GOOD PRACTICE IN DIGITISATION
FORM FOR NOMINATION

This is the form for the nomination of a good practice in digitisation.
Please, send a form for each different project.
Each project can be “nominated” for more than one area.

Send the form/forms to the attention of Maria Teresa Natale by e-mail to minerva2@beniculturali.it or by fax to +390667232499.

The form will be submitted to the National representative for approval.

English must be used.

NAME AND ACRONYM OF THE PROJECT:
Flemish Folknarrative Database (FFD), the result of the project ‘Breaking the story’ 
(Vlaamse Volksverhalenbank (VVB), resultaat van het project ‘Op verhaal komen’)

URL: www.volksverhalenbank.be

AREAS for nominations of 'good practice' for on-going projects on digitisation:

1) x Digitisation Project Planning (The Reasons for the project, Human Resources, Research, Risks

2)  Selecting Source Material for Digitisation (Establish Selection Criteria, Selection Against the Criteria)

3) x Preparation for Digitisation (Hardware; Software; Environment)

4) x Handling of Originals (Moving and Manipulating Original Material)

5)  The Digitisation Process (Using Scanners; Using Digital Cameras; Software Applications for Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

6)  Preservation of Digital Master Material (File Formats; Media Choices; Migration Strategies)

7)  Meta-Data (The Scope of Meta-Data Used for Object Description; Appropriate Meta-Data Standards)

8) x Publication (Image Processing; 3D and Virtual Reality Issues; Online Publication)
9)  IPR and Copyright (Establing Copyright; Safeguarding Copyright)

10) x Managing Digitisation projects (Digitisation Process management; Team Development; Staff Training; Working with Third Parties for Technical Assistance; Working with Third Parties in Cooperative projects and Content Sharing; Costs

RESPONSIBLE BODY AND/OR ANY SPECIFIC 
CO-ORDINATING BODY/MECHANISM/INSTITUTION

Name of the institution: Seminarie voor Volkskunde K.U.Leuven

English name of the institution:  Institute for Folklore & Ethnology K.U.Leuven

Acronym of the institution: K.U.Leuven

Mailing address: Blijde Inkomststraat 21, 3000 Leuven

Country: Belgium

Tel.: 0032 (0)16.32.48.56 

Fax: 00 32 (0)16.32.50.68 

e-mail: stefaan.top@arts.kuleuven.ac.be

URL: www.kuleuven.ac.be

Type of institution:  National		 Governmental		 Regional
            x Other   Specify: Research Unit

Sector:  Archive   Library  Museum  Foundation  
            x Other   Specify: university

Legal status:  Public  X Private    No profit

Description of the institution (max 200 characters):

The Institute for Folklore & Ethnology belongs to the Department of Literature. Its main topics of research are folk literature (narratives, songs), rituals and festivals. 

CONTACT PERSON OF THE PROJECT

Name: Stefaan Surname: Top

Gender:   X M		 F

Title: Professor of Folklore / Ethnology

Institution: Seminarie voor Volkskunde K.U.Leuven
Mailing address: Blijde-Inkomststraat 21, 3000 Leuven

Country: Belgium

Tel.: (0032) (0)16.32.48.56 

Fax: (00 32) (0)16.32.50.68

e-mail: stefaan.top@arts.kuleuven.ac.be

Contact languages: Dutch, English, German, French

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT

Duration: 2002-2006

Objectives and priorities  (max 200 characters):

- to make the enormous collection of unpublished legends maximally accessible by means of a well-structured database allowing complex search operations 
- to generate new possibilities for historical, thematic and comparative research

The main features for what you consider the project a 'good practice' example, with respect to the selected areas (max 200 characters for each area):

1) Project planning:
The fieldwork of dozens of students of folklore resulted in a collection of approximately 70.000 legends written down in the dialect of informers from all Flemish regions. The narratives can be considered authentic and valuable exponents of the social environment and mentality characterising the nineteenth and twentieth century. As the treasured collection of legends hidden away in the archive of the Seminarie voor Volkskunde was not accessible to the public an efficient opening up of the legend corpus proved to be a matter of vital importance. 

4) Handling of Originals:
Because the preservation of the original dialect texts is of great importance, these texts are manually digitalised for the internal version (see below) by an assistant. Digitalising the photographs of persons and places related to the stories, together with the audiotapes of the original storytelling sessions is a future priority that can be realised if the necessary financial means are provided.

3) Preparation and 8) Publication: 
The database and the website of the FFD were created by the Maerlant Center (www.maerlant.be). The result of this cooperation is a user-friendly ICT-product with a lot of search possibilities, hyperlinks and more than 4000 keywords. 

10) Managing the project
Thanks to the financial support of the Vlaamse Gemeenschap [Flemish Community] in the context of permanent increase of accessibility and study of cultural heritage in April 2003 more than 11.000 legends from Limburg were digitalised and presented on the internet. At this moment we are working on the database material of West-Flanders. As the structure of the Flemish Folknarrative Database was created after the example of the Nederlandse Volksverhalenbank from the Meertensinstituut in Amsterdam, links between the Flemish and the Dutch legend collection can easily be established in the future.

Problems encountered and lessons learned:

- In order to protect the privacy of the narrators, the people mentioned in the stories, their family members and descendants, we thought it necessary to create two versions of the Vlaamse Volksverhalenbank (VVB) [Flemish Folknarrative Database (FFD)]. The public version that is accessible on the internet contains detailed summaries of the stories in which all personal names have been left out. The internal version of the database can only be accessed at the university of Leuven by means of a user name and a password. The latter version presenting the original texts in their dialect with full names was particularly created for scientific research. 
- The transcripts of the legends collected by the students are in local Flemish dialects. Although the dialectal rendering makes a valuable contribution to the authenticity of the narratives, the researcher cannot be familiar with all regional variants of the legend vocabulary. The meaning of most dialectal expressions can be derived from the context. For the interpretation of problematic linguistic elements a dialectologist is consulted.

Comments:
Up to now the FFD has been visited 117.202 times (16/02/2004). Taking the positive reactions of the last months into consideration one could even expect the success of the FFD to increase when the other Flemish provinces will be digitalised. In addition the possibilities of the website can be extended, creating for example the possibility to react to stories, to tell variants of the stories that are mentioned, to stimulate discussions about the meaning of certain narrative elements, and so on. 
The project ‘Breaking the story’ is a product of the cooperation of the K.U.Leuven with the Maerlant Center and of the financial support of the Vlaamse Gemeenschap, the Provincie Limburg, the Provincie West-Vlaanderen, Volkskunde Vlaanderen vzw., Leuvense Vereniging voor Volkskunde vzw. and the F.M. Olbrechtsstichting vzw.

I agree this information may be published on Minerva Knowledge Base: http://www.minervaeurope.org

x Yes  No

Signature: _____________________

Name: Stefaan Top

e-mail: stefaan.top@arts.kuleuven.ac.be