Cultural Heritage

The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) have published a new set of Web pages highlighting their policy for the Digital agenda in libraries, archives and museums.

The Museums, Libraries and Archives Sector has an important role to play in using digital technologies to deliver improved access, increased information and more opportunities for participation in its rich diversity of resources and services.

MLA is committed to helping museums, libraries and archives make full use of these opportunities, and to ensuring that the sector is at the heart of government digital policies.

Our role is to provide strategic leadership to the sector in relation to the digital agenda through:

• Developing a vision for the sector’s use of digital technologies
• Supporting and promoting the development of quality standards
• Encouraging innovation to enable inclusion of all communities
• Promoting understanding and skills development

MLA has commissioned digital services from a number of organisations to help to deliver:

• More and better quality information on cultural opportunities to the public
• A coherent portal for cultural resources for teachers and learners
• Greater interaction with individuals and communities through use of Web 2.0 and social networking tools
• High quality standards in the management and preservation of digital resources

UKOLN will be working with MLA on this digital agenda and an overview of the digital services commissioned is now available.

Further information on the social Web workshops we will be running is also now available. More information on venues and dates will follow.

A news item in the April 2009 issue of Library & Information Update (“Call for MLA to focus more on the ‘L’“, page 5) reports that Andrew Motion, the new Chair of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) is ‘insisting’ that MLA focus ‘more equal attention’ on libraries than in the past. In a speech at the London Libraries conference in St Albans he spoke about his new role and how he feels that ‘we need to encourage government to think more strategically about libraries in general’.

It is good to see this focus on libraries and it will be interesting to see what concrete initiatives emerge. UKOLN has previously contributed to a range of projects in collaborations with the public library sector – Internet provision in public libraries, Stories from the Web, NOF-digitise and the People’s Network Discovery Service, People Flows, Cornucopia and the Public Library Web Managers Workshops – and we’re looking forward to further work in this area, such as the national library card that Andrew Motion mentions.