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Collections / Institutes

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Institute - Research Projects and Collaborative Ventures

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Institute for Museum Research

museumsvokabular.de
museumsvokabular.de is an initiative to prepare, edit and adapt museum vocabularies. Given the enormous variety of museum objects, museum professionals require a comprehensive, specialised vocabulary to create inventories of objects and describe catalogues. Four institutions - the Working Group on Documentation within the German Museums Association, the Zuse Institute in Berlin, the digicult project in Schleswig-Holstein and the Institute for Museum Research in Berlin - have joined together to shape the vocabulary museums need to perform essential museum operations. Working together, we continue to expand this initiative.
www.museumsvokabular.de

MICHAEL (Multilingual Inventory of Cultural Heritage in Europe)
The MICHAEL portal offers access to digital resources from collections across Europe. It enables worldwide access to Europe's cultural heritage, bringing together unique digital collections from museums, libraries and archives in one central portal. France, Italy and the United Kingdom have completed national inventories for MICHAEL. The German portal is currently under construction (www.michael-portal.de). In Germany, seven institutions are participating in a common effort to identify and crosslink the digital collections of German cultural organisations. All of the national portals will be interconnected to establish a European portal, allowing users multilingual access. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is a partner in the MICHAEL initiative. Responsibility for the national co-ordination of the MICHAEL project within Germany rests with the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. Responsibility for implementation across Germany rests with the Institute for Museum Research (the Institute is part of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation).
www.michael-culture.org

Related Links:
www.numerique.culture.fr
www.michael-culture.org.uk
michael.beniculturali.it
www.minervaeurope.org

BAM (Portal for Libraries, Archives and Museums)
BAM is a common Internet service of libraries, archives and museums in Germany. The BAM portal presents information about published materials, archival records and museum objects. At present, BAM allows a common search of more than 30 million digital records
from museums, libraries and archives. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation became a partner of the BAM initiative in 2005. The Foundation is working to improve the technology behind the portal. The Foundation is also involved in efforts to assure its long-term viability once its current funding has expired. The Foundation is above all responsible for the integration of additional sources in the BAM portal.
On behalf of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation and museums in Germany, the Institute for Museum Research oversees work on the BAM portal. Project funding comes from the German Research Foundation (DFG).
www.bam-portal.de

kulturerbe-digital.de
kulturerbe-digital.de (digital cultural heritage) addresses questions related to digitisation in heritage organisations. The portal offers comprehensive information to the public in Germany and abroad about the current state of cultural heritage digitisation. The establishment of this portal allows us to bundle available resources, in particular, the assets of the Digital Library Forum and a German working group of national and provincial experts, EUBAM. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation has entrusted the Institute for Museum Research with the practical implementation of the website. The German Research Foundation (DFG) agreed to support the new information platform in cooperation with the Digital Library Forum.
www.kulturerbe-digital.de
Related Links:
www.eubam.de
www.dl-forum.de

DiFoSa (Digital Photographic Collections)
DiFoSa (Digital Photographic Collections) is concerned with the digitisation of photographic collections. This scholarly project of the National Museums in Berlin is carried out by the Institute for Museum Research. The aim of the DiFoSa project is two-fold: to ascertain the optimal strategies available to digitise photographic collections held by museums and to offer practical advice tailored to the specific capabilities of the museums in question. The project website (currently in development) invites museums to become actively involved.
www.sepiadigital.de
Another objective of the project is to take stock: who holds which collections of historical photographs? How are they accessible? Have they already been digitised? This dimension of the project goes beyond museums to capture information about collections housed in archives, libraries and other repositories of heritage. Here we seek to promote common use of photographic heritage. This dimension of the project has a website of its own:
www.fotoerbe.de

nestor II (Network of Expertise in long-term Storage and availability of digital Resources in Germany)
The objective of nestor II is to promote greater cooperation among those parties in Germany involved in the long-term conservation of digital resources. Nestor II also aims to ensure long-term accessibility to digital resources: both preservation and access over the long run shall be achieved through greater exchange and cooperation within Germany and abroad. One special focus of nestor II is long-term digital preservation in light of developments in the fields of eScience and grid computing. Two other areas of emphasis are the long-term preservation of multimedia objects and an appraisal of the potential reliability of archival servers. The nestor II portal bundles a variety of information in German and offers access to international sources as well. The Institute for Museum Research represents the German museum community within nestor II.
www.langzeitarchivierung.de

www.euromuse.net
Euromuse.net, a joint project of European museums, provides reliable, up-to-date information about art and cultural history museums throughout Europe. The portal brings together in one website information regarding special exhibitions, institutions and collections, offering easy access to Europe's diverse museum world.
Over 150 museums from seventeen European nations present their holdings and temporary exhibitions at www.euromuse.net. These include the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the National Museums in Berlin and the Jewish Museum in Prague. Euromuse.net provides all information regarding exhibitions and collections in English, as well as the native language of each museum. The Institute for Museum Research supervises euromuse on behalf of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.
www.euromuse.net

