Minerva Project

I want to introduce a really interesting project based on the
Cultural Web Sites. The project is called Minerva.  The aim of
Minerva is to create a network of Member States' Ministries to
discuss, correlate and harmonise activities carried out in
digitisation of cultural and scientific content, for creating an
agreed European common platform, recommendations and guidelines
about digitisation, metadata, long-term accessibility and
preservation.

In those activities the Minerva Working Group WP5 (Identification of
user needs, content and quality framework for common access points)
has defined its work programme to identify the quality guidelines as
follows:

    1.  Definition of basic recommendations
    2.  Verification of "typical" quality criteria regarding
        cultural heritage in relation to "typical" quality criteria
        of the web
    3.  Definition of quality criteria applicable to different
        heritage sectors
    4.  Production of the guidelines
    5.  Testing of guidelines criteria

At the moment the Italian workgroup proposes its Document No. 1,
available on Minerva's web site <URL:http://www.minervaeurope.org>,
regarding the definition of the strategy of valorisation of the
public cultural entity's identity, the issues related to the web
language strategy in relation to educative vocation and the theme
about coordinated communication strategy of the cultural entity with
regard to the web.

To define the quality in public cultural web sites the Italian group
starts from some questions: in particular the reasons for creating
them; their objectives; the meaning of the word "quality" for a
public cultural web site and what are the typical user needs
defined in terms of quality.

The group will continue to define and elaborate the programme
points, however each contribution  will be received. The group has
edited the Index of Quality criteria for public cultural Web
applications: recommendations and guidelines.

    <URL:http://www.minervaeurope.org/structure/
        workinggroups/userneeds/documents/Indexhandbook5.pdf>
        (PDF 120KB)

        **** Moderator's comments: The above URL has been wrapped
        for email. There should be no newline.

Please analyze this document and comment it (from the conservation
specialist point of view) by means of our Forum, subforum Web sites
quality
<URL:http://www.minervaeurope.org/forum/forum.asp?FORUM_ID=7>

The language of the forum is English and 40 people are members.

Giancarlo Buzzanca,
Web Department Head.
Istituto Centrale per Il Restauro
p.za S. Francesco di Paola, 9
00184   Rome Italy
+39 6 48896254
Fax: +39 6 4815704


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 16:61
                 Distributed: Wednesday, April 16, 2003
                       Message Id: cdl-16-61-014
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