This document discusses culture and creativity in the digital realm. It outlines how the digital environment has enabled unprecedented ways to search, combine, and reuse cultural works. This has created new opportunities for cultural institutions to digitize and make cultural heritage accessible online. The Europeana portal is highlighted as a central access point and digital library for Europeans' cultural works. Challenges remain around copyright issues and ensuring the long-term sustainability of efforts to digitize and provide access to Europe's cultural heritage online.

1. Culture and Creativity in the
digital realm
- a boost from the past
Luis Ferrão
Creativity Unit
DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology
Europeana Licensing Workshop
Luxembourg, 13-14 June 2013
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2. Culture – EU competence:
'support, coordinate or complement'
• The Union shall contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the
Member States, while respecting their national and regional
diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural
heritage to the fore.
• Action of the Union shall be…in the following areas:
• improvement of the knowledge and dissemination of the culture
and history of the European peoples,
• Conservation and safeguarding of cultural heritage of European
significance…
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3. •
"…the evolution of art, science, religion, philosophy,
and social thought…the living past…form the
substance of what is now called 'the culture'."
" Culture is what makes life worth living."
Culture as the 'living past'
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4. The digital realm:
- a game-change for culture…
  connected, distributed environment
• (www, open platforms, interfaces, smart spaces…)
  unprecedented ways to search, combine and reuse
• (data- and text mining, mash-ups, crowdsourcing, geo-location tools…)
  real time, multi-layer, world-wide interactions
• (social networks, web fora, wikis, blogs, P2P and UGC platforms...)
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5. …creativity…
• The complexity dimension:
• creation as an incremental, mutually enriching process
• emphasis on interactions
(social communities, collective intelligence,
collaborative design…)
• emergence and sistemic effects
(whole more than sum of parts…)
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6. …and the creative sector
• Unprecedented possibilities to:
• help cultural institutions in digitising/preserving CH
• make digitised CH generally accessible to all
(regardless of time, distance, physical or other constraints)
• use, share, combine, aggregate and disseminate CH
• re-use CH to develop new content, tools and applications
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7. Europe 2020 strategy
Digitisation and online accessibility of cultural heritage is firmly
anchored in Europe 2020 strategy and flagship initiatives Digital
Agenda for Europe and Innovation Union. It is also a building
block of the Open data strategy launched in December 2011
(e.g. proposed extension of the Directive on re-use of Public
Sector Information to cultural content)
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8. Europe 2020 strategy (2)
5 interrelated targets for an innovative, knowledge-based economy, incl.:
 3% of GDP in R&D
•  40% share of population aged 30-34 with tertiary education
•  75% the employment rate of population aged 20-64
7 flagship initiatives, including:
•  an Innovation Union
• a Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE)
Mobilizing all instruments and policies, such as:
• internal market and competition
• budget (structural funds, Horizon 2020, Connecting Europe Facility…)
• trade policy and external relations
• public procurement
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9. Digital Agenda for Europe
One of the 7 flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 strategy
- 101 specific actions, including 31 legal proposals
A vibrant digital
single market
Fast and ultra fast
Internet access
Using ICT to help society
Promote digital literacy,
qualifications and inclusion
Interoperabilit
y
and standards
Trust and
security
Research and 9

10. Objectives
  maximize the economic and social potential of ICT
Internet vital for business, work, leasure, communications and free expression
  stimulate innovation and economic growth and
improving the daily life of citizens and companies
  reply to Europe’s main societal changes and offer
Europeans a better quality of life:
• eHealth
• efficient transport solutions
• cleaner environment
• new ways of communicating
• easier access to public services and cultural content
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11. Obstacles
  fragmented digital markets
  lack of interoperability
  cyber-criminality and risk of network security
  lack of investment in networks
  insufficient R&D
  lack of digital literacy and qualifications
  fragmented replies to societal challenges:
• climate change and other pressures on environment
• ageing population and growing health care costs
• need for more efficient public services
• integration of handicaped persons
• digitisation of Europe’s cultural heritage and its
availability for present and future generations
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12. Digital knowledge infrastructure
- building blocks
  broadband, fast internet & accessible mobile networks
  interoperability of formats and applications
  online public services
  wide access to public and scientific data (open data)*
  online accessibility to cultural heritage
  comprehensive, reliable and affordable platforms for
web search and interactions (incl. rights clearance)
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13. Culture heritage in the digital economy
∀ • Cultural heritage as expression of European
identity, diversity and wealth (global asset)
∀ • Digital access to CH breathes new life into
material from the past, turning it into:
• formidable asset for the individual user
• important building block of the digital economy
∀ • material can be reused in new ways for developing:
• learning and educational content
• documentaries, tourism applications
• games, animations and a wealth of other web services & apps
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14. Connecting Europe Facility
- access to digital resources of European heritage
• Core service platform (www.europeana.eu)
• continuous coordination, operation, maintenance, enhancement and
promotion of the central services of the Europeana portal (
www.europeana.eu ) infrastructure and related networks
• Generic services
• aggregation of content
• crowd-sourcing facilities
• user-friendly services; cross-language access
• exchange of rights information and licensing mechanisms
• competence centres on digitisation and preservation of digital CH
• content repositories for cultural institutions and user-generated content
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As per CEF proposal –> reassessment in view of MFF budget cuts in progress

