MICHAEL Culture Association

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MICHAEL Culture Association

MICHAEL - Multilingual Inventory of Cultural Heritage in Europe – is a European multilingual catalogue of digital cultural resources accessible online.

On these pages, you can discover the MICHAEL Culture Association, which is the international structure which manages the MICHAEL European portal and develops the MICHAEL services at European level.

Mission of the MICHAEL Culture Association

The MICHAEL Culture Association is a not-for-profit organisation that was founded in July 2007. The association is established under Belgian law (AISBL - Association Internationale Sans But Lucratif).

The Association fulfills the following not-for-profit objectives, defined in its statutes:

  • Providing services to access digitised cultural resources
  • Enhancement of quality and progress in digitisation of the on-line services and resources relative to cultural and scientific knowledge

In that perspective, the Association is carrying out activities such as:

  • Management and development of the MICHAEL European portal
  • Maintenance of the MICHAEL quality and interoperability framework
  • Support of the growth of the inventory of digitised cultural heritage in Europe
  • Promotion of the access to cultural heritage for the public in a cross-domain perspective
  • Participation in European and international projects in the field of digitisation of cultural heritage, such as the construction of the European Digital Library
  • Dissemination and exchanges of information, training in the related subjects

Join the MICHAEL Culture Association

WHY JOIN US?

To participate in major European initiatives
The MICHAEL Culture Association develops European projects which aim at enhancing the digitisation and the promotion of the European cultural heritage. It has members from all over Europe including ministries, governmental agencies, public bodies and private organisations.
It is participating in the ongoing construction of Europeana – the European Digital Library. The Association is a member of the executive committee of the EDL foundation and is also a partner in major European projects such as EDLnet/Europeana and Athena.

To promote cultural digitised collections to a European and worldwide audience
MICHAEL service is a multilingual catalogue bringing together national initiatives from across Europe. It enables users to find high quality digitised cultural content from archives, museums, libraries, audio-visual archives, monuments and archaeology.

To ensure the sustainability and development of MICHAEL European portal
The MICHAEL Culture Association is in charge of the management of the MICHAEL European portal. It maintains the MICHAEL quality and interoperability framework. It gives technical support to its members and manages the future development of the open source software platform.

Different Kinds of Membership

The MICHAEL Culture Association gathers three groups of members:

  • Full members, who are operating a MICHAEL national or regional catalogue of digitised heritage collections built on the MICHAEL data model. Full members are ministries, governmental agencies, public bodies representing a country or a region, all of them giving access to their regional or national content.
  • Associate members, who support the objectives of the Association and participate in its activities. Associate members are mainly private organisations.
  • Honorary members, who bring their experience and expertise to the Association.

Want to join us?

The MICHAEL Culture Association new members' applications are proposed to the members by the Board of Directors.
An application letter presenting your organisation (public body, association, company) and explaining your objectives towards the Association can be sent to the Board through the following email: association@michael-culture.org
The board will then analyse your application and will keep you informed as soon as possible about its decision.

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