EUBAM
EUBAM is a portal devoted to topics of concern to libraries, archives, museums and other preservation authorities. EUBAM is a German working group of national and provincial experts drawn from the fields of politics, culture as well as subject matter experts from the worlds of libraries, archives, museums and other heritage organisations. Professor Klaus-Dieter Lehmann, President of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, chairs the EUBAM Working Group. The Institute for Museum Research represents German museums within the Working Group. The State Library in Berlin represents Germany's libraries.
EUBAM provides information about digitisation in an European context. The EUBAM website offers links to funding sources, information services in the fields of culture as well as reports on events, surveys and tenders. The EUBAM portal serves cultural heritage institutions in Germany, whose interests it in turn represents vis-à-vis offices of the European Union. The portal is also directed to national and provincial offices in Germany charged with the formulation of political objectives concerning the preservation and care of cultural heritage.
www.eubam.de

MINERVA (Ministerial Network for Valorising Activities in Digitisation)
MINERVA is a European platform covering digitisation activities in the fields of culture. Since 2002 the MINERVA network has received support in the context of several EU projects (MINERVA, MINERVA Plus, MINERVA eC). Through various forms of assistance and recommendations, MINERVA ensures the implementation of guidelines formulated by the National Representatives Group (NRG). Established in 2001, the NRG is charged with the co-ordination of digitisation programmes within the Member States of the European Union. The NRG consists of representatives from the various EU Member States and the European Commission. The three German NRG representative are:
- Monika Hagedorn-Saupe (Deputy Director, Institute for Museum Research) Representing EUBAM
- Dr. Gerald Maier (Provincial Archive of Baden-Württemberg) Representing the German Provinces (Länder)
- Werner Weber (Department K 34 - International Co-Operation in Cultural Affairs, Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media) Representing the Federal Government
- The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is MINERVA's institutional partner in Germany
www.minervaeurope.org
Related Links:
www.eubam.de

EGMUS (European Group on Museum Statistics)
EGMUS came into being in 2002, as the consolidation of two initiatives. The first of these initiatives was an international conference on museum statistics, held each year in Berlin and organised by the Institute for Museum Research. This Berlin conference first took place in 1994. The second was the gathering of a working group of the EU statistics office, Eurostat. In 1997, that EU office had established a leadership group charged with the harmonisation of cultural statistics in the EU.
EGMUS pools data and statistics relevant to museums. It does so in order to improve our ability to compare national museum statistics across Europe. EGMUS' first publication, 'A Guide to European Museum Statistics', appeared in 2004 in a series edited by the Institute for Museum Research in Berlin. This study presents museums statistics from twenty-three European nations (ISSN 0931-4641, Special Edition 3).
The next publication, with up-to-date information, will appear later this year. We are also currently working on a website that will allow direct comparison of Europe-wide data and statistics.
EGMUS is co-ordinated by:
- Germany (Monika Hagedorn-Saupe, Institute for Museum Research)
- Luxembourg (Guy Frank, Ministère de la Culture, de l'Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche)
- The Netherlands (Vladimir Bina, Research Co-ordinator, Ministry of Education, Culture and Science)
- France (Jeannine Cardona, Département des Etudes et de la Prospective, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication)

NEMO - the Network of European Museum Organisations
NEMO is the Network of European Museum Organisations. NEMO acts as advisory organ of the European Union, promoting the enhanced significance of culture in European affairs as described in the Treaty of Maastricht.
For more than thirteen years, NEMO has represented the interests and importance of museums in Europe vis-à-vis legislators. NEMO also provides detailed information to museums on EU initiatives. Finally, NEMO encourages the exchange of information among museums and museum organisations throughout Europe.
NEMO's chair in 2006 and 2007 is Mechtild Kronenberg, Director of the German Museums Association. Monika Hagedorn-Saupe, Deputy Director of the Institute for Museum Research, is the second German representative.
www.ne-mo.org