| Abstract [eng] |
The subject of the Master‘s Thesis is the digitalization of cultural heritage in public libraries. The purpose of the Master’s Thesis is the establishment of new possibilities of dissemination of cultural heritage in the electronic environment of public libraries. With a view to achieving the established purposes, the Master’s Thesis tackles the following tasks: overview of the policy of the digitalized cultural policy in Europe and Lithuania, survey of European best practices related with the dissemination of cultural heritage in the electronic environment, examination of the Lithuanian public libraries’ capacity for presentation the digitalized cultural heritage, description of a number of digitalization features in public libraries. Digitalization is a new method of cultural heritage management that includes not only organization processes but also the diversity and forms of the provided services. The last decade is known for the revolution in the way cultural heritage is managed. Cultural heritage management initiatives are closely related with the attempts to develop a common European information environment. The year 2001 saw the formulation of the Lund principles have urged the European Commission and EU member states to undertake the coordination of digitalization of and provision of access to cultural heritage. Having identified the drawbacks in digitalization and public delivery of cultural heritage and having established the ways of eliminating these drawbacks, specific actions have been undertaken. Quite a few projects on the participation of local cultural heritage institutions in the process of digitalization, e.g. Pulman, Calimera, etc., were initiated and completed. In 2005, Lithuania joined the EU initiatives related with digitalization in order to coordinate the national activities in the area of cultural heritage digitalization. In summer of 2005, the Ministry of Culture and Science approved the Lithuanian Concept of Cultural Heritage Digitalization. A lot of initiatives related with digitalization are currently implemented or had been already implemented, however, the access to the digital cultural content has been as yet fragmentary. The digitalization in Europe is influenced by a number of financial, organizational, technical and legal difficulties. It is possible to find excellent best practices related with partnership in the electronic environment of European public libraries that provide the global customer with digital sources of national cultural heritage in the electronic environment. Implementation of the new information technologies and provision of access to virtual information sources has been recently started by the Lithuanian public libraries and has been slowly gaining momentum. Therefore, only 36 out of 65 public libraries provide the customer with digital cultural heritage and ethnographic information. Digital information of the cultural heritage content is provided by the libraries in a variety of forms such as Internet portals, data bases, full-text documents, virtual exhibitions. Lithuanian public libraries should exploit the new possibilities of disseminating ethnographic information more actively because they are opened up an opportunity to participate in international initiatives on cultural heritage management in the electronic environment. Lithuanian public libraries should establish cooperation with other partners from the local cultural sector such as museums and archives. The partnership with other stakeholders would enable public libraries to accumulate financial, organizational and other resources. Projects implemented by the European libraries raised a wealth of problems that are encountered in the process of digitalization. Not every library may boast of the expertise in this area, therefore, Lithuanian libraries should draw on the accumulated experience. |
