Gov't passes 'E-cultura: Romania's digital library' project's kick off

The gov't passed on Wednesday's sitting the "E-cultura: Romania's digital library" kick off, the Executive's spokesman Nelu Barbu announced. 

Barbu specified that the project initiated by the Culture Ministry has a 53.242 million lei budget and it is financed from European funds, namely the 2014-2020 Competitiveness Programme, alongside national funds. 

"This project has in view to digitize the cultural heritage with help of current IT technology, so that the national cultural legacy be preserved, promoted and transmitted to the future generations," Nelu Barbu asserted. 

"E-cultura: Romania's digital library" sees two components: a first one aims at developing an online IT platform of partitioned catalogue and library, called "Culturalia" and available to all of Romania's cultural institutions and the public; a second one, aims to digitize and exhibit online in the "Digital library of Romania" - "Culturalia" over 550k of digital elements (texts, images, audiograms, videograms, 3D digital objects), added the spokesman. 

The term library in this context is used in the broad sense meaning the traditional library, museum and archive. 

"As many as 200k cultural resources are to be digitized and provided to europeana.eu, the European Digital Library. The project will be completed within 36 months," Nelu Barbu specified. 

Barbu mentioned that the project will involve 29 institutions, counting for 19 museums, 5 libraries, the National Films Archive, the Romanian Television Society, the Romanian Radio Broadcaster Society, the National Heritage Institute.