EUROPEAN POLICY ON DIGITISATION OF CULTURAL HERITAGE FROM 2005. ONWARDS

Abstract

Protection of cultural heritage is not just a matter of legacy and reverence we owe to our ancestors but also a way to preserve our national identity. The preservation of cultural diversity of Europian countries is one of the most important goals and a condition for its further valorisation. New information technologies offer great opportunities to digitise cultural heritage, to save it from oblivion and to make it available for future generations. In the period from 2005 to 2014, the European Union authorities adopted a number of important legal documents aimed at establishing a common framework for digitisation of tangible and intangible national heritage, in full observance of the cultural differences between the EU Member States. In this paper, the authors provide an overview of the most important legal documents in this field and highlight the importance of digitisation for the process of protection and popularization of cultural heritage. The authors suggest that the presented recommendations and guidelines that cpnsitute a normative framework for the digitisation of cultural heritage may be very useful in the process of harmonizing Serbian legislation with the EU recommendations in this area.