Europeana

Europeana
Europeana logo
Type of site
 Meta-aggregator and display space for European digitised works
Owner Europeana Foundation
Website europeana.eu
Alexa rank 44,210 (April 2014)[1]
Commercial no
Launched 20 November 2008 (prototype), February 2009 (official version 1.0)
Current status official

Europeana.eu is the EU digital platform for cultural heritage.[2] Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer, the works of Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton and the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are some of the highlights on Europeana.

More than 3,000 institutions across Europe have contributed to Europeana.[3] These range from major international names like the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the British Library and the Louvre to regional archives and local museums from every member of the European Union.[4] Together, their assembled collections[5] let users explore Europe's cultural and scientific heritage from prehistory to the modern day.

History

The catalyst for Europeana was a letter sent by Jacques Chirac, President of France, together with the premiers of Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and Hungary to the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, in April 2005. The letter recommended the creation of a virtual European library, to make Europe's cultural heritage accessible for all.[6]

The letter added resonance to the work that the European Commission's Information Society and Media Directorate had been engaged in for over a decade, with programmes such as Telematics for Libraries. It gave strong political endorsement to the Directorate's strategy, i2010: communication on digital libraries, which was published on 30 September 2005. The strategy announced the intention to promote and support the creation of a European digital library, as a goal within the European Union,[7] which aims to foster growth in the information society and media industries.

The project that began the building of Europeana was called the European Digital Library Network (EDLnet) and was aimed at building a prototype of a cross-border, cross-domain, user-centred service. It was funded by the European Commission under its eContentplus programme, one of the research and development funding streams of i2010.

The prototype was launched on 20 November 2008.[8] At its beta launch, the site gave access to 4.5 million digital objects – more than double the initial target – from over 1,000 contributing organisations, including world-famous national library, gallery and museum collections from the capitals of Europe. Due to an unexpected user surge (peaking at an estimated 10 million hits an hour), the servers were unable to cope with the massive load. The site was temporarily taken down, and after series of technical upgrades went up again in December 2008. In February 2009, the successor of EDLnet – Europeana version 1.0 – began. This 30-month project was to develop the prototype into a fully operational service. In 2010, the project accomplished its objective of giving access to over 10 million digital objects.[9] Early in 2011, new features on the site included a translation tool and the ability to expand on information by automatically transferring the search term to Wikipedia and other services.

Function

Europeana gives access to different types of content from different types of heritage institutions. The digital objects that users can find in Europeana are not stored on a central computer, but remain with the cultural institution and are hosted on their networks. Europeana collects contextual information – or metadata – about the items, including a small picture. Users search this contextual information. Once they find what they are looking for, if they want to access the full content of the item, they can click through to the original site that holds the content.

Different types of cultural heritage organisations – libraries, museums, archives and audiovisual collections – catalogue their content in different ways and to different standards. Approaches also vary in different countries. To make the information searchable, it has to be mapped to a single common standard, known as the Europeana Semantic Elements. This metadata standard at present takes a lowest common denominator approach to the integration of different types of digital content. In 2010 the Europeana Data Model, a richer metadata standard, was introduced will help to give users more and better information.[10]

Europeana accepts metadata about digital objects, it does not make any decisions about digitisation. The decision about which objects are digitised lies with the organisation that holds the material.

Strategy

In its Strategic Plan for 2011–2015,[11] which was published in January 2011, Europeana outlines four strategic tracks that will shape its further development:

  1. Aggregate – to build the open trusted source for European cultural and scientific heritage content;
  2. Facilitate – to support the cultural and scientific heritage sector through knowledge transfer, innovation and advocacy;
  3. Distribute – to make heritage available to users wherever they are, whenever they want it;
  4. Engage – to cultivate new ways for users to participate in their cultural and scientific heritage.

The current strategy is for the period 2015-2020.[12]

Organisation

The Europeana Foundation[13] is the governing body of the Europeana service. Its members are the presidents and chairs of European associations for cultural heritage and information associations.

The Foundation promotes collaboration between museums, archives, audiovisual collections and libraries so that users can have integrated access to their content through Europeana and other services.

The Foundation is incorporated under Dutch law as Stichting Europeana[14] and is housed within the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the national library of the Netherlands. It provides a legal framework for the governance of Europeana, employing the staff, bidding for funding and enabling the sustainability of the service.

The executive director of the Europeana Foundation is Jill Cousins.

