PROGRESS REPORT

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1 EUROPEAN COMMISSION Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology Media and Data Creativity Ref. Ares(2015) /11/2015 IMPLEMENTATION OF THE COMMISSION RECOMMENDATION ON DIGITISATION AND ONLINE ACCESSIBILITY OF CULTURAL MATERIAL AND DIGITAL PRESERVATION PROGRESS REPORT Please complete and return by to no later than 30 October 2015 European Commission, 2920 Luxembourg, LUXEMBOURG - Tel , CNECT-G2@ec.europa.eu

2 Country Contact Details (info will not be published): Name Organisation Hans van der Linden Flemish Government. Dept Culture, Youth, Media, Sport Telephone +32 (0) Name Organisation Jean-Louis Blanchart Walloon Brussels Federation. Dept Culture Telephone +32 (0) Name Chris De Loof Anna Calderone Organisation Belgian Federal Government Belgian Science Policy Office (Belspo) Telephone CDL : AC : anna.calderone@belspo.be chris.deloof@belspo.be NOTE: This template follows the structure of the Recommendation of 27 October 2011 on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation. This template should be strictly followed. The Commission Recommendation was endorsed by Council on its Conclusion of 12 May The priority actions and indicative timetable contained in these Conclusions should clearly be taken into account in your reporting of progress. 2

3 Please note that your report should focus on new developments in the reference period Please use the empty boxes underneath the questions to indicate your response/comments. Besides your factual report, you are encouraged to raise any implementation problems or highlight any best practice examples to which you think special attention should be paid at national and/or European level. Where implementation is not fully reached, please describe how you plan to continue your work. Please provide quantitative indicators on progress achieved, where applicable. If no information is available for a question, please leave the corresponding box empty. All reports will be published on the Commission's Digital Agenda for Europe website. Introductory note on the institutional structure of Belgium Within the federal institutional structure of Belgium, the Communities the Flemish Community, the French Community and the German-speaking Community are competent for culture including the digital cultural heritage, museums, libraries, archives, etc. Administrations responsible for the digital cultural heritage policy are installed in each Community: - Federation Wallonia-Brussels (French Community): Délégation générale à la numérisation des patrimoines culturels ; - Flemish Community: Departement Cultuur, Jeugd, Sport en Media ; - German-speaking Community: Abteilung Kulturelle und Soziale Angelegenheiten. A series of federal scientific and cultural institutions remain under the responsibility of the federal authority. Most of them are placed under the authority of the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO), namely: the Royal Library, the State Archives, the Royal Museums of Art and History, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage, the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, the Royal Museum for Central Africa and the Centre for Historical Research and Documentation on War and Contemporary Society. The Royal Film Archive is also financially supported by the Federal Science Policy. The Royal Museum of the Army and Military History comes under the Department of Defence. An ad hoc coordination body called "DC-BEL" has been set up with representatives of the Ministries of the Communities and of the Federal Science Policy Office. The aim of this ad hoc group is twofold: (1) to prepare and follow up the Belgian participation in the MSEG and various EU programmes, projects and initiatives such as Europeana, Athena, Numeric, FP7 DigiCult, ERANET DC-NET, CIP ICT PSP, etc and (2) to exchange ideas and information about national, regional and European policies regarding digitisation of cultural heritage. The members of DC-BEL meet at least twice a year. 3

