about the use of standards in European museums with its implications for the ATHENA project and for Europeana in general.

D3.2 Recommendations and best practice report (PDF, 323 kb)

Overall the aim of this deliverable is not to ‘reinvent the wheel' by adding yet another set of guidelines for an organisation to look at. There is already an existing set of guidelines available which do a very good job at meeting the needs of cultural organisations in Europe. This is the Minerva Guidelines. In terms of content the deliverable is divided into two broad areas: 1) Technical standards and guidance - these follow the recommendations of the Minerva Guidelines with minor changes and additions where needed; 2) Metadata standards and guidance. This section also looks at the creation of a new metadata harvesting XML schema, LIDO, together with an outline description of it.

D3.3 Specification for conversion tools (PDF, 153 kb)

This document looks at how LIDO was created by the activities of WP3, and how the schema will work within the ATHENA system and its relationship to Europeana. Moreover, it looks at how to map from the recommended collections management use environment standard, SPECTRUM, to LIDO within the context of the ATHENA system, and then on to ESE.

There are two annexes to this deliverable as separate documents:

• The LIDO XML schema (261 kb)
• A technical description of LIDO (XSD, 85 kb).

  Please note: The now applicable version LIDO v1.0 can be found at:

  LIDO v1.0 Specification Document
  LIDO v1.0 XML Schema Definition
  

For more information on LIDO visit: http://www.lido-schema.org

D3.4 Assessment of requirements for persistent identification of objects, collections and institutions (PDF, 111 kb)

Within the museum domain, this deliverable covers persistent identification for: physical objects; digital objects; collections; and institutions. Its aim is to provide: Information about the standards and services available for persistent identifiers; a review of persistent identifier use in the cultural heritage sector using a survey of the National Representatives associated with the ATHENA project;    a set of requirements for the successful implementation of persistent identifiers in the CHS; advice and best practice; conclusions.

D3.5 Technical and policy infrastructure to support persistent identifiers (PDF, 200 kb)With the needs of top management in mind the deliverable provides sections on: Showing the importance of identifiers as keys to cultural information integration; Setting PID policy in wider collections management context; Policy for the management of PIDs; A brief note on the technical infrastructure needed for PIDs; Conclusions. Moreover two Appendixes are available: Appendix I: Persistent Identifiers – A Briefing Note [for top managers]; Appendix II: Survey of mission statements.

D3.6  Specific tools to be used for conversion and adaptation of proprietary museum data (PDF, 713 kb)

This deliverable is defined in the ATHENA Description of Work as of the type ‘Demonstrator', and covers the ‘tools' produced during the ATHENA project. There is no external definition of exactly what a tool is the context of ATHENA, therefore we define them as: software systems (with helpdesk support); metadata standards; training materials; and guidelines documents. All of these are covered in the deliverable.

The deliverable is in two parts:

• An overview of the tools created, and used, during the project which have helped partners to provide their material to Europeana.
• A guide, based on partners' experiences during the project, which gives users an overview on how to get the most from their content and metadata when providing it to Europeana.

These tools were used in the context of the ATHENA project; however most of them have a general application. The ATHENA Project Ingestion Server is being applied in other current Europeana Group projects, e.g. Judaica Europeana and MIMO. It will also be maintained and used in the new projects like DCA and Linked Heritage (starting April 2011).

WP4 - Integration of existing data structure into the EDL

D4.1 Identification of existing terminology resources in museums (PDF, 3349 kb)The overall objective of this deliverable is to identify the terminology resources used by European museums. In order to achieve this objective, the work has been divided in two mainmain tasks: a state of the art and a specific survey.

D4.2 Guidelines for mapping into SKOS, dealing with translations (PDF, 2491 kb)

This deliverable addresses European museums. It aims to present a set of guidelines for the mapping of terminology resources into SKOS (SKOSification) dealing with translations (multilingualism). 