15. Bringing Europe's cultural heritage online
• 2006: Commission Recommendation on digitisation and online
accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation
• main developments since 2006:
• Launch of Europeana (2008)
• Digital Agenda for Europe (2010)
• MoU on out-of-commerce works (2011)
• Comité des Sages Report ‘The New Renaissance’ (2011)
• Directive 2012/28/EU on orphan works
• Commission Recommendation 2011/711/EU
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16. Comité des Sages Report
(2011) public domain material:
  make CH digitised with public funds as widely available as
possible
  avoid use of intrusive watermarks or other use-restricting means
  metadata related to digitised objects produced by cultural
institutions widely and freely available for re-use
• in © works:
  avoid future orphan works
  Collective licensing solutions + window of opportunity for
digitisation and cross-border access of out-of-commerce works
  backed by legislation to digitise and bring them online, if
rightholders and commercial providers do not do so
Europeana:
  to become the reference point for cultural content online
  public funding for digitisation conditional on subsequent free
accessibility through Europeana
  linking main digitisation activities of Europe's cultural heritage
  all public domain masterpieces brought into Europeana by 201616

17. Digitisation and online accessibility
  further develop the planning and monitoring of digitisation of cultural material
  encourage partnerships between cultural institutions and the private sector
  stimulate new uses of cultural material under fair & balanced PPPs
  make use of EU's structural funds to co-finance digitisation activities
  optimise use of digitisation capacity to achieve economies of scale
(pooling cultural institutions' digitisation efforts, cross-border colaboration…)
  improve access to and use of digitised cultural material in the public domain
 Improve conditions for digitisation and online accessibility of in © material
  contribute to the further development of Europeana
  30 m objects accessible through Europeana by 2015, incl. 2m AV and all PD
masterpieces
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18. Facilitating rights clearance
∀ • ARROW -‘Accessible Registries of Rights
Information and Orphan Works towards Europeana’
• books
• four countries pilot: UK, F, D, SP (2009-2011)
∀ • ARROW Plus (April/2011-Set/2013)
• wider geographical coverage
• embedded images
• FORWARD – AV material
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19. Europeana – Europe's digital library, archive & museum
• More openess
• open government licences
• More transparency
• Open data portals
• More reusability
• Open, machine-readable formats
• Downwards trend on charging
Wider scope
• cultural institutions (libraries, archives, museums)
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20. Europeana
 Access point to cultural heritage
 Hub for the creative industries, which already
account for ca. 4% of EU GDP and jobs
 Funding proposal through 'Connecting
Europe Facility' (2014 – 2020)
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21. The Europeana ecosystem - aggregators
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22. Some challenges
 In © works
• Orphan works
• Out-of-commerce works
• Digital rights clearing platforms
 AV material (under-represented)
 Access/re-use:
• visibility/usability (multilingualism, search quality, resolution…)
• EDM/LOD deployment
 Rights labelling
• ca. 1/3 of objects un-marked*
 Scalability and Sustainability 22

23. ESMAE – Escola Superior de Música, Artes e
Espetáculo do Porto (PT) 2,487 objects
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24. To know more
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/creativity-m
http://www.europeana.eu/portal
http://ec.europa.eu/licences-for-europe-dialogue/e
THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!
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