4 DIGITISATION: ORGANISATION AND FUNDING 1. PROGRESS ON PLANNING AND MONITORING THE DIGITISATION OF BOOKS, JOURNALS, NEWSPAPERS, PHOTOGRAPHS, MUSEUM OBJECTS, ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTS, SOUND AND AUDIO-VISUAL MATERIAL, MONUMENTS AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES ("CULTURAL MATERIAL") a. Setting clear quantitative targets for the digitisation of cultural material, in line with the overall targets mentioned under point 7, indicating the expected increase in digitised material in Europeana and the budgets allocated by public authorities - Is a national strategy or other scheme in place for planning the digitisation of cultural material? [ ] National strategy [ ] National funding programme [ ] Domain specific initiatives [ ] Regional schemes [X] No specific scheme [ ] Other Please provide details of the present scheme, and any developments since the last reporting period. In Flanders there is no specific scheme but the Flemish Institute for Archiving or VIAA digitises, stores and provides access to audiovisual material together with partners from the cultural, heritage and media sectors ( VIAA was founded on 21 December 2012 by the Flemish Government. Since then the institute is making continuous progress in the digitisation and digital archiving of audiovisual heritage coming from museums, archives en broadcasters in Flanders. VIAA s primary focus is on the audiovisual but in the light of the commemoration of the Great War, VIAA together with 13 partners succeeded in the digitisation of more than pages coming from trench newspapers & magazines from the period. In the French Community The Heritage Preservation and Exploitation Program (Plan de préservation et d'exploitation des patrimoines PEP's) that has been adopted by the Government of the French Community in October 2007 plans the creation and the development of a portal site, to provide for an inventory, a directory of institutions and initiatives and an overview of the progress of digitisation projects, per sector and for each involved player. There are no new developments since the previous report. For the federal institutions, a Ministerial Decision from DIGIT-03 is 4

5 worth mentioning. A plan has been voted by the Council of Ministers on 19 December 2013 to create 3 complementary infrastructures for the digitisation and preservation of assets held by the different Federal Scientific Institutions (FSI) and the National Film Archives. The funding scheme has the objective to create 3 infrastructures : an infrastructure for the digitisation of content, an infrastructure for digital preservation and an infrastructure for use and reuse of digital content. The plan has started in 2014 and will end by The different infrastructures : 1. Infrastructures for digitisation of content - Internal digitisation :budget allocated to the subsidiaries for equipment, personnel, operation - External digitisation : public procurement of services The scope of this project is extended to the digitisation of a wide variety of grouped cultural and natural assets kept in our museums, libraries and archives : common books, journals and registers (different formats), precious and rare books, paper formats (from A5 to A0), images on glass plaques, paper, film, 2D structures, 3D structures, movies, audio, videos and the creation of well-structured metadata (added manually or semi-automatic). 2. Infrastructure for digital preservation A tender was launched in The scope is a 4 years contract of services for the exploitation of a long term preservation infrastructure in the national data centres. The contract was allocated in October 2015 to a consortium of 2 companies: Atos Belgium and Videohouse. 3. Infrastructure for use and reuse of digital content The launch of this platform is planned in Are quantitative targets for the digitisation of cultural material set at national level? Please provide details for the reference period including any available figures on digitisation targets and allocated budgets/budget sources. In Flanders for the amount spent on the reformatting (e.g. digitisation) of audiovisual carriers was 2,8 million euro. For 2015 ca. 0,4 million euro will be spent. With these amounts, around audiovisual carriers will have been digitised by the end of For the reference period , the general delegation for the digitisation of cultural heritage of the French Community has allocated 395,000 for digitisation 5

6 campaigns and 60,000 for the development of a prototype semantic website. The campaigns have produced the following results : 170,000 pages, 200 plans, 650 pictures, 2500 paintings and engravings, and 330 museum items have been digitised. On a federal level there are no quantitative targets. The quantity is determined by the available funding. The Botanic Garden Meise has been digitising and scanning its herbarium collections since 2004:, Global Plants Initiative (GPI) Mellon Foundation (US) scans - 1,6 M, Linden Collections (Botanic Garden & University Ghent) Kunsten & Erfgoed Vlaanderen (BE) specimens - 18,4 K and OpenUp! - European Commission placing scanned specimens online on European platform - 97 K. The Flemish Community recently provided funds to digitize and scan 1,2 M specimens from African and Belgium Herbaria at the Botanic Garden - 1,4 M (as well as 250 K for upgrading equipment and infrastructure). Scanning will start in Are qualitative targets for the digitisation of cultural material set at national level? Please provide details of any present standards or guidelines, and any developments since the last reporting period. Flanders: 1. VIAA VIAA draws specifications for all aspects of the digitisation (project management, logistics as well as technical aspects of the conversion itself) and includes these in the tenders that appoint the digitisation service providers. For audio the technical requirements of digitisation are largely based on IASA TC04. For video, in the absence of such a standard, the applicable terms of IASA TC04 are copied mutatis mutandis, and ad hoc depending on the carrier formats other specifications are added. These specifications are usually not based on international standards (except for the file output standards), but on the specifications set by eminent colleagues in the international audiovisual archives community, gathered in bodies such as IASA, FIAT/IFTA, CCAAA-JTS, EBU, PrestoCentre etc. We look forward to the publication of IASA TC06 and most likely will be using this as a standard for the digitisation process of audiovisual carriers. 2. The implementation of normative tools: - With TRACKS ( the Flemish Government created a toolbox for handling archives and collections within the arts. The idea behind this was that in the digital realm, the sustainability of digital objects should be 6

