Promoting Global Access to Taiwan Digital Archives, Networking toward International Cooperation

    As the third theme project of National Digital Archives Program (NDAP), the International Collaboration and Promotion Project is aiming to broaden global access to Taiwan Digital Archives and to enhance international cooperation. There are three major missions:

• Developing multi-lingual contents to represent the richness of cultural and biological diversity.
• Networking with International research communities to identify and acquire the Taiwan-related collections located overseas .
• Obtaining leading role in international digital archives organization.

   To accomplish the missions, we have invited experts from different institutes to work on the developing multilingual catalog and data description of Taiwan Digital Archives for global users, on providing portal service of Culture Taiwan for greater access, and on acquiring digital collections overseas to complete the related databases for Taiwan studies and to enable international cooperation.

Based on the merits of NDAP Phase One, we continue working on

• Taking active roles in editorial boards: such as Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL), European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Library (ECDL), the international Conference on Asian Digital Library (ICADL).
• Taiwanese chapters of international organizations were established. For example, in 2004, NDAP members attended the Museum Computer Network (MCN) Conference, where a Memorandum of Understanding was signed to set up an MCN Taiwan Chapter to promote regional cooperation.
• Operating Museum Computer Network (MCN) Taiwan Chapter: from attending MCN annual meeting, entering into memorandum of understanding (MoU), to officially signing and running MCN Taiwan Chapter for further bilateral cooperation.
• Increase global exposure: hosting international conferences (including International Conference on Digital Archive Technologies, ICDAT and Pacific Neighborhood Consortium, PNC) to promote international collaboration and experience sharing, joining directors board of Culture Mondo Network, also following the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as a member of Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) to promote sharing of biodiversity information and to integrate global species information for Encyclopedia of Life (EoL).

   We have blueprinted a strategic plan for deeper participation in international organizations in order to leading further collaborations.