Description:
European projects MICHAEL and MICHAELPlus, funded by the European Commission as part of the eTEN programme, have created a network of national databases that provide access to cultural heritage, through the description of digital resources of cultural and scientific interest developed over the years by public and private cultural organizations, from any administrative background, in the project partner countries.
The main goal of the MICHAEL project was to make available to a worldwide audience the wealth and diversity of Europe cultural heritage, by providing online access to the digital collections of museums, archives, libraries and other cultural and scientific institutions throughout Europe.
One of the important tool that was developed, and that is being updated and improved, is the Michael European portal: www.michael-culture.org
Through the multilingual MICHAEL service, people are able to find and explore European digital cultural heritage material using the Internet. The MICHAEL service provides access to digital collections from museums, libraries and archives.
Objectives:
A European cultural heritage inventory, available to all and providing access to cultural heritage resources.
Endorsement and implementation at a national government level, in order to underpin further funding as required.A methodology and technical platform, which makes it easy to add new national instances of MICHAEL, thus growing the content and user bases.
The website includes:
A searchable database of digital resources from museums, libraries and archives in several European countries.
Articles and user stories, which look at various aspects of the European cultural heritage and the contents of MICHAEL.
The MICHAEL database is based on national inventories of digital resources that have been created by the project partners. Each national inventory includes descriptions of digital collections and the websites, CD-ROMS and other products and services that have been created by museums, libraries and archives. The descriptions are written especially for MICHAEL by people working in, or on behalf of, the cultural institutions themselves. Details are harvested directly from the national inventories to become part of the MICHAEL database for the European services.