7 taken care of from the beginning of the lifecycle of the digital object. - CEST (cultureel erfgoed standaarden toolbox, focusses on cultural heritage collections and is implemented and updated continuously. It also is aligned with the Dutch initiative De BASIS (maintained by Digitaal Erfgoed Nederland (DEN)). The general Delegation for the digitisation of cultural heritage of the French Community has published its guidelines Normes et lignes directrices et organisationnelles pour les initiatives de numérisation soutenues par la Communauté française on its website No new developments can be mentioned for the reference period. On the Federal level standards are defined, set and implemented by the organizations themselves. a. Creating overviews of digitised cultural material and contributing to collaborative efforts to establish an overview at European level - Is a national scheme or mechanism in place for monitoring the digitisation of cultural material? Yes [ ] No [X] If yes, please provide details. There is no Belgian mechanism however some elements are worth mentioning: In Flanders digitisation projects by VIAA are planned based on high level inventory lists provided by the content partners. Based on these the timing, scope and budget for the digitisation of a particular carrier type is set. To start with the project itself, a way more detailed and thorough inventarisation is done, including packaging, barcoding and registering metadata, but only metadata that serve the digitisation and logistics process, so close to none content-describing metadata. These content-describing metadata will be added at a later stage to the essence in the VIAA media asset management system. As the inventory making / registration processes by the different content partners are still running while the digitisation processes are already started, frequent changes are made to the timing and scheduling, and also the projects are subject to regular budget reviews. For the federal institutions there is an annual reporting mechanism in place for monitoring the degree of progress and the cost of staff, external digitisation and internal digitisation (equipment). 7

8 - Has your country encouraged and supported the participation of cultural institutions to the ENUMERATE surveys for the establishment of a Europeanlevel overview of digitisation data? Please provide details of actions within this reporting period, any related figures, and/or plans to support contribution in upcoming surveys. FARO Flemish interface centre for cultural heritage participated as a partner in the Enumerate project. This organisation supported the implementation of the core surveys in Flanders via their communication channels (website, newsletters, social media, etc.). Participation of Flemish institutions to these core surveys was not high. Starting from 2014 the Enumerate indicators are largely integrated in the Flemish heritage monitor (Cijferboek cultureel erfgoed, The federal institutes have participated in ENUMERATE version 1. Federal institutions were encouraged to participate in the follow-up project as well (however there was no national coordination possible due to the structure of the Enumerate survey). 3. PROGRESS ON PARTNERSHIPS BETWEEN CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS AND THE PRIVATE SECTOR IN ORDER TO CREATE NEW WAYS OF FUNDING DIGITISATION OF CULTURAL MATERIAL AND TO STIMULATE INNOVATIVE USES OF THE MATERIAL, WHILE ENSURING THAT PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIPS FOR DIGITISATION ARE FAIR AND BALANCED, AND IN LINE WITH THE CONDITIONS INDICATED IN ANNEX I - Have cultural institutions in your country entered into PPPs (including also partnerships with non-eu partners) for digitisation or for facilitating the access to digital cultural heritage? Yes [ ] No [X] Please provide details of any major partnerships established since the last reporting period, compliance of the respective agreements with the conditions in Annex I of the Recommendation as well as contact details of the cultural institution involved. 4. PROGRESS ON MAKING USE OF STRUCTURAL FUNDS, WHERE POSSIBLE, TO CO- FINANCE DIGITISATION ACTIVITIES - Is your country using, or planning to use, funding from the European Structural and Investment Funds for the period for the digitisation of cultural material? Yes [ ] No [X] 8

