The MICHAEL European Service provides access to digital resources from museums, libraries and archives. The website includes:
- A searchable database of digital resources from museums, libraries and archives in several European countries.
- Articles and user stories, which look at various aspects of the European cultural heritage and the contents of MICHAEL.
- Information about the MICHAEL project, the technology that it uses and links to useful materials.
MICHAEL database
The MICHAEL database is based on national inventories of digital resources that have been created by the project partners. Each national inventory includes descriptions of digital collections and the websites, CD-ROMS and other products and services that have been created by museums, libraries and archives. The descriptions are written especially for MICHAEL by people working in, or on behalf of, the cultural institutions themselves. Details are harvested directly from the national inventories to become part of the MICHAEL database for the European services.
Countries and languages
At the time of writing, in Spring 2008, there are plans to include in the MICHAEL European Service the national inventories for Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Malta, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Initially three languages were supported (English, French and Italian) but new languages are being added as each national inventory joins the service. By summer 2008 the service should be available in sixteen languages and users will be able to choose their preferred language to search and browse the contents of the MICHAEL database, and also the editorial contents of the website. Records are held in the database in their original language and (partially) in translation. Users are offered access to machine translation tools to enable them to translate record details into the language of their choosing.
In future we hope that more European countries will join and make details of digital resources from their museums, libraries and archives available through the MICHAEL European service.