A few excerpts from the European
Commission's final review
report:
The review team considered that the
setting up through technologies of a network
of experts in CEEC and Russia constitutes a success
story that merits publicity.
The project proceeded fully in line
with its "Description of Work".
The successful coordination of
a large group of partners (23 partners, 2
subcontractors from 12 countries, including
from Eastern and Central Europe and Russia)
can be considered as close to best practice.
The potential seems to be good for the
network. The e-publishing module offers very
good prospects [...].
Some additional tasks were
completed, such as Topic Maps (management
of all metadata terminologies), or also such
as the fact that the project output was
supposed to be the creation of an
infrastrucutre, whilst it produced also
commercially exploitable modules.
The repository allows to be independent
from data formats and is open therefore to
wap and i-mode exploitation.
A
short esssence of the work carried out so
far is given in the following paragraphs.
Content
Engineering
Digital
content and related products are the basis
for the REGNET system - the variety of
content available at the side of the content
providers within the project (different
types and styles, different languages and
geographic origins) will enhance not only
the attractiveness for the end user but also
decide upon the economic success of the
REGNET system.
Dealing
with heterogenous requirements this work
area was mainly dedicated to the content
production. According to the special
approach content production comprises not
only the cataloguing and digitising of
objects but also the "thematic
knowledge engineering" (e. g.
development of topic maps structures and
thematic texts related to the object within
the collections). The plans and guidelines
elaborated in WP 1 build now the basis for
all partners to provide cultural heritage
data for the integration into the REGNET
demonstration system and to deal with the
tools already developed (offline and online
data entry tools).
The
legal framework
In
order to set up an operational e-Business
network future cooperation has to be based
on sound agreements among the stakeholders
doing business in the Cultural Heritage
field. Existing networks had to be
investigated in the light of the experience
made in practice. An important issue for the
establishment of the REGNET partnership
model was the mixture of profit and
non-profit enterprises. Here REGNET intends to
introduce a layer between content holders
and distribution and service channels.
Within
this work area we have developed a contracting
and partnership model for a REGNET
operational and strategic network. Research
finally showed that the organization form
“European Economic Interest Group” of
European company law would be very
appropriate for a network like REGNET.
Therefore it has been decided to establish
the “CSC Europe EEIG” and a first
version of the statutes for this Cultural
Service Centre Europe EEIG has been
developed.
APRIL 2002
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