9 If yes, please provide details of specific programmes, or large-scale projects, and respective amounts. 5. PROGRESS ON WAYS TO OPTIMISE THE USE OF DIGITISATION CAPACITY AND ACHIEVE ECONOMIES OF SCALE, WHICH MAY IMPLY THE POOLING OF DIGITISATION EFFORTS BY CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS AND CROSS-BORDER COLLABORATION, BUILDING ON COMPETENCE CENTRES FOR DIGITISATION IN EUROPE. - Has your country developed ways to optimise the use of digitisation capacity and achieve economies of scale, through pooling of digitisation efforts or cross-border collaboration? Yes [ ] No [ ] Please provide details of any developments or best practice examples of national, or cross-border, collaboration within this reporting period. In Flanders VIAA in itself is an institution largely based on the search for advantages of scale. The VIAA digitisation projects are a clear example of this. VIAA as one of the very few national institutions in Europe provides a real national approach to the digitisation of (a very large part of) the Flemish audiovisual heritage. This is done by aiming the digitisation projects not only on the collections of one or a few, but on the collections of many. The total number of content providers from whom carriers are included in the VIAA digitisation projects is currently around 60. This group is even largely cross-sectoral: broadcaster s archives take the biggest part obviously, but these are completed with many more small collections from heritage libraries, archives and museums throughout Flanders. VIAA organises its digitisation projects based upon the type of carrier/format. In the project definition phase, carriers of all the content partners are considered, and their quantities are added. Technical requirements are agreed upon by all partners via a consultation process. This way one project can be defined for one specific carrier type. All quantities are bundled and tendered as one lot. This way the digitisation prizes drop dramatically as compared to the tendering of smaller quantities. VIAA tries to extend its content partner group gradually, which is off course highly related to the available budget. At this moment from the media side the public and regional broadcasters are included, with commercial broadcasters in different stages of negotiation. From the cultural heritage field all heritage libraries, archives and museums recognized under the Cultural Heritage Act are included, together with the archives of governmental bodies and a selection city archives. From 2016 on VIAA would like to include amongst others the archives of arts organisations. 9

10 The federal level has developed a strategy to pool similar material from multiple organizations for external digitisation in a single tender for cost reduction. This applies to for example books, newspapers, A4 formats, audio, microfilm and 3D objects from the Natural History Collections For internal digitisation, infrastructures are shared between the organisations according to the different grouped assets. 10

11 DIGITISATION AND ONLINE ACCESSIBILITY OF PUBLIC DOMAIN MATERIAL 6. PROGRESS ON IMPROVING ACCESS TO AND USE OF DIGITISED CULTURAL MATERIAL THAT IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN a. Ensuring that material in the public domain remains in the public domain after digitisation - Has your country encountered obstacles in the process of ensuring that material in the public domain stays in the public domain after digitisation? How do cultural institutions in your country take up the Europeana Public Domain Charter? Please provide details of the present situation and any developments within this reporting period. In Flanders and in Walloon Brussels Federation, the process of opening up data is slowly taken up by cultural heritage institutions. On a federal level the minority of the digitised assets are labelled public domain or CC-BY-SA. b. Promoting the widest possible access to digitised public domain material as well as the widest possible reuse of the material for non-commercial and commercial purposes - Are there projects or schemes for promoting the widest possible access to and reuse of digitised public domain material? Please provide details of any developments within this reporting period. In Flanders VIAA s primary focus is on the audiovisual heritage whose public consultation or reuse is very much restricted by current IPR-rules. VIAA nevertheless has developed a public website which enables to consult public domain material. The first project to be viewed on this platform is the result of the project News from the Great war with more than pages from trench newspapers, magazines and newspapers ( On a federal level there are no schemes in place. - What experience has your country been able to gather concerning the re-use of digitised public domain material for non-commercial or commercial purposes? Please provide details of any best practice examples within this reporting period. Please also indicate whether there are mechanisms for monitoring such reuse (take-up by organisations engaging in re-use and take-up by endusers/visitors). In Flanders a project called opencultuurdata was conducted in 2013 by PACKED vzw. Opencultuurdata.be was 1) a campaign to raise awareness about open data in the cultural and heritage sector in Flanders, and 2) an app developing contest based on open cultural data sets. Through the website opencultuurdata.be, information 11

