Introduction and background to Europeana and EuropeanaLocal

Mary Rowlatt

MDR Partners

Scientific Coordinator

A common, online multilingual access point to Europe’s distributed digital heritageDirect access to 10 million digital objects – film, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books, newspapers, archival papers

Europeana: think culture

• Europeana.eu is about ideas and inspiration. It links you to 4.6 million digital items.

• Images - paintings, drawings, maps, photos and pictures of museum objects

• Texts - books, newspapers, letters, diaries and archival papers

• Sounds - music and spoken word from cylinders, tapes, discs and radio broadcasts

• Videos - films, newsreels and TV broadcasts

• Some of these are world famous, others are hidden treasures from Europe's museums and galleries, archives, libraries, audio-visual collections

• The website is a prototype. Europeana Version 1.0 is being developed and will launch in 2010 with links to over 10 million digital objects.

Background

• The Commission has been working for a number of years on projects to boost the digital economy. These prepared the ground for an online service that would bring together Europe's cultural heritage.

• The idea for Europeana came from a letter to the Presidency of Council and to the Commission on 28 April 2005. Six Heads of State and Government suggested the creation of a virtual European library, aiming to make Europe's cultural and scientific resources accessible for all.

Background (2)

• On 30 September 2005 the European Commission published the i2010: communication on digital libraries, where it announced its strategy to promote and support the creation of a European digital library, as a strategic goal within the European Information Society i2010 Initiative, which aims to foster growth and jobs in the information society and media industries. The European Commission's goal for Europeana is to make European information resources easier to use in an online environment. It will build on Europe's rich heritage, combining multicultural and multilingual environments with technological advances and new business models.

Background (3)

• The Europeana prototype is the result of a 2-year project that began in July 2007. Europeana.eu went live on 20 November 2008, launched by Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

• The project is run by a core team based in the national library of the Netherlands, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. It builds on the project management and technical expertise developed by The European Library, which is a service of the Conference of European National Librarians.

• Overseeing the project is the EDL Foundation, which includes key European cultural heritage associations from the four domains.

EuropeanaLocal

• One of the family of additional projects funded by EC to further develop Europeana

• Best practice network funded under eContentplus• June 2008 – May 2011

• Main aim: mobilise and assist the huge number of museums, archives and audio-visual archives at local and regional level

• make the enormous amount of digital content that they hold available through the Europeana service of the European Digital Library

AthenaAPEnet

STERNA

BHLEurope

EUScreen

VideoActive

EuropeanFilmGateway

EuropeanaLocal

EuropeanaTravel

MIMO

Judaica Europeana

EuropeanaConnect

Europeana v.1.0

Europeana Project Universe

Europeana

Arrow

IMPACT

PrestoPrime

Europeana Group homepage

Europeana & EuropeanaLocal – the bigger picture

• EuropeanaLocal (1 June 2008 – 36 months)• Brings content from regional and local content holders

• Europeanav1.0 (1 Feb 2009 – 30 months)• Develops a fully functional Europeana website

• EuropeanaConnect (1 May – 30 months)• Develops technologies and resources to improve Europeana services

2008 2009 2010 2011J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A S O N D J F M A M J J A S O

ELocalEv1.0

EConnect

Rhi

ne

Dan

ube

EuropeanaLocal - basic facts

• Duration 36 months

• Budget 4.3 million Euro (80% funded)

• 1031+ Person-months in total

• 32 Partners

• 39 Deliverables

Fundamental goals

• Mobilise local and regional content for Europeana• and other portals, services

• Demonstrate the value of digital content sourced by local and regional cultural institutions

• public libraries. museums, archives and audio-visual archives • quantity and quality

• Make the case for an inclusive Europe-wide infrastructure by working initially with a single co-ordinator of local and regional digital content in each EU Member State.

What came before

• Guidelines and best practice for local and regional institutions in providing digital services

• PubliCA (FP4) 1998-2000• PULMAN (FP5) 2001-3• CALIMERA (FP6) 2003-5

• Some of the main proponents in these actions are now among those involved in implementation in EuropeanaLocal

Europeana content holders

How much content?

• Over 20 million items identified in proposal content tables• Potentially deliverable by this selection of partners• Around 290 collections• Full range of types and formats

• film material, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books, newspapers, archival papers.

• 3 million items by July 2010

• 10 million items visible through Europeana portal by end

• If we are successful, this amount alone would make a very substantial contribution to total Europeana targets

• EDL Foundation

• 1 Ministry of Culture (as aggregator of local content)

• 2 national libraries, 2 national museums, 3 national cultural agencies

• 5 regional cultural authorities

• 7 public libraries

• 1 local museum

• 1 research foundation

• 1 regional digital library provider

• 7 private sector organisations

EuropeanaLocal partners: types of organisation

Main phases of work

1. 2008/9 Analyse, prepare and understand, train, provide guidance, install repositories

2. 2009/10 Implementation• Ingest and test harvested metadata from bulk of partners for Europeana

Rhine release July 20103. 2010/11 Policy/dissemination work

• Loose ends• New content providers• Promote ‘sensible levels’ of aggregation • Stabilise web environment as a source of guidance and tools• Disseminate• User perspective, impact study• Contribute to emerging work on semantics and metadata enrichment in

Europeana.

Key activities

• Real world test bed for Europeana standards, technologies and processes

• feeding back to inform developments and improvements• Selection and installation of repositories• Normalisation of existing metadata schemas in use in the

candidate collections with ESE• Infrastructure for harvesting of metadata (OAI-PMH)• ingestion and testing of metadata by Europeana –

content visible in portal• Guidance, staff training and support• Contribute to emerging work on semantics and metadata

enrichment in Europeana• Processing locally sourced vocabularies (SKOS)• Object Modelling

Longer term - sustainable aggregation

• Europeana will work best if it is able to harvest content from a manageable number of metadata aggregations

• Aggregation in Europe highly variable and still evolving• Maybe 50% of member states have made significant progress

• In others, EuropeanaLocal repositories are among the first

• EuropeanaLocal does not aim to develop or sustain a European aggregation in its own right

• Strongly support existing/emerging aggregation initiatives • Promote Europeana compliant standards and infrastructure

• Assist evolution through National meetings 2010/11• Thematic aggregations from Europeana ’family’ projects

• APENet, EFG, Athena• Europeana Content Providers Group

Conclusion

Europeana is not just a project – it’s a call for action (Yvo Volman)

Improving basic conditions for digitisation, online accessibility and digital preservation

Direct support for Europeana

Need to join forces to shape the digital future of culture!

Thank you!

Questions/comments?

mary.rowlatt@mdrpartners.com

MDR Partners

Scientific co-ordinators: EuropeanaLocal

www.europeanalocal.eu