Tag Archives: ACCESS IT

More good news from Turkey

In our previous post we have mentioned about great success of our Turkish colleagues, they managed to launch e-learning portal and skills certification in the area of digitization and digital libraries. This development was based on ACCESS IT materials initially developed by PSNC Digital Libraries Team.

Educational program was launched on 10th of January. It had to be very busy period for our Turkish colleagues, yesterday we received a news that Turkish portal has now 895 registered users! We hope to hear about anatomy of such a great educational success during the ACCESS IT final conference which will be held in the end of March in Istanbul.

ACCESS IT online course to be launched in Turkey

ACCESS IT e-learning courses (for more information see our previous post) were developed to facilitate education in the area of digitisation and digital libraries in Greece, Serbia and Turkey. Reference materials developed by PSNC – released in October 2010, were deployed, translated and customized by ACCESS IT partners. We are very pleased to announce that this work has been finished in Turkey.

Prof. Bülent Yılmaz (coordinator of ACCESS IT project in Turkey) from Hacettepe University in Ankara informed us that Turkish online education program will be launched on 10 January 2011 (next Monday). Turkish portal is available here.

Most of the “Digital Repositories for small memory institutions” (DRMSI) course was translated into Turkish. Apart from this, DRMSI course was divided into two smaller courses: “Digitisation” and “Digital Content management”. As a result of this work Turkish students can participate in three courses (the third one is unchanged “Cooperation with Europeana”) . Students who finishes given course and pass the final exam would obtain an ACCESS IT certificate signed by Hacettepe University.

First edition of the course will be open till 6th of March 2011.

9th “Automatyzacja bibliotek publicznych” conference

On 25-26 of November we had a chance to participate in 9th edition of “Automatyzacja bibliotek publicznych” conference. This Conference is organized as a joint effort of Warsaw Public Library, Polish Librarians Association and National Library of Poland.

This year conference was held under the slogan “Regional cooperation – strategy, tools and realisation”. Most of the presentations were heavily inspired by this leading sentence. So, we had a chance to listen about various approaches to public libraries automation including development of IT infrastructure, integrated library systems, models for successful cooperation between libraries and various aspects of education in the area of new technologies.

Conference program was filled with interesting presentations, including Edwin Bendyk’s “Between atoms and bits. Future of the digital book” which was truly inspiring. Apart from this one we would like to distinguish presentations made by employees of National Library of Poland (NLP):

  • Director Katarzyna Ślaska was speaking about competence centre in the area of digitisation which was launched this year in the NLP.
  • Joanna Potęga and Dariusz Paradowski were speaking about digitisation workflow model developed in the NLP.

It is also worth to mention about presentation of Madga Miller from City Public Library in Gorlice who was speaking about building of consortium of local libraries, which was led by her library.

PSNC Digital Libraries Team was presenting ACCESS IT e-learning materials. As the goal of the ACCESS IT was to reach small and medium memory institutions, it seems that it can be also useful for Polish public libraries.

„Biblioteka, Książka, Informacja i Internet 2010” conference

We had a chance to present ACCESS IT e-learning course during the international “Biblioteka, Książka, Informacja i Internet 2010” conference which was held in Lublin (18-19th of October 2010) at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University.

During the conference we listened about challenges and achievements of Polish and Ukrainian academic libraries. There was also a possibility to listen about informational needs of Polish scientists and their ideas how those needs might be satisfied by libraries.

All articles are available in the conference proceedings which were distributed during the conference.

E-learning educational courses for small memory institutions

One of the main aims of the ACCESS IT project is to support digitisation of cultural heritage and development of digital libraries in small memory institutions in three target countries covered by this project. In the second half of October these countries held a series of conferences, on which the current form of ACCESS IT e-learning courses was presented:

The agenda of these conferences reflected current needs of people/institutions who are involved in digitisation of cultural heritage in particular countries. Topics discussed during the conference covered not only the scope of the ACCESS IT project. One of the actively discussed subjects was the role and importance of Europeana. Other important topic were the needs of small and medium memory institutions in terms of creation of digital libraries.