12 about open data was made available: why should a cultural organisation open up their data, and how should this be done? c. Taking measures to limit the use of intrusive watermarks or other visual protection measures that reduce the usability of the digitised public domain material. - Are measures to limit the use of watermarks or other visual protection measures reducing the usability of digitised public domain material in place? Yes [ ] No [X] Please provide details of any developments since the last reporting period.. Where applicable, please also indicate best/worst practice examples. DIGITISATION AND ONLINE ACCESSIBILITY OF IN- COPYRIGHT MATERIAL 7. IMPROVE CONDITIONS FOR THE DIGITISATION AND ONLINE ACCESSIBILITY OF IN- COPYRIGHT MATERIAL. a. Rapid and correct transposition and implementation of the provisions of the Directive on orphan works - Has your country adopted legislation to transpose the Directive on orphan works? Yes [ ] No [ ] Please provide details of any developments since the last reporting period. Within the Belgian national legislation the law of 20 July 2015 transposed the Directive on orphan works. b. Legal framework conditions to underpin licensing mechanisms identified and agreed by stake-holders for the large-scale digitisation and cross-border accessibility of works that are out-of commerce. - Are there any legal/voluntary stakeholder-driven schemes in your country to underpin the large- scale digitisation and cross-border accessibility of out-ofcommerce works? 12

13 Yes [ ] No [X] Please provide details of any developments since the last reporting period (including schemes, references and impact). c. Contributing to and promoting the availability of databases with rights information, connected at the European level, such as ARROW. - Is your country contributing and promoting the availability of such databases at the European level? Yes [ ] No [X] Please provide details of any developments since the last reporting period. EUROPEANA 8. PROGRESS ON CONTRIBUTION TO THE FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEANA a. Encouraging cultural institutions as well as publishers and other right holders to make their digitised material accessible through Europeana, thus helping the platform to give direct access to 30 million digitised objects by 2015, including two million sound or audio-visual objects - Please provide details of any developments, or best practice examples, within this reporting period. Since 2008, the Europeana Vlaanderen Overlegplatform has been active in Flanders as a local platform to mobilise cultural heritage institutions and others interested in Europeana to discuss participation, policy issues, copyright, This platform meets 3 or 4 times a year to discuss Europeana-issues. Besides this, many cultural heritage institutions participate in the Europeana ecosystem (projects such as AthenaPlus, Europeana Food and Drink, EuropeanaSpace, PartagePlus, Europeana Fashion, ). Flanders would like to stress that it wants to focus on quality instead on quantity. The sustainable handling of digital cultural heritage is key, and Europeana can play an important role in order to achieve this. Most of the Federal Scientific Institutions (Royal Museums, Royal Library, State Archives, Royal Film Archive and Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage, ) have contributed content and knowledge to the Europeana ecosystem. 13

14 The Royal Museums for Art and History in Brussels participated in and delivered content through the following Europeana related projects AthenaPlus, Europeana Fashion, Europeana Photography, Partage Plus, Europeana Inside, 3D Icons, Europeana Food and drink; contribution of standardised vocabularies; contribution to the Europeana Connection Kit; contribution to social media strategies for communication and engaging of audiences. The Royal Library has contributed in and delivered content through several Europeana Projects like Europeana Regia, Europeana Collection (with responsibilities within the Project Board), Europeana Newspapers, Europeana Fashion, Europeana User Generated Content by organising collections days in Brussels. Out of the scope of these projects, the Royal Library regularly updates its contribution to Europeana with new digital content. The Royal Film Archive contributed to the project EFG Please provide figures concerning the contribution of your country to Europeana with regards to the indicative targets for minimum content contribution by 2015, as set at Annex II of the Recommendation. Exact figures are globally not known. There is no set national aggregator. Some individual institutions can give numbers. Belgium would like to suggest to look for other means to measure progress. The amount of available objects is one way of looking into this but there should be approaches to include other quality issues. - Are there known obstacles that have prevented your country from reaching the indicative targets for 2015? (if relevant) b. Making all public funding for future digitisation projects conditional on the accessibility of the digitised material through Europeana. - Please provide details of any steps taken, or best practice examples, within this reporting period. Flanders is opposed to imposing obligations on cultural heritage institutions. Instead thereof the importance of interoperable and accessible standards is emphasized. The Walloon Brussels Federation shares this opinion. On a federal level accessibility of the digitised material through Europeana isn t 14

