DC-NET (Digital Cultural Heritage Network) is an ERA-NET (European Research Area Network) project funded by the European Commission as part of the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), a eInfrastructures specific programme.

The goal of DC-NET is to develop and consolidate the coordination of European public research programme in the digital cultural heritage sector. To this end, ministries and other national policy managers in the digital cultural heritage field, that are project partners, will develop and launch a plan of joint activities with the ultimate purpose of creating a new digital infrastructure for research in the digital cultural heritage field.
DC-NET is the first step towards the creation of this eInfrastructure. The project partners will be able to build upon the experience and institutional networks developed by the MICHAEL project, which enjoyed the collaboration of thousands of cultural institutions from 18 different countries.

In the long term, the goal of DC-NET is to develop a digital infrastructure for cultural heritage with a critical mass of digital collections and contents, able to provide a wide array of services and tools to facilitate integration and analysis. Advanced storage, research, access, usability, viewing, and digital object manipulation functions are planned. The infrastructure will be appointed to  a virtual multidisciplinary research community in the fields of cultural heritage and ICT, thus fostering scientific collaboration and boosting research capabilities.
The two-year project was launched in December 2009. The project, which is coordinated by ICCU, initially had eight national partners; one of the project goals is to widen this network, and indeed the consortium is already getting larger.

Activities are developed through national and international working groups, with representatives from the ICT research, cultural heritageand eInfrastructure sectors.

For more information: ic-cu@beniculturali.it