During these conferences Adam Dudczak, member of the PSNC Digital Libraries Team, had a pleasure to present first complete version of ACCESS IT e-learning courses. Reference version of these courses is available under http://dl.psnc.pl/moodle. At the moment any interested person can register and go through the content of the following two courses:

The content of both courses was consulted/reviewed by Polish and foreign experts in digitisation and digital libraries. These courses together are divided into 40 modules, which cover very broad set of concepts and practical advices associated to digitisation, metadata, digital libraries, aggregation and of course Europeana.

As already mentioned, courses deployed on PSNC server are a reference version. Each project partner prepared his own adapted version of the reference courses. In the nearest future this will be a base for certification programmes launched in target countries.

Both courses are available under Creative Commons Attribution, Non-commercial, Share-alike license. If you are interested in using these materials, please contact us.

Slides from presentation “Access IT e-learning courses: overview of an educational offering dedicated for small memory institutions” are available here.

Culture 2007-2013 Logo
Ten program prac został zrealizowany przy wsparciu finansowym Komisji Europejskiej. Program lub publikacja odzwierciedlają jedynie stanowisko ich autora i Komisja Europejska nie ponosi odpowiedzialności za umieszczoną w nich zawartość merytoryczną.

AccessIT project study tour

Between 27-29 of April 2010 the AccessIT project study tour was organised by PSNC. The aim of this tour was to present the representatives of cultural institutions from Greece, Serbia and Turkey a set of chosen projects and initiatives related to the cultural heritage digitisation and publishing on-line in Poland. The general agenda of the tour was the following:

2010/04/27 – Wrocław

  • 9:30 – 11:30 – Wrocław University Library
  • 11:30 – 13:00 – Silesian Library (presentations hosted by the Wrocław Uniwersity Library)
  • 14:30 – 16:00 – Ossoliński National Institute

2010/04/28 – Poznań

  • 8:30 – 11:00 – Poznań University Library
  • 11:30 – 13:30 – Poznań Branch of the National Archives
  • 15:00 – 16:00 – PSNC

2010/04/29 – Warszawa

  • 8:30 – 10:00 – National Library
  • 10:00 – 11:30 – National Museum in Warsaw
  • 13:00 – 15:30 – National Digital Archive

Some photos from the tour can be found here.

Once again we would like to thank to all who have helped us with the organisation of this tour!

Culture 2007-2013 Logo Ten program prac został zrealizowany przy wsparciu finansowym Komisji Europejskiej.
Program lub publikacja odzwierciedlają jedynie stanowisko ich autora i Komisja Europejska nie ponosi odpowiedzialności za umieszczoną w nich zawartość merytoryczną.

ACCESS IT training finished

Between 16th and 18th February 2010 in Veria Central Public Library (Βέροια – city located in Middle Macedonia region in Greece) a training for ACCESS IT project was conducted. The training led by Adam Dudczak and Marcina Werla from PSNC DL Team covered wide range of topics related to digitisation, creation of digital libraries and aggregation of metadata for Europeana and other purposes. The training was divided into following sections:

  1. What is all this digitisation about and which objects should be digitised?
  2. How to digitize objects?
  3. How to create a digital repository?
  4. How to describe digital objects?
  5. How objects and metadata from digital repositories can be reused?
  6. How to (and why) prepare a repository for Europeana?
  7. How to set up a metadata aggregator?
  8. Should I know something more about digital preservation?
  9. Why to evaluate accessibility and usability of digital libraries?
  10. What comes next?

The training had 15 participants representing Greece, Serbia and Turkey.

ACCESS IT Training participants

In the ACCESS IT project these persons will create in their countries centres of competence on digital libraries, trying to cause the increase of the amount of cultural heritage available on-line and visible in Europeana. On the basis of materials prepared for the training and conclusions from discussions and practical exercises an on-line course will be prepared. It will be the basis for wide training action for cultural institution employees in three mentioned countries. This training connected with certification is planned to reach to several thousands of people causing the increase of knowledge and practical skills in the digital libraries area.

The training was described by regional press (1, 2, 3) and on the Flickr profile of the Veria Central Public Library some photos from the training were published.

Veria Central Public Library is one of the largest public libraries in Greece. It takes many initiatives related to European cooperation and to the promotion of reading. Particularly worth to notice and recommend is the idea of Magic Boxes – a way to arrange the library space for the youngest readers, which was implemented in Veria Central Public Library at the end of 2008.