15 conditional for funded digitisation projects. c. Ensuring that all their public domain masterpieces will be accessible through Europeana by 2015, - Please provide details of any steps taken, or best practice examples, within this reporting period. Although Flanders prefers an inclusive approach, which is not only centred around masterpieces, Flanders is engaged in the Europeana 280 project in order to expose both some pieces of art and the museums that are shaping a sustainable framework for their future accessibility. If this solid basis is guaranteed, highlighting masterpieces is an effective way to promote digital cultural. The question however remains what should be considered as a masterpiece. Flanders finds it important that within the framework of the digital evolution, museums are looked upon as gatekeepers that have a task to create public value based on innovation. As custodians it was up to them to make the selection. At the federal level the Royal Library of Belgium will participate in de project Europeana 280. The French Community will also take part by providing some of its masterpieces called trésors classes en Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles. d. Setting up or reinforcing national aggregators bringing content from different domains into Europeana, and contributing to cross-border aggregators in specific domains or for specific topics, which may bring about economies of scale - Is a national aggregator bringing content from different domains into Europeana present in your country? Yes [ ] No [X] - Please provide details of any developments, within this reporting period, concerning national aggregators, participating organisations and content domains covered. - Please provide details of any developments or best practice examples, within this reporting period, concerning contribution to cross-border aggregators in specific domain or for specific topics. The most effective cross-border projects have been the ones that happened in the vein of the CIP ICT-PSP funded projects. The Flemish participation was ensured awithin DCA (digitizing contemporary art), EuropeanaFashion, EUScreen, Linked Heritage, EuropeanaCloud, EuropeanaInside, AthenaPlus, Europeana Drink and Food and the Social History 15

16 Aggregator. The Flemish Government wanted to simulate participation in these projects by providing grants in order to provide cofunding. The Walloon Brussels Federation develops the portal as an aggregator but so far it is not harvested by Europeana. The federal level used for its aggregation of data and metadata the mapping and aggregation tools that have been created by European projects and existing European organisations: * the MINT-tool (Greece, NTUA) for the Royal Museums and the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage, * the tools for BHL-Europe for the Royal institution for natural sciences and Royal Museum for Central Africa, Botanic Garden Meise, * the tools from Open up! for the Royal institution for natural sciences and Royal Museum for Central Africa, Botanic Garden Meise * TEL for the Royal Library of Belgium, * APEX for the National State Archives, * the Europeana Connection Kit (ECK), developed in the Europeana Inside project, was used by the Royal Museums for Art and History and the Museum for Central Africa, * EFG for the Royal Film Archive. e. Ensuring the use of common digitisation standards defined by Europeana in collaboration with the cultural institutions in order to achieve interoperability of the digitised material at European level, as well as the systematic use of permanent identifiers - Please provide details of any steps taken, or best practice examples, within this reporting period, to ensure the use of common digitisation and metadata standards to achieve interoperability at European level. In Flanders normative tools such as CEST and TRACKS should be mentioned here once again (for more information, see above). In 2014 and 2015, a project called persistent identification was coordinated by PACKED vzw. The goal was the normalization of the identification data of works of art from 10 different digital collections. This normalization was done with the use of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI s), in order to link different information on the works of art together, and enrich that info with information from external resources. The goals were to create more efficiency in exchanging collection data, to increase the use of collection data in websites or mobile applications, to further enrich the metadata (by example by adding persistent identifiers for events), and to publish them as linked open data through Wikidata. On a federal level mapping happens using the system of the previously mentioned international aggregators. Mapping to EDM happens by the international aggregator. 16

