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About EFGOne year after the official start of the EFG project in September 2008, the groundwork is laid for a successful establishment of the EFG web portal, which will eventually give access to some 700.000 digitised texts, images and films kept in European film archives. A major task of the first year's work was the building of the EFG database structure, which will not only allow to collect and harmonise heterogeneous data from the contributing archives but also forms the backbone of the EFG web portal to be launched in summer 2010. A report on the database structure is publicly available in the outcomes section on the EFG website.
Database Structure
First data exports from a group of testing partners have already been inserted in the EFG database; more archives will be included from September on. Part of the data harmonisation process are controlled vocabularies that EFG defined in order to allow a consistent representation of the archives' local database entries. Adding to EFG defined vocabularies, existing standards like ISO, MIME or the FIAF Glossary of Filmographic Terms will be applied. Compatibility with other initiatives is at the heart of these efforts.
Parallel to the database and vocabulary work, specifications for the front-end of the web portal were defined. The actual implementation and design of the EFG portal will start in November.
Copyright Clearance
In order to avoid infringement when putting digitised materials online, EFG started to develop best practices for copyright clearance. In October a workshop will be held in Vilnius for EFG partners to familiarise them with these practices. Copyright clearance tools will be handed out, which will - once tested by the partners - be further refined and eventually contribute to the archives' work not only in the EFG context but also in other contexts.
Events
In its first project year the EFG project was presented in the framework of a number of national and international conferences. From 5-7 October 2009 the Joint BAAC (Baltic Audiovisual Archival Council) & LCSA (Lithuanian Central State Archive) Annual Conference will be held in Vilnius. Under this year's topic 'Aggregation and Management of Audiovisual Content in the Digital Space' the conference aims at promoting the visibility of the Baltic heritage in a digital environment by sharing best practices and encouraging collaborative networks with national and trans-European initiatives. As a partner of the conference, EFG is not only involved in the organisation but will also give a presentation. The preliminary conference programme can be found online.
In context of the conference and the copyright workshop, the EFG Plenary Board will meet in Vilnius on 9 October 2009.
Liaison with Europeana
The strong liaison activity between EFG and Europeana currently focuses on a first test ingestion of EFG content in Europeana by the end of September 2009. Also in the field of dissemination both initiatives work closely together as EFG is an important member of the Europeana group of projects.
In the next six months EFG work will strongly focus on the enrichment of the database with contributions from the partner archives as well as on setting up the website via which the database will be accessible. Relevant updates on the on-goings in the EFG project can be found on the EFG website. A public annual report for the first EFG year as well as other reports are available in the outcomes section of the project website.
For further reading:
EFG Outcomes
Joint BAAC & LCSA Annual Conference
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