Save the NOF-Digi COntent!

To:  Sion Simon, Creative Industries Minister

Between 2001-2003, the New Opportunities Fund (now the Big Lottery Fund) took the unprecedented step of investing millions of pounds into a programme to Digitise the nation's Cultural Heritage.

The NOF Digitisation Programme was a remarkable collective effort involving hundreds of museum, archive and library professionals. It created tens of thousands of interesting and useful digital images, learning resources and other material - an astonishingly rich resource that is still current today.

Sadly, however, by 2009 much of this wonderful content has fallen into disuse. While the vast majority of it is still hosted on servers across the UK, it is not being promoted and the public have no idea it is there.

Efforts to pull this content together, refresh and promote it have so far failed. We urgently ask the UK Government, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the relevant non-Departmental Public Bodies and funders to establish a fund so that this content can be rehabilitated and made available for the enjoyment and education of generations to come.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The Save the NOF-Digi COntent! Petition to Sion Simon, Creative Industries Minister was created by Cultural & Creative Industries and written by Nick Poole (nick@collectionstrust.org.uk).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.