D4.3 Recommendation for integrating Digital resources present in museums in Europeana (PDF, 2025 kb)

This deliverable, targeted to museums, aims to present all WP4 recommendations for integrating Digital resources present in musuems into Europeana. An introduction explains the context of the whole work package in which the deliverable stands, the objectives of the task that the deliverable relates to, the audience for these recommendations and the skills needed to understand and to apply them. Then the document presents all the basic knowledge necessary to have in mind before reading the recommendations. In that part are notably presented the current technological environment, the museum needs, what a datamodel is, a typology of terminology resources, and the connexion between the datamodel and the terminology. Afterword, several recommendations address European museums about terminology management. This part helps museums conceive a terminology, make it interoperable and link it to a network of terminologies in order to enable and to improve the digital resources retrievability on Europeana. In the colclusions, a synthesis of the main results and several perspectives for the museums which aim to make their digital resources the more exploitable and retrievable again and again.

WP5 - Coordination of contents

D5.1 First Report on the network of national coordination (PDF, 355 kb)

The first part of the deliverable illustrates the network of National Contact Point (NCP) set up in the framework of the project to respond to the need of a practical mechanism of gathering digital content for the project, filling in the questionnaires which are preparatory to the development of the ATHENA technical framework, manage the relationship among the involved institutions, and organise dissemination activities. Each NCP has been requested to contribute to the writing of this deliverable and compile a national report including information on the policy or strategy set up at national level for the implementation of Europeana, the new collections which are supposed to be provided to ATHENA during the future months, and the national/international events that will be held during the year 2009 where the ATHENA project will be introduced.

D5.2 Guidelines and Best Practises for Setting up national Co-operation Frameworks (PDF, 1296 kb)

This document's aim is providing guidelines and good practices for the creation of national cooperative frameworks for digitisation, online accessibility and content aggregation. Some ATHENA providers and other memory institutions that play a role into the European aggregation landscape towards Europeana, pay for a lack of strategy and synergy at country level. Anyhow many examples of internal concertation on digitisation and related issues across Member States exist; for this reason, it was deemed opportune to support the ATHENA consortium and other memory institutions in setting up National Cooperative Framework.

WP6 - Analysis of IPR issues and definition of possible solutions

D6.1 Legislation (PDF, 633 kb)

The goal of this report is to present an overview of Intellectual Property Rights legislation in relation to the objectives of Europeana. The first section of the report looks at the regulatory frameworks of intellectual property rights. It examines the role of and the interaction between the relevant international treaties, the European Union directives and the national legislation. The next section gives an overview of the scope of copyright. It discusses the economic and moral rights of the author (incl. reproduction rights and the right of communication to the public). It also gives a brief illustration of copyright exceptions and the role of the three-step-test. This chapter concludes with a presentation of the different rules for  the term of protection of copyright-protected material. The following chapter examines the copyright exceptions for cultural heritage institutions. It pays special attention to libraries, museums, archives and educational institutions. This section presents an overview of the exceptions for the use of works for educational purposes, for the display of works in a closed network, for the preservation of works and for the use of works containing technological protection measures. It also looks at the status and implementation of these exceptions. This is followed by a chapter on databases. This section introduces the European database right. It also examines the author's right on databases and the differences between general copyright and database right. Furthermore it also indicates when cultural heritage institutions can call upon database right. This chapter concludes with an overview of the rules for the term of protection of databases. This report also gives an overview of the issues that arise for orphan works and out-of-print works in relation to copyright. It gives some examples of the legislative initiatives to solve these problems. Finally the report also draws some conclusions about the legislation on intellectual property in relation to the actual objectives of Europeana

D6.2 -  Step-by-step guide on IPR issues: methodology (PDF, 202 kb)

This document presents the methodology that will form the basis of the creation of an online Step-by-step guide to assist cultural heritage institutions in dealing with their IPR-issues and to provide accurate solutions. This deliverable is dealing only with the methodology of the Step-by-step guide.

