Brussels, 10/01/2011 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 10 January, the Reflection Group (Comité des Sages) on digitalisation submitted its report entitled “The New Renaissance” to Neelie Kroes (Digital Strategy) and Androula Vassiliou (Education, Culture). They are calling on the member states of the EU to redouble their efforts to put the collections of their libraries, archives and museums online. The recommendations will be part of the digital strategy of the Commission, which aim to accompany the cultural institutions in their transition into the digital era and to find new, effective models of activity to speed up digitalisation. They will also be of use to the Commission in drawing up a sustainable financing model for Europeana between now and 2012, the Commission states in a press release.
The main recommendations and conclusions of the report are as follows: (1) the portal Europeana aims to become the first point of reference for online digital heritage; (2) works protected by copyright but no longer available for sale should be put online; (3) there should be EU regulations on orphan works (those whose beneficiaries cannot be identified) as soon as possible; (4) the member states should considerably increase the funding earmarked for digitalisation, to create jobs and generate growth; (5) partnerships between the public and private sectors for the purposes of digitalisation should be encouraged, transparent, non-exclusive and fair; (6) in order to guarantee the preservation of collections in digital format, a second copy of this cultural material should be archived in Europeana.
According to the report, it will take nearly €100 billion to put all of Europe's cultural heritage online. “In order to find such sums, public-private partnerships for digitalisation should be encouraged” but “with a number of conditions”, Maurice Levy, CEO of Publicis (France), and member of the Reflection Group, told the press, adding that “granting private partnerships the right to preferential use of the digitalised material should not exceed seven years”. Neelie Kroes supports this timescale, AFP reports. As regards the fact that the Europeans do not wish to be dependent on the American internet giant Google, which is very active in the digitalisation of books and which has entered into a great many digitalisation agreements with publishing houses in recent years, Maurice Levy said: “We encourage the emergence of new partners, new players and we believe that given the sums of money to be spent, there will be enough to go around a lot of businesses”. This sentiment is shared by Androula Vassiliou, who said: “We believe in competition and we wish to encourage European players to take part in it”.
The Reflection Group, which was set up last April by President Barroso, is made up of Maurice Levy, Elisabeth Niggemann (president of the National Library of Germany) and Jacques De Decker (writer and permanent secretary of the Royal Academy of French Language and Literature of Belgium)
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