By Wietske van den Heuvel

The EUscreen consortium has welcomed Maastricht University as a new partner into the project. The university will be represented by Professor dr. Andreas Fickers, currently working as an Associate Professor for comparative media history at the faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. He has also worked for the University of Utrecht where he has been involved in Video Active, the precursor of EUscreen.  Dr. Andreas Fickers is one of the founders of the European Television History Network, an academic network which is closely involved in EUscreen. The work of Maastricht University will mainly focus on the contextualisation of audiovisual content and addressing the academic community.

EUscreen is always looking for opportunities to enlarge it’s consortium and network. Currently, we have a special interest in audiovisual archives. If you would like to join, please contact us.

Press release by Europeana

Colleagues from Europe’s galleries, libraries, archives and museums – GLAMs – will hear about innovations in their sector from Wikipedia and Google at the annual Europeana conference, Open Culture 2010, in Amsterdam on the 14/15 October.

Peace, Love & Metadata: a cultural collaboration with Wikipedia is the title of Liam Wyatt’s keynote speech on 14 October. Liam was the British Museum’s first Wikipedian in Residence, where he brought curators, content and the Wikipedia crowd together in new ways. The collaboration was a great success and heralds a change in the way that GLAM professionals will engage with their online users.

In the keynote on 15 October, the Engineering Director for Google Books, James Crawford, will talk about the present and future of the project, which has the goal of scanning the world’s books and making the data searchable online. Recent developments include Google’s digitisation agreements signed with Europeana’s host, the National Library of the Netherlands, and with Europeana’s main technology co-ordinator, the National Library of Austria. One result of these agreements is that a further 560,000 digitised historic texts will be made available through Europeana.

The Open Culture 2010 conference will focus on topical issues in the digital heritage sector. Delegates will work in informal discussion groups led by international experts to find practical solutions to questions around:

• Linked data: What are the applications envisaged for cultural linked data? How should GLAMS position themselves to take advantage of these opportunities? How can Europeana best facilitate this process?
• User Generated Content: Wikipedia highlights the value of the user’s contribution. How best can GLAMs harness users’ information and expertise? What are the pitfalls and how can they be avoided?
• Risks and rewards: Opening up data or content for re-use, potentially in a commercial context, can seem a high-risk strategy for GLAMs. Does openness threaten current revenue streams, control over data standards and content, or scholarly standards of provenance and authentication? Against this risk must be set the rewards in terms of their relevance to society, and the benefits that the whole of society can derive from open access to knowledge and creative ideas.

The Europeana conference is a free annual event that is open to archivists, curators, librarians, technologists and developers. Delegates will see how successful sites that exemplify the conference themes are built and have the opportunity to understand emerging trends, share knowledge and expertise, and develop their network of contacts and project partners.

This year the event is held in Amsterdam’s vibrant Westergasfabriek cultural centre.

Media contacts are welcome to attend Europeana Open Culture 2010 – please complete our registration. Interviews can be booked with keynote speakers and experts: please contact jonathan.purday@bl.uk.

The Media & Learning Conference taking place in Brussels on 25 and 26 November 2010 addresses how new media can contribute to improve learning. Media literacy and digital fluency are amongst the most important skills young people can learn in order to find, use and create accurate information to become the creative citizens of a future society. But how can educators be sure that learners are learning better thanks to media?

During this conference practitioners, experts and researchers will discuss how learners handle video and audio in a meaningful and thoughtful manner to support their learning, how media repositories complement existing teaching and learning materials effectively, how young people learn by creating their own media and how ICT can enhance the teaching and learning process.

The programme for the Media & Learning: towards the era of digital fluency Conference 25-26 November 2010 Brussels is now finalised and available online. Johan Oomen will do a presentation about EUscreen on Thursday, 25 November in the session about Re-using existing media resources for education and training.

Pascal Smet, Flemish Minister for Education, Youth, Equal Opportunities and Brussels Affairs will open the conference by introducing the three main discussion topics: media literacy, re-use of existing media and the value of content created by learners and teachers. Speakers include Paul Bottelberghs, writer and media innovator; Pelle Snickars, co-editor of “The YouTube Reader”; Helen Keegan, educational social media innovator and practitioner; Francesc Pedró, lead researcher with the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, Rowan Simms from iTunes U and Paul Ashton, educational broadcaster and commissioning editor of Teachers TV, UK.

The conference programme includes discussions and presentations about existing media resource banks like those provided by AthenaWeb, lesite.tv and EduHi as well as practical schemes aimed at increasing teachers and trainers skills in creating and publishing their own media-based resources. Policy and practice come together in online and offline discussions on topics like how best to teach media literacy and what resources are available to enhance understanding of the complexities of copyright in the sector. Best practices from the US, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Italy and the UK will highlight how educators are keeping up with student expectations and experience. Games and media-rich materials like Poverty is not a Game (PING) and The Climate Mystery will be demonstrated and discussed. Teachers from the UK, Italy, Belgium and Denmark will show how they use media to make teaching and learning more exciting and more effective for teachers and learners.

The Media & Learning Conference will be supported by an online discussion that starts one month before the actual Conference and that will facilitate networking and exchange of ideas before, during and after the conference within the Media & Learning community of practice.

On Thursday 25th November alongside the Media & Learning Conference, the MEDEA Awards Ceremony takes place where the winners of this year’s awards will be announced.

More information from the conference website.

Date: 7-8 October 2010.
Location: Casa del Cinema. Largo Marcello Mastroianni 1, Rome, Italy.