D6.3 - Overview of collective licensing models and of DRM systems and technologies used for IPR protection and management (PDF, 1882 kb)

The first part presents an overview of collective licensing models in relation to the digitisation and disclosure of cultural heritage content.The first section of the report situates current trends in unlocking cultural heritage content by making it digitally available on the internet. Some specific issues on copyright to which collective licensing might provide an answer are presented here as well. We take a look at the current copyright discussions within the European policy field as well as regulatory initiatives by Europeana.The following chapter gives an overview of the actual collective licensing mechanisms. It starts off by presenting what the collective management of rights is and why it can be useful to the cultural heritage sector. Different collective licensing models are then illustrated, as well as some country-specific regimes.This is followed by a chapter on new and emerging licensing models. Collective licensing may be one option but we should also look at others. Open content licenses and Creative Commons licenses in particular will be discussed here. Their application in the field of cultural heritage, as well as some cases and best pratices, illustrate the theory.The second parts deals with the issues of wide access to cultural and scientific content and in parallel protection and management of copyright create the next digital dilemma and considerable scepticism to Web 2.0 users and content providers: do we consider creations as human kind advances and in some way patrimony of the humanity freely accessible and reusable by anyone or do we consider wiser to protect it as the result of ‘personal' investments and efforts?How intellectual property laws could embrace the apparently paradoxical goals of motivating individual creation and preserving the ultimate benefits of that creation for the common good, is a major question. As a result the necessity of using systems which allow broad exchange of the creations while at the same time use copyright protection methodologies and tools during this exchange is important. Digital Rights Management systems have the objective to fulfil this goal, thus to protect and manage rights and copyrights and in parallel support the distribution and publication of priceless digital creations in the form of digital content. A technical study presents the main aspects of Digital Rights Management Systems.This technical study could be proved useful to organisations and people who might not know what a DRM system is, while at the same time and in certain aspects reaches depths useful for experienced scientists and experts active in the scientific field of DRM and copyright protection/management.

D6.4 Database containing IPR information per member State (PDF 879 kb)This deliverable provides a complete and open database containing information about responsible organisations, clearing houses and key entities dealing with IPR issues and/or legislation in several countries European and / or non-European. The specific deliverable is a tool with which the ATHENA partners and content providers can view, insert and edit relevant information regarding relevant actors in the field of advising, defining and clearing rights on (digital) cultural heritage content. The database is fully integrated in the main ATHENA platform for clearing rights, which is the Step-by-step guide on IPR issues. Specific services include: information retrieval regarding existing IPR offices and organisations;possibility of new data insertion for new and emerging actors in this field; editing already included information on existing organisations. The aim is to produce a complete and consistent database of the offices, organisations and key entities most currently active in rights clearance in Europe and in particular in the ATHENA partner countries. Its strength lies in its openness and built-in capability to be enriched by authorised and responsible users in the long term. Flexibility was necessary to be implemented so as to support the ever changing digital rights clearing landscape. At the moment of writing, 24 countries are represented in the database.

WP7 - Development of plug-ins to be integrated within the European Digital Library

D7.1 First version of the semantic interoperability plug-in (1427 kb)

Present document constitutes the first report for the design and development of the web-based tool that will be used for the ingestion and publishing of cultural content metadata belonging to providers that participate in the ATHENA project. This process aims to guarantee semantic interoperability across numerous data repositories of varied thematic categories, technical features and capabilities, allowing robust ingestion of diverse content and knowledge. The results of requirements analysis together with the outcome of close cooperation with relevant work packages and working groups of the project are illustrated and, the subsequent decision making process that has lead to the final functional and technical requirements of the prototype are discussed. Additionally, the core modules that currently serve the ingestion process are described, together with examples and screens that cover all the functionality of the implemented web service. This document can be used as a reference for the prototype design and implementation as well as for providing instructions for the service's usage, modules and features.

