European network of landscape documentation centers
Three specialized documentation centers in landscape in Europe join forces to exchange publications and share resources
The documentation centers of the Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche, the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands and the Landscape Observatory of Catalonia have added efforts to jointly disseminate the respective centers, their activities, exchange own publications and other documentation, and share experiences and resources.
To achieve this, the three centers will work in a network to increase mutual contact in order to offer a better service to its users. The three documentation centers are specialized in landscape, understood from a global and integrating view, in accordance with the principles of the European Landscape Convention (ELC). Later on, new European documentation centers could join this initiative.
The Documentation Centre of the Landscape Observatory of Cataloniais a physical and virtual space for collating, organising and disseminating all kinds of information about landscape in general, with special consideration given to Catalan and European landscapes. This information site can be accessed by all citizens, who can make enquiries free of charge. While its main objective is to support the Observatory’s endeavours, the centre is open to anybody interested in landscape. The archive is constantly expanding and it consists of more than four thousand documents in varying formats.
Opened to the public since 1990, the Documentation Centre of Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche, has been developed in close relation with scientific and cultural work in the research areas of cultural heritage, history and civilization of games and, mainly, landscape studies, supporting activities with all kinds of useful documents and, in addition, preserving and cataloging the materials produced by the research. A library, a map library, the documentary and iconographic archive hold more than one hundred and fifty thousands documents, available to scholars and users. The main services offered are: on-line catalogue, reference, reading room, local and interlibrary loan, reproduction (self service and on request).
TheCultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlandshas the functions to generate and disseminate knowledge, implement heritage policies or provide advice on this topic. Its documentation center has a large number of references in the field of cultural landscapes and could become the reference center of the future Landscape Observatory of the Netherlands.