17 - Please provide details of any developments or best practice examples, within this reporting period, concerning the systematic use of permanent identifiers. In Flanders, the project persistent identification is worth mentioning (see above). For the federal institutions there is no systematic use of persistent identifiers (PID) at the moment. On an individual base, some institutions use however persistent identification: e.g. the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage uses PID s: The Royal Library also works with persistent identifiers for its digital items (UURL) f. Ensuring the wide and free availability of existing metadata (descriptions of digital objects) produced by cultural institutions, for reuse through services such as Europeana and for innovative applications - Which steps has your country taken to ensure the free availability of existing metadata? How do cultural institutions in your country take up the Europeana Data Exchange Agreement? Please provide details of any developments or best practice examples, within this reporting period. For Flanders see the above mentioned project of opencultuurdata.be (6.b). A federal open data strategy has been launched. The legislation to make this happen will be voted soon. - What experience has your country been able to gather concerning the re-use of free metadata, through services such as Europeana or for innovative applications? Please provide details of any best practice examples within this reporting period. There are no known initiatives for re-use of free metadata provided through services such as Europeana. Europeana doesn t provide statistics about re-use of delivered content neither. Related to Flemish project opencultuurdata.be, one of the experiences is that if cultural datasets are made available, it is hard to find (app) developers willing to work with the datasets. 17

18 g. Establishing a communication plan to raise awareness of Europeana among the general public and notably in schools, in collaboration with the cultural institutions contributing content to the site - Please provide details of any developments or best practice examples, within this reporting period,. As mentioned before, the Flemish Europeana Vlaanderen Overlegplatform meets on a regular basis to discuss an approach towards Europeana. It was also involved in the conference Digitisation: opportunity or necessity (May 7 th 2015) which focused on the treaths and opportunities of the digital realm. This conference, which was also linked to AthenaPlus, had a good outreach. Besides this, the Flemish Government also was involved in elaborating the Europeana recommendations on education and involved specific institutions. This issue was also taken up in this conference. There is no federal communication plan to raise awareness of Europeana among the general public. However the federal scientific institutions which are funded as content provider for Europeana are responsible for dissemination of the results and therefore giving visibility to Europeana. DIGITAL PRESERVATION 9. REINFORCE NATIONAL STRATEGIES FOR THE LONG-TERM PRESERVATION OF DIGITAL MATERIAL, UPDATE ACTION PLANS IMPLEMENTING THE STRATEGIES, AND EXCHANGE INFORMATION WITH EACH OTHER ON THE STRATEGIES AND ACTION PLANS. - Does your country have a strategy for the long-term preservation of digital material? What actions are you planning to implement the strategy? Have you exchanged information with other Member States in order to devise your strategy and action plan? Please provide details of any developments since the last reporting period. In Flanders, in managing digital heritage, VIAA uses a digital archive system that has been designed as much as possible according to open standards. An important point of reference is the OAIS or Open Archival Information System. This reference model describes both the processes and the technical requirements for storage, management and access with respect to digital archives. In the long term, VIAA aims to nurture a relationship of trust between VIAA and the users of this service in order to become a Trustworthy Digital Repository or TDR in the future. The general Delegation for the digitisation of cultural heritage of the French Community plans to develop a small OAIS compliant preservation infrastructure (between 100 and 200 TB) for the preservation of files resulting from its own digitisation campaigns. Federal Belgium has initiated a strategy for the long-term preservation of digital 18

19 material. A workgroup has been set up for guidance. One of the results is the development - after a public procurement of services - of a secure and trustworthy digital preservation platform. The platform will act as a digital dark archive for born digital (eg. research data) and digitised assets. The project setup started on the 1st of October The volume takes an initial 2 Pb. The Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage and PACKED, centre of expertise on digital heritage are partners in European project Preforma ( dedicated to the development of conformance checkers for LTP standards. 10. EXPLICIT AND CLEAR PROVISION IN YOUR COUNTRY'S LEGISLATION SO AS TO ALLOW MULTIPLE COPYING AND MIGRATION OF DIGITAL CULTURAL MATERIAL BY PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS FOR PRESERVATION PURPOSES, IN FULL RESPECT OF EUROPEAN UNION AND INTERNATIONAL LEGISLATION ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS. - Have your country made explicit and clear provision in its legislation to allow multiple copying and migration of digital cultural material by public institutions for preservation purposes? Please provide details of any developments since the last reporting period. No new developments. 11. MAKE THE NECESSARY ARRANGEMENTS FOR THE DEPOSIT OF MATERIAL CREATED IN DIGITAL FORMAT IN ORDER TO GUARANTEE ITS LONG-TERM PRESERVATION, AND IMPROVE THE EFFICIENCY OF EXISTING DEPOSIT ARRANGEMENTS FOR MATERIAL CREATED IN DIGITAL FORMAT. a. Ensuring that right holders deliver works to legal deposit libraries without technical protection measures, or that, alternatively, they make available to legal deposit libraries the means to ensure that technical protection measures do not impede the acts that libraries have to undertake for preservation purposes, in full respect of European Union and international legislation on intellectual property rights. - What arrangements has your country made to ensure that technical protection measures do not impede the acts that libraries have to undertake to guarantee long-term preservation of material created in digital format? Please provide details of any developments since the last reporting period. No new developments. 19

