Home | Access to Diverse Cultural Content (Summary)
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Cultural Community information (see also resource description, information services, and e-government)
The public needs up to date information about the range of organisations which make up the civil society in the increasingly complex and atomised urban communities and frequently poorly-serviced rural communities of modern Europe. This type of information is clearly suitable for digitisation and it is now very common for public libraries to provide information about local organisations of all kinds through the library website. Public libraries should focus on local organisations: national organisations are well covered by commercially or centrally-produced directories. The sorts of cultural information provided may include:

• Local events

• Local theatres, cinemas, concerts etc.

• Local voluntary groups including organisations for dramatic and choral societies, photography clubs, gardening clubs, etc.

• Tourist information

• Local newspapers.

Community information databases should be searchable by subject, place and by organisation name and should provide links to other community information pages in the same region.

In large cities, towns and regions, there are often centralised local authority departments which sponsor cultural institutions with a strong strategic interest in this work. Public libraries are well-placed to demonstrate that they have the skills to lead in this area on behalf of the local authority, working in partnership with other agencies and local organisations to maintain accurate and up to date information, supplied in a form compatible with agreed standards.

seamlessUK is a good example. It is developing a one-stop citizen's gateway which integrates local and national information. It is funded under the NOF (New Opportunities Fund) Digitisation Programme in the UK. The project is led by Essex County Council and involves a further 8 local authorities and 14 key national information providers, working together to develop a national citizens' gateway and 9 locally branded portals, one in each local authority area. It is hoped that the system will be taken up nationally in the UK. It focuses on public information - information produced by government agencies at all levels, public sector organisations, voluntary and community groups, and commercial organisations.

EssexOnline
The local portal for seamlessUK in Essex is called Essex Online. Further functionality is being developed by the Essex Online partnership which comprises the 15 local authorities in Essex together with the Essex Strategic Health Authority, Fire and Police. It is the community portal for Essex and is recognised as the central focal point for the delivery of e-services to the Essex citizen. An initial website is now live and two new transaction services - e-forms (for 10 public services including planning applications) and e-payments initially for payment of parking fines, other applications to follow) will be added by the end of March 2003. Other e-services will follow.

FUTURE AGENDA

The future for access to cultural resources is closely affected by developments in resource description, delivery of access to the Internet, the progress of digitisation of cultural goods and the development of multimedia. For example such issues as the safeguarding of bandwidth for non-commercial purposes and the effect of copyright legislation will need to be considered. Indeed content can be seen as a key driver for developing a market for broadband.

The digitisation of cultural collections will continue until a substantial proportion of the cultural heritage of Europe is available in one way or another by digital means. Local content will form an increasing part of this picture. Museums, archives, public libraries, community and voluntary organisations will need to work jointly to ensure that this material is accessible. 

The generation of content, such as community information, by libraries will become more sophisticated and involve co-operative projects across institutional boundaries, creating databases of increasing power and speed which will become communal assets of great value.

Home | Access to Diverse Cultural Content (Summary)
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