D7.2 - Guidelines for Geographic Location Description (7443 kb)

The aim of this Guidelines for Geographic Location Description is to provide basic information for geographic location description of digital cultural content, which could be used by museums, other cultural institutions, content holders, curators, and information engineers. Guidelines begin with introduction to the concept, technology and tools of geographic information systems (GIS). GIS and other geographic description terms are described next to understand the concept and specifics of GIS technology and its connections with cultural heritage. Fourth chapter answers the question do meta data from ATHENA project content providers that are describing digital cultural content contain geographic coordinates or standardized geographic names, so that geographic coordinates can be determined »automatically. Interoperability of geographic information which pertains to digital cultural content is in focus next. The chapter presents a framework for modeling geographic information about cultural heritage objects. It provides an overview of relevant standards. The accent is on cross-relational aspects of standards that could enable their connection in support for systematic implementation of geographic information in cultural heritage field. Final chapter provides advice to cultural institutions on introducing geographical data. It explains how to begin with the process of enrichment for existing individual objects description as well as object collection descriptions. Concise guidance to possible immediate actions of cultural institutions is distilled in 10 quick thoughts and the curriculum for training in basic concepts of GIS is proposed. Seven types of GIS models are the core of the Guidelines for Geographic Location Description. They were developed with aim that museums, archives, libraries, audiovisual institutions and other data providers clearly understand what they should be working on and implement in the future. We prepared small sample database for each model and a prototype internet applications, performed simulation and discussion of issues pertaining to each model.

D7.3 Skosification of the existing metadata standards ans terminology sets used by the participating museums (PDF, 359 kb)

This deliverable documents the prototyping efforts of WP4 in collaboration with WP7 towards the evaluation and application of guidelines and tools for the mapping of terminology resources into SKOS (SKOSification) dealing with translations (multilingualism). The introduction explains the context of the work packages that collaborate for the deliverable, the objectives of the task that the deliverable relates to, the audience and expected skills, and the basic concepts the reader should have a grasp of in order to have a good understanding of the deliverable content. The chapter on SKOS presents its main features, a summary of the ATHENA Guidelines for SKOS and a list of identified tools for use in SKOSification tasks. The chapter on the ATHENA Thesaurus illustrates the results of the prototyping experiment carried out within WP4, presenting the requirements, terminology sets and methodology that was set up for the elaboration of the first core of the ATHENA Thesaurus.

D7.4 Report on the integration of the plug-in with the Europeana portal (PDF, 1596)

This document constitutes the report on the integration and interoperability of the ATHENA ingestion system with the Europeana Ingestion Office infrastructure and the Europeana portal. Europeana provides integrated access to digital objects from the cultural heritage organisations of all the nations of the European Union. It encompasses material from museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual archives with the aim of making Europe’s multicultural and multilingual riches discoverable together in a common on-line environment.
To do this Europeana harvests and indexes the descriptive metadata associated with the digital objects. As there is no one universal metadata standard applied across the participating domains, a set of metadata elements (ESE – Europeana Semantic Elements) has been developed that will allow a common set of information to be supplied to support the functionality desired by the user and needed for the operation of the underlying system. To provide metadata in the ESE format, it is necessary for contributors to map elements from their own metadata format to ESE. In addition to the mapping it is necessary for a normalisation process to be carried out on some values to enable machine readability. In the initial implementation of the Europeana prototype much of the mapping and normalisation was carried out centrally in the Europeana Office, a work that gradually passed to data providers or aggregators. The ATHENA project introduced an implementation plan for the ingestion and WP7 provided an appropriate web-based tool that was used for the aggregation and remediation of cultural content metadata belonging to providers. The process guarantees semantic interoperability across numerous data repositories of varied thematic categories, technical features and capabilities, allowing seamless ingestion of diverse content and knowledge and, their subsequent harvesting by the Europeana Office through the OAI-PMH protocol.

D7.5 Implementation plan and access to content of museums through Europeana (PDF, 528 kb)

This deliverable reports on the results of Task 7.5 (Creation, management and execution of implementation plan) of WP7 concerning the technical standards and metadata models of interest for the design of the ATHENA harvesting strategy, the technical infrastructure that supports the ingestion work flow and, the resources to train and support the project’s users. Its main objective is to provide the information and technical specifications for the alignment of provider’s metadata with ATHENA and, for the interoperability of the later with the Europeana repository and relevant standardized and widely used data models for digital cultural heritage. This deliverable introduces the available cultural metadata standards, focusing on their implementation and discussing the prevalent representation languages. Based on the results obtained from the WP3 questionnaire completed by all content providers and the following requirement analysis, LIDO was selected as a suitable metadata schema for the ATHENA needs.