ACTIVITIES :: eTen :: Projects :: Projects of the Month :: TOUCH&TURN (May 2004)

May 2004 Project of the Month: Touch & Turn

Press Release 06/05/2004: The Touch&Turn Virtual Library won the First Price for the best web based/virtual application in the Nordic Conference NODEM (Nordic Digital Excellence of Museums), 4-5 May at Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland. View Press Release

The Diarium Vadstenense, this 14th Century manuscript describes the life in the Vadstena Convent.

Touch & Turn Virtual Library - "Mediation of rare books over the Internet"

Issues being addressed

The Internet opens up new possibilities for interchanging digital copies between different institutions. In 2003 the Swedish company Touch and Turn (T&T) initiated the project Mediation of rare books over the Internet.

The project will develop and validate the mediation service of rare books and manuscripts at libraries and other cultural and private institutions through the technology and business model of T&T. Today literary treasures of rare books and documents are often unique, fragile, valuable, difficult to read, detailed and therefore seldom accessible to the public. Making this material accessible in exhibitions or for scientific purposes is connected with many obstacles like regulations, insurance and other security related costs, geographical limitations and political considerations. This is the background to why the technology of T&T has found a potential market.

Using high quality Internet services, the aim is to establish a European standard of how to present, distribute and preserve our cultural heritage through digitisation. The online platform created within the project, will make digital books/ manuscripts accessible to the general public, educational institutions and professionals.

During the past year the company Touch and Turn has collaborated with libraries from all over Europe on the EC project. The project involves the Karl-Franzens University, Graz; the Zentral und Landesbibliothek, Berlin; the University Library of Crete, Heraklion; the National Library of Rome; the Baldini Library, Rome; the Keats Shelley House, Rome and the Uppsala University Library, all of whom have digitised works in their collections using T&T technology.

In order to access the library collection the user has to download the ”T&T Library Reader”, a free program giving access to the complete Virtual Library database, as well as a personal My library section. During the launch period almost all of the material will be available for free, but gradually the library will become a pay-as-you go service where revenues earned will go to the book-lending institutions themselves. In this way the libraries and museums can generate a return on their digitisation costs while making available their rare, and internationally important, collections.

T&T Virtual Library can at the same time strengthen the trans-national relationships among the cultural institutions that posses rare material and their customers/visitors. The project is therefore an important step towards creating a network of the rare books holders of Europe.

Objectives

The main objectives for the project have been to:

initiate mediation between the partners within the project
evaluate the potential of the online platform through a market research within the project network
evaluate the technology as such in order to set a standard for how to present and distribute rare books within the EU
identify which branches, potential customers and users could be interested in the mediation and
prepare for a European deployment

Achievements

The main project objectives have been reached with the official opening of The Virtual Library on April 22, 2004 at www.touchandturn.com, which has been a big success in terms of visitors, press and feedback from the cultural institutions.

From the market research consisting of both an international survey and personal visits, , Touch and Turn has been able to present an overview of the current status of digitisation of rare material at 122 libraries, museums and archives though out Europe as well as identify a large number of potential customers within the network of the project partners. One of the most interesting conclusions is that digitisation of rare material is in progress in the majority of the countries, but only in few cases on a regular basis or on a large scale. The work is in an experimental phase with very basic equipment and no standard solutions for software, database systems or hardware. At the same time the results show that digitisation is considered as a good way to preserve the books and that Internet as a mediation channel play an important role in this process.

Reference data

Dedicated Web site: http://www.touchandturn.com
Project reference: eTEN-28038
Contract type: Market Validation
Start date: 1 April 2003
Duration: 15 months
End date: 30 June 2004