Europeana projects

There are a number of projects – the Europeana Group – that are contributing technology solutions and content to Europeana.[15] These projects are run by different cultural heritage institutions, and are part-funded by the European Commission's eContentplus programme and the Information and Communications Technologies Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP).

The Europeana Group projects are:

Financing

Europeana and the projects contributing content to Europeana.eu have been funded by the European Commission under eContentplus, the Information and Communications Technologies Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) and similar programmes. To participate in a wide range of projects, which are only funded by the Commission for 50–100% of the costs and do not include overheads, Europeana is also reliant for an element of its funding on Member States’ ministries of culture and education.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Europeana.eu Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2014-04-01.
  2. ↑ "New Europeana Collections site brings people closer to culture". Digital Single Market. European Commission. 22 January 2016. Retrieved 2016-05-10.
  3. ↑ "Why become a data provider?". pro.europeana. Europeana. Retrieved 10 May 2016.
  4. ↑ List of partners and contributors List of partners and contributors, Europeana.eu. Accessed 2 February 2011.
  5. ↑ Prieto Gutiérrez, J. J. (2014). Europeana: Colección y contenidos. In Europeana: la plataforma del patrimonio cultural europeo (pp. 45-58). Trea
  6. ↑ "Timeline of digitisation and online accessibility of cultural heritage" (23 July 2014). European Commission, Digital Agenda for Europe. The letter, written in French, was dated 28 April 2005 (see under that date in timeline): ec.europa.eu. Retrieved 2015-05-19.
  7. ↑ European Commission (30 September 2005). Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. i2010: Digital Libraries p. 3. Retrieved 2015-05-19.
  8. ↑ "Background". Europeana.eu. Retrieved 10 March 2011.
  9. ↑ "Europeana Version 1 project". Europeana Foundation. Retrieved 2012-06-25.
  10. ↑ "Europeana Data Model Documentation". pro.europeana. Europeana. Retrieved 10 May 2016.
  11. ↑ "Strategic Plan 2011–2015". Europeana.eu. Retrieved 10 March 2011.
  12. ↑ "Europeana Strategy 2015-2020". strategy2020.europeana.eu. Europeana. Retrieved 10 May 2016.
  13. ↑ "The Europeana Foundation". Pro.europeana.eu. Retrieved 25 June 2012.
  14. ↑ Stichting Europeana, Kamer van Koophandel (Chamber of Commerce, Netherlands) (KvK) number 27307531, located at Prins Willem-Alexanderhof 5, 's-Gravenhage (The Hague).
  15. ↑ "Europeana Group". Retrieved 10 March 2011.
  16. ↑ "3D ICONS project". 3D ICONS project. 1 February 2010. Retrieved 2013-04-13.
  17. ↑ "archivesportaleurope.net". Retrieved 1 October 2014.
  18. ↑ "Connecting ARchaeology and ARchitecture in Europeana project". CARARE project. 1 February 2010. Retrieved 2013-04-13.
  19. ↑ "Digitising Contemporary Art (DCA) project". DCA Project. 1 January 2011. Retrieved 2012-06-25.
  20. ↑ "DM2E Project". DM2E Project. Retrieved 2012-11-06.
  21. ↑ "e-Library for Performing Arts (ECLAP)". ECLAP Project. Retrieved 2012-06-25.
  22. ↑ "Europeana 1914–1918". Europeana1914-1918.eu. Retrieved 2012-12-05.
  23. ↑ "Europeana project aims to save more forgotten First World War family histories". Culture24. 24 July 2014. Retrieved 2014-08-10.
  24. ↑ "World War I history at your fingertips". Luxemburger Wort. 30 July 2014. Retrieved 2014-08-10.
  25. ↑ "Europeana 1914-1918 - untold stories & official histories of WW1". Europeana 1914-1918.
  26. ↑ "Europeana Creative". Europeana Creative.
  27. ↑ "Europeana Fashion". Europeana Fashion.
  28. ↑ "European Film Gateway". Retrieved 2013-07-19
  29. ↑ "Europeana Libraries".
  30. ↑ "Europeana Newspapers".
  31. ↑ "The European Library". theeuropeanlibrary.org.
  32. ↑ "Manuscripts and Princes in Medieval and Renaissance Europe". theeuropeanlibrary.org.
  33. ↑ "EUScreen Project". EUScreen Project. Retrieved 2012-06-25.
  34. ↑ "Personalised Access to Cultural Heritage Spaces (PATHS) project". PATHS project. Retrieved 2012-06-25.
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