The Minister of Culture, Ángeles González-Sinde, and his French counterpart, Frederic Mitterand, have held a meeting today to discuss overlapping issues of cultural policy in both countries, particularly those that are among the priority objectives of the Spanish Presidency European Union.
The main theme addressed was the importance of ensuring the presence and distribution of European Cultural Heritage on the Internet. Both ministers agreed that all European governments have a responsibility to facilitate the preservation of European cultural heritage and promote its diffusion.
Among others, they exchanged views on specific projects such as the European Digital Library, creative content online, the public private partnership in the digitization of cultural heritage and the European Heritage Label.
Digitization of the European Cultural Heritage
Both France and Spain have been pioneers in the digitization of cultural heritage. The Ministry of Culture has digitized more than two million objects from the historical archives of the National Library of Spain, while it has launched an ambitious project, the Hispanic Digital Library.
With regard to private initiatives in digitizing, the Minister of Culture of Spain has highlighted that there must be some basic requirements and agreement between all member states of the European Union "public assets should remain public at all times and avoid agreements between public and private institutions that grant exclusivity for the management of such heritage.
Committee of Experts
France and Spain are working with the European Commission to establish a Committee of Experts made up of top-level experts to help define the common framework for digitization and European Cultural Heritage Protection.
Another European project for content digitization, Europeana, has also been a consensus among ministers. Gonzalez-Sinde and Mitterand have agreed on the need to enhance the consolidation of Europeana, the great European Digital Library, from which all citizens can get access to digitized collections.
In this sense, Angeles Gonzalez-Sinde has reported the transfer of Spanish content to Europeana "soon the figure will reach more than 800,000 Spanish records, approximately 20% of all European registries.