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Uldis Zariņš
The digitisation of cultural heritage has been on the political agenda
of the European Union since 2000, when, in response to the aims put
forward by the Lisbon strategy it appeared first in the working plan of the
“eEurope” initiative and then as part of the “eContent” program. Since
then, the European Commission has published two recommendations
(and, subsequently, the European Council two conclusions) on the digitis a -
tion of cultural heritage, encouraging member states to strengthen their
digitisation efforts, and an expert group on digitisation and digital preservation
has been set up. Today, digitisation in Europe is viewed in the
light of the “Digital Agenda” initiative of the “Europe 2020” strategy, where
the priority is the development of the European digital library “Europeana”,
and the member states are tasked with the organisation and financing of
the digitisation itself. In Latvia, digitisation activities began in 1994, however,
on the political agenda, this topic appeared, and only for a brief
moment, in 2006. Although significant investments have been made to
develop the digitisation infrastructure, to perform the digitisation itself
and to create cultural e-services, there is still no articulated national policy
on the digitisation of cultural heritage in Latvia to this day. It can be
assumed that the inclusion of digitisation topics in the strategic planning
documents of both culture and information society for 2014–2020 will
finally change this situation, and the digitisation of cultural heritage in
Latvia will finally be carried out according to national cultural policy, not
just based on the enthusiasm of some institutions and project budgets.
Keywords: archives, cultural heritage, cultural institutions, cultural
policy, culture, Digital Agenda for Europe, digital culture, digitisation of
cultural heritage, eEurope, eContent, Europe 2020, Europeana, European
Commission, European Council, information society, knowledge society,
libraries, Lisbon strategy, museums.
Lai arī Eiropas Savienības dalībvalstis ir vienojušās neveikt nacionālā
likumdošanas un regulējuma harmonizēšanu kultūras jomā 1 , tas nebūt ne -
no zīmē, ka Eiropas Savienībā kultūras jautājumi ir mazsvarīgi un netiek
risināti. Gluži pretēji, ar Lisabonas līgumu īpašā reveransā Eiropas kultūras
mantojumam Līguma par Eiropas Savienību preambula papildināta ar
1
Līguma par Eiropas Savienības darbību. Oficiālais Vēstnesis, C 326, 26.10.2012., 167. pants,
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/LV/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:12012E/TXT&from=LV (ES
tiesību aktu datubāze EUR-Lex; aplūkota 21.04.2014.).