Europeana
Encyclopedia
Europeana.eu is an internet portal that acts as an interface to millions of books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records that have been digitised throughout Europe. 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.
Around 1500 institutions across Europe have contributed to Europeana. 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 EU. Together, their assembled collections let users explore Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage from prehistory to the modern day.
, President of France, together with the premiers of Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and Hungary to 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.
The letter added resonance to the work that the 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, which aims to foster growth in the information society and media industries.
The project that would begin 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 Commission under their eContentplus programme, one of the research and development funding streams of i2010.
The prototype was launched on 20 November, 2008. 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. 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.
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. In order 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. However, the introduction of a richer metadata standard, the Europeana Data Model, will help to give users more and better information.
Europeana accepts metadata about digital objects, it doesn’t make any decisions about digitisation. The decision about which objects are digitised lies with the organisation that holds the material.
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 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.
The Europeana Group projects are:
Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa is a portrait by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. It is a painting in oil on a poplar panel, completed circa 1503–1519...
by Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
, Girl with a Pearl Earring
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Girl with a Pearl Earring is a painting by Johannes Vermeer.Girl With a Pearl Earring may also refer to:* Girl with a Pearl Earring , by Tracy Chevalier* Girl with a Pearl Earring...
by Johannes Vermeer
Johannes Vermeer
Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of middle class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime...
, the works of Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
and Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...
and the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are some of the highlights on Europeana.
Around 1500 institutions across Europe have contributed to Europeana. These range from major international names like the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
and the Louvre
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
to regional archives and local museums from every member of the EU. Together, their assembled collections 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 ChiracJacques Chirac
Jacques René Chirac is a French politician who served as President of France from 1995 to 2007. He previously served as Prime Minister of France from 1974 to 1976 and from 1986 to 1988 , and as Mayor of Paris from 1977 to 1995.After completing his studies of the DEA's degree at the...
, President of France, together with the premiers of Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and Hungary to President of the European Commission José Manuel Durão Barroso
José Manuel Durão Barroso
José Manuel Durão Barroso is a Portuguese politician. He is President of the European Commission, since 23 November 2004. He served as Prime Minister of Portugal from 6 April 2002 to 17 July 2004.-Academic career:...
in April 2005. The letter recommended the creation of a virtual European library, to make Europe's cultural heritage accessible for all.
The letter added resonance to the work that the 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, which aims to foster growth in the information society and media industries.
The project that would begin 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 Commission under their eContentplus programme, one of the research and development funding streams of i2010.
The prototype was launched on 20 November, 2008. 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. 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
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
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 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. In order 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. However, the introduction of a richer metadata standard, the Europeana Data Model, will help to give users more and better information.
Europeana accepts metadata about digital objects, it doesn’t 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, which was published in January 2011, Europeana outlines four strategic tracks that will shape its further development:- Aggregate – to build the open trusted source for European cultural and scientific heritage content;
- Facilitate – to support the cultural and scientific heritage sector through knowledge transfer, innovation and advocacy;
- Distribute – to make heritage available to users wherever they are, whenever they want it;
- Engage – to cultivate new ways for users to participate in their cultural and scientific heritage.
Organisation
The Europeana Foundation 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 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. These projects are run by different cultural heritage institutions, and are part-funded by the European Commission’s eContentplus programme eContentplus programme and the Information and Communications Technologies Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP).The Europeana Group projects are:
- Europeana v1.0 is developing a fully functional Europeana website.
- APEnet – Archives Portal Europe
- ASSETS aims to improve the usability of Europeana.
- ATHENA aggregates museum content and promotes standards for museum digitisation and metadata.
- Biodiversity Heritage Library - Europe
- CARARE aggregates content for the archaeology and architectural heritage.
- Digitising Contemporary Art (DCA)
- ECLAP will build a large digital library of performing arts and UGC. *ECLAP Portal
- Europeana Connect adds sound material to Europeana.
- European Film Gateway (EFG)