The EUscreen best practice network is hosting a two-day international conference on content selection policies and contextualisation in the audiovisual domain. It will be held in Rome on 7 and 8 October 2010. The conference will focus on contextualisation of audiovisual material. Attendance is free, but pre-registration is compulsory as the number of seats is limited. The complete programme is published here.

The first conference day begins with a keynote speech by Professor. Andrew Hoskins, Professor of Cultural Studies at Nottingham University. The day will continue with plenary sessions by Dr. Lilian Landes, scientific co-ordinator of the recensio.net project at Bavaria State Library and Dr. Alec Badenoch, from Utrecht University. The afternoon programme includes three case studies and a keynote speech lecturer and filmmaker Professor. Johan Söderberg.

The second conference day will be devoted to two half-day workshops. The first workshop will focus upon creative reuse of archive material. Peter B. Kaufman, president of Intelligent Television, will talk about ‘Unlocking Audiovisual Value’ through reuse. His keynote speech will be followed by four case studies (from INA, Sound and Vision, VRT and ELTE).

The central topic of the second workshop is ‘selection criteria and success indicators for large-scale AV digitisation programmes’. It begins with a keynote address from Professor. John Ellis, Professor of Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London, and will be followed by case studies from the BBC, DR, Memoriav and Sound and Vision. Both days also include panel discussions.

Make sure to register in time, as there are only a few tickets left.

More information can be found here.

By Christopher Natzén

During the 76^th IFLA Conference “Open access to knowledge – promoting sustainable progress” between 10-15 August, the National Library of Sweden (KB) initiated a satellite meeting on the 9^th of August in cooperation with the libraries of the universities of Gothenburg, Uppsala, Lund and Malmö under the headline “Open Access and the Changing Role of Libraries”. The aim was to address questions relating to Open Access and its effect on academic libraries. Increasingly libraries are involved in supporting the creation and dissemination of scientific and scholarly information, which for example requires that new competencies become strengthened within libraries, and that technical platforms for publishing and archiving will be developed. Full presentations in English can be found here.

The Reflection Group has been asked to advise the European Commission about how to accelerate the process of digitalisation and access of cultural heritage. The Reflection Group is an independent group of 12 members, which started in 2008 and advises the European Union in various longer term matters. For this particular subject on cultural heritage, the group has set up a questionnaire to consult the field and gather there expertise.

“This consultation is launched by the Comité to feed its reflection and subsequent recommendations. As the cultural sector is undergoing a revolutionary transition worldwide, Europe is looking for innovative solutions to reap the social and economic benefits of the technological advances. The Comité des Sages is therefore seeking your views on key issues of this process, including on the sources of funding for digitisation, the exploitation models of content digitised with public funding or on conditions governing public-private partnerships for digitisation. You are invited to respond to the consultation by 30 September 2010. The Comité des Sages will analyse the responses and a follow-up hearing is scheduled to take place in Brussels on 28 October 2010.”
(IPM website )

The questionnaire can be found here

By Wietske van den Heuvel

Berber Hagedoorn has published a book review of Jonathan Bignell & Andreas Fickers’ ‘A European Television History’ in the Dutch journal ,  ‘Tijdschrift voor Mediageschiedenis‘. The book has been the first collective result of the European Television History Network (ETHN), and is also the first European project that researches the European television history from a comparative perspective.

“European Television History brings together television historians and media scholars to chart the development of television in Europe since its inception. The volume interrogates the history of the medium in divergent political, economic, cultural and ideological national contexts.

• Taking a comparative approach to the topic, the volume is organized around a set of common questions, themes, and methodological reflections.
• Deals with European television in the context of television historiography and transnational traditions.
• Case study chapters written by scholars from different European countries to reflect their specific areas of expertise. “ (From: Wiley.com)

Hagedoorn works as a PhD researcher at Utrecht University, one of the founders of the ETHN and co-ordinator of EUscreen. As a researcher, Hagedoorn is closely involved in the contextualisation of EUscreen content. In her review, she has also referred to EUscreen in relationship to ‘A European Television History’.

Acces the review here

More information about the book

Press release by Europeana

We are pleased to invite you to the Europeana Open Culture 2010 conference, our annual event that highlights current challenges in our sector and works on practical solutions for the future.

The event is in two parts:

Europeana pre-conference meetings are for the Europeana Foundation Board, the Council of Content Providers and Aggregators and contributors to v1.0 Work Packages. The meetings will be on 13 October 2010 at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) in The Hague and in the morning of 14 October at Amsterdam’s Westergasfabriek (the main conference venue).

The Europeana Open Culture 2010 main conference is on the 14 October (afternoon) and 15 October (morning) at Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam.
Open Culture 2010 will focus on how museums, libraries, archives and audiovisual collections can create public value by making digital information and knowledge openly available. The keynote speaker is Liam Wyatt, the British Museum’s first Wikipedian in Residence, whose innovative work in bringing the curator and the crowd together sparked international interest and significant traffic.

Three parallel sessions led by experts in the field get right to the heart of current concerns – linked data, User Generated Content and the risks and rewards of openness. Specialists with different perspectives will run small problem-solving groups and there will be demos of innovative sites that exemplify our themes.

The conference is free, and Europeana v1.0 will cover the travel and hotel costs of one delegate from each partner in the Thematic Network.

Europeana Open Culture 2010 will bring together people who are setting the agenda. Join us to stay in touch with the network’s latest thinking. Register now!