Aktuality EÚ

máj 2005

31. máj 2005
Školiace kurzy pre digitálne projekty

King's Digital Consultancy Services (KDCS) is a new venture for King's College in London, providing expertise and consultancy for the creation and management of digital resources.

In June 2005 they will organise two training courses focusing on digital projects – Managing digital projects for culture and heritage on 15 June and Sustaining digital projects: funding the future on 23 June. The courses will inform managers and project staff about how to approach digital projects.

There will also be a 5-day training event taking place from 26 to 30 Sep tember, 2005. To learn more about these and other courses offered by KDCS, visit their official website.

20. máj 2005
eVzdelávanie pre rast, pracovné miesta a inkluzívnu spoločnosť

A multi-annual, multi-stakeholder drive to build digital competence at home, school and the workplace was launched by Viviane Reding, the Commissioner for Information Society and Media, and Ján Figel, the Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Multilingualism, at a multi-stakeholder conference entitled "Towards a learning society", in Brussels on 19 May.

The "Towards a learning society" conference brought together 500 stakeholders from industry, education, the social partners, civil society and government to take stock of Europe's eLearning strengths and weaknesses from a variety of perspectives, including education, enterprise and industry, employment, and social inclusion.

The conference conclusions will provide direction for the future work to be carried out in this area.

More inf ormation on the topic can be found in the official press release and on the website of eLearning conference.

18 May 2005
5. výzva je otvorená

A nová výzva na predkladanie návrhov has been opened by the Európska komisia on 18 May 2005 to fund research projects in the sektor kultúrneho dedičstva of the IST Programme. CALL 5 addresses, amongst others, the Strategický cieľ 2.5.10 - 'Sprístupnenie a uchovávanie kultúrnych a vedeckých zdrojov '. Closing date is 21 September 2005 .

More details and documentation on the call can be found at the following links:

Documentation on CALL 5 (including call text)

Summary of the research goals in the kultúrne dedičstvo domain with a link to the full work programme.

In connection with the call, the Európska komisia is organising an Informačný deň on 16 June in Luxembourg.

Click here for more information and registration forms

16 May 2005
Využívanie internetu v EÚ 25

13 May 2005 Eurostat published a report on the Internet usage in countries rozšírenej Európyan Union. According to the report half of individuals and nine out of ten enterprises used the Internet in the first quarter of 2004. The highest levels of Internet usage were recorded in Sweden (82%), Denmark (76%) and Finland (70%), the lowest levels in Greece (20%), Hungary (28%), Lithuania, Poland and Portugal (all 29%).

The Eurostat report in PDF can be downloaded from their official website. The press release summarising the contents of the report is available here.

12 May 2005
Informačný deň ku programu eContentPlus

In addition to the FP6 Informačný deň k 5. výzve the Európska komisia is hosting another similar event focused on the first e Content plus proposal call.

The Informačný deň will take place in Luxembourg on 15 June 2005. It will be dedicated to a detailed presentation of the programme and the call for proposals. Subject to the completion of all the necessary procedures, the Európska komisia intends to launch a call for proposals in June 2005 with a proposal submission deadline in October 2005.

Registration for the Informačný deň is open till 8 June 2005.

Click here for more information and registration forms

3 May 2005
Európska digitálna knižnica bude obhajovať rozmanitosť

On Monday, 2 May, at the Palais d’Elysée, in Paris, the French President Jacques Chirac defended the European Union's draft constitution before an audience of ministers, artists, intellectuals, representatives from cultural institutions and various cultural celebrities. The President emphasised the need for the European member states to defend their cultural diversity ‘against the looming threat of uniformity’, arguing that the constitution would defend that diversity. In his speech, Chirac made also reference to the initiative of creating a European Digital Library, recently proposed by himself with the support of most EU countries’ leaders, to counteract the Google project of digitising resources from five big USA and UK national libraries (see news item dated 2 May 2005).

At the Paris meeting, Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, expressed his agreement with Chirac’s initiative. ‘I say yes because Europe must not submit in the face of virulent attacks from others’, referring to the Google project.

The Informačná spoločnosť a médiá Commissioner Viviane Reding also confirmed the willingness of the Európska komisia to take action in this respect, boosting its policy of preserving and exploiting Europe’s heritage. The initiative taken by France and the other EU member states, said the Commissioner, ‘is a positive sign of increased awareness of the need to bolster our policy in this field,’…. ‘digitising this heritage is … a marvellous opportunity which our industry should grasp.’

Viac:

• Press release from Viviane Reding
• Jacques Chirac‘s speech on 2 May 2005 (in French)
• Article on Chirac’s speech
• Support from Jean-Claude Junker, Luxembourg prime minister and acting EU president

2 May 2005
Európska aktivita ako odpoveď na digitalizačný projekt Google-u

Nineteen European national libraries have joined forces against the Google ambitious project, announced in December 2004, to digitise millions of books from five major libraries in the USA and UK (the Michigan University Library, the Harvard, Stanford and New York Public Libraries and the Bodleian Library, in Oxford) and make them freely available online.

The initiative is led by the French National Library, urged by the French President Jacques Chirac, who explicitly expressed his concern that the Google project may lead to an overwhelming domination of English language resources on the Internet.

The signatories of the agreement are the national libraries in Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden. The British National Library has also given its implicit support, without signing the motion, Cyprus and Malta have agreed verbally to the text and Portugal is willing to approve it.

The objectives of this action are clearly expressed in a letter sent on Thursday, 28 April, to the Presidents of the Európska komisia and of the European Council, signed by the leaders of France, Poland, Italy, Hungary, Germany and Spain. The letter urges the undertaking of a large-scale European digitisation initiative, coordinated at a EU level, which would bring together existing digitisation projects and digitise additional cultural and scientific resources to make them accessible on the Internet in an organised and coherent way. The letter also emphasises the importance of coordinating the selection of materials to digitise, to avoid overlapping, of researching and developing more advanced digitisation techniques and search tools and of paying a greater attention to users' needs.