Strategies and activities undertaken

in Italy for diffusion and

dissemination of Minerva products

Ministerial NEtwoRk for Valorising Activities in digitisation

Strategies and activities

1. Museo & Web. Kit for planning a quality website for small museums;

2. The National Technological Observatory for Cultural Heritage

3. Conference on Web Quality on June 2005

4. Disseminations of the ‘Cultural Quality Web Handbook’ and its Test bed;

5. The second Italian edition of the Handbook

Museo&Web 1‘Museo&Web - Planning Kit for a

Quality Site for Small and Medium Sized Museums’

Project elaborated by the MINERVA Italian working group on quality.

Realised by the sub-group for the creation of a web prototype for public cultural web sites.

Museo&Web 2

The technical realisation of this model follows the guidelines in the Handbook for Quality in Cultural Web Sites and the European principles for quality in a cultural Web site. Both of these were defined by the MINERVA project.

Museo&Web 3Italian and English versions available:<http://www.minervaeurope.org/

structure/workinggroups/userneeds/prototipo/museoweb_e.html>

This prototype has to be used as a reference model by small and medium sized museums, intending to create a web site.

Museo&Web Characteristics• Respects the rules of Accessibility

• Can be navigated using different types of technology

• It can be navigated via assistive technologies

• Users can adapt the neutral graphics

SectionsMuseum and Web is organised into 4

parts:

• Structure and Contents of the Prototype

• Tutorial

• Quality check

• Models

Structure and contents of the prototype

This section contains indications for organisation of the contents and services, and many examples of sites around the world.

It gives advice, for example, on how to publish multimedia contents, (such as Flash animations) in html.

It also evaluates whether the rules of accessibility have been respected.

Tutorial

• How to build web pages according to the rules of accessibility and usability

• Practical information on architecture, management, inter-operability, copyright, multilinguism issues, etc

Quality checkTwo tests:1.to verify on which of the 12

Objectives for a Quality cultural web application your site has been built

2.To evaluate whether the quality principles have been applied

ModelsThere are 3 models to download:

•1 home page2 other pages of a site•the templates (in XHTML 1.0 and CSS)

The future of Museo&WebThe prototype will be adapted to

other categories of cultural subjects, like libraries, archives, territorial heritage, cultural offices.

Moreover, thanks to an agreement with the Italian Ministry for Education and University, it is to be adapted to school and university web sites.

The National Technological Observatory for Cultural Heritage

A centre of the Italian Ministry for Culture Heritage, created in 2005 to support and to develop digital applications, with particular regards to web sites, in the field of cultural content.

The National Technological Observatory for Cultural Heritage

The Observatory is organized and coordinated by the Italian staff of MINERVA Project, who will work together with a network of experts.

The National Technological Observatory for Cultural Heritage

The Observatory will deliver information and practical help through a dedicated web site and will offer both services on demand and seminars on quality and accessibility of cultural web sites.

The National Technological Observatory for Cultural Heritage

The main users of the Observatory are cultural institutes like museums, libraries, archives, cultural projects that want to improve quality in their web site projects and digital programmes.

The National Technological Observatory for Cultural Heritage

The Observatory will cooperate with other national and international centres, like for example:

• the National Technological Observatory of the Ministry for Education (OTE),

• the National Center for informatics in Public Administration (CNIPA)

• the Italian Office of W3C• the Italian Union of Blind (UIC)

The second Italian edition of the HandbookNew contributes:- The results of the Test bed activities- Cultural Networks and Portals- Web preservation- Semantic Web- Languange in cultural web sites- Web site and Copyright - Technical Standards for quality web

Conference on Web Quality

It will take place in Rome on 13-14th of June. Themes:

- Quality of web contents in different fields (linguistics, medicine, school, science, journalism…)

- Creative commons, Copyright/left- Semantic Web- Test bed of cultural web quality

handbook

For further informationwww.minervaeurope.org