The strategy outlined the Scottish Executive's vision of access for all to information and resources through electronic means, arguing that culture in all its forms can stimulate and support lifelong learning, encourage community involvement and help minimise exclusion be it social, rural or digital.

The Scottish Library and Information Council were successful in their bid to develop an online service for the Scottish Executive, keeping the aforementioned needs in mind.

The objectives for the project are to provide a robust searching mechanism for accessing printed and electronic information about Scottish Culture. This information is held in a wide range of places such as libraries, museums and archives and culturally significant resources identified by the portal team which are available on the internet. The project wishes to acts as a focus for cultural development.

The aim of this initiative is to extend access to the public; those at all stages of education – including lifelong learning; educators; and potential visitors to Scotland – in fact, everyone with an interest in Scotland’s Culture.

The service will provide access to a wide range of printed and electronic resources, including data held by national and local organisations, galleries, museums, libraries and local authorities, through a single search engine.

Scotland's Culture aims to:

• be a one stop shop for information on Scottish cultural matters, by acting as a gateway to information on a wide range of cultural resources in print, audio visual and electronic formats.
  
• help support the development of cultural strategy and promote Scottish culture globally.
  
• build on existing information networks such as CAIRNS (Co-operative Information Retrieval Network) and SCONE (Scottish Collections Network) to enhance the information landscape to include collection level resources and also printed resources.
  
• provide useful mechanisms into the electronic resources of Scotland's Culture, by means of quick guides into subjects and also regional resources using a dynamic map of Scotland and its regions.

View the 3rd National Cultural Strategy report.

View the April 2004 Cultural Policy Statement.