Esprit is the European Union information technologies programme. In September ACT participated in the preparation and submission of a proposal to the programme for a project called Virtual Museums International. The European partners in the proposal include The National Gallery and Birkbeck College in London England, NSM Jukebox and DeTeBerkom in Germany, and the Laboratoire de Recherche des Musees de France which is a research division of the Louvre in Paris. The project would see the linking of museum materials in Europe and Canada over a high-speed transatlantic fibre network.
Currently the proposals submitted to Esprit are still in evaluation. We expect to hear soon as to whether the proposal was successful.
A further proposal with the European partners will be made to the Advanced Communications Technologies and Services program of the EU in 1996. The ACTS program focuses more strongly on networking infrastructure unlike the Esprit programme which is more concerned with content. Newbridge Networks Corp. has expressed a strong interest in participating in this proposal.