20 b. Where relevant, making legal provision to allow the transfer of digital legal deposit works from one legal deposit library to other deposit libraries that also have the right to these works. - Has your country made legal provision to allow the transfer of digital legal deposit works from one legal deposit library to other deposit libraries that also have the right to these works? Please provide details of any developments since the last reporting period.. No new developments. c. Allowing the preservation of web-content by mandated institutions using techniques for collecting material from the Internet such as web-harvesting, in full respect of European Union and international legislation on intellectual property rights. - What measures has your country adopted to allow preservation of web-content by mandated institutions? Please provide details of any developments since the last reporting period. No new developments. 12. TAKING INTO ACCOUNT DEVELOPMENTS IN OTHER MEMBER STATES, WHEN ESTABLISHING OR UPDATING POLICIES AND PROCEDURES FOR THE DEPOSIT OF MATERIAL ORIGINALLY CREATED IN DIGITAL FORMAT, IN ORDER TO PREVENT A WIDE VARIATION IN DEPOSITING ARRANGEMENTS. - How is your country taking into account developments in other Member States in order to prevent a wide variation in deposition arrangements? Please provide details of any developments since the last reporting period. IS THE RECOMMENDATION UP TO DATE AND FIT FOR PURPOSE? 20

21 THE RECOMMENDATION IS A NON-BINDING EU LEGAL ACT WHOSE PURPOSE IS TO COORDINATE, SUPPLEMENT AND SUPPORT MS' ACTIONS IN AN AREA WHERE THE EU HAS NO CENTRAL COMPETENCE. IN THIS CONTEXT: - What are your views on the overall usefulness of the Recommendation as an instrument to improve conditions, in the areas addressed therein, in your country? The recommendation should be updated, but is still a necessary tool. The 2011-recommendation raised awareness on the urgency of digitisation and related aspects such as copyright and re-use. Although the recommendation focusses on digitisation, digital preservation and accessibility, by limiting the MSEG-focus and European policy initiatives to Europeana, an important aspect such as sustainable preservation was left underexposed. - Which provisions of the Recommendation do you consider to have had high impact in your country? - Which provisions of the Recommendation do you consider to have had low impact in your country? Issue on in copyright material: Orphan works directive has a very low impact: eg not useful for photographical content. - Would the Recommendation benefit from an update to enhance its impact or bring it up to date with current challenges so that it remains relevant in the coming years? Please provide your suggestions or comments with respect to specific provisions or in general. The recommendation will benefit from an update. We believe the following issues should be taken into account when updating: - The recommendations should take the concept born digital specifically into account. - There s a need to focus more on (national) digital strategies that can be monitored (collectively) and that are multiannual (in terms of planning, actions). - Focus on capacity building (eg. by linking digitisation / competence centres in 21

22 Europe in order to share information, to have a platform for good practices an collaboration and to work on joint issues. - Find other ways to measure progress (annex one is about amounts of objects, how to include other quality issues?) - UNESCO is working on similar issues in the frame of the Memory of the World program (recommendations on the digital documentary heritage in the digital area are presented to the general conference in November 2015: ANY OTHER BUSINESS - Please indicate in the box below any suggestions or other comments you would like to make, or any further information you consider of use for the purposes of this progress report and/or the further implementation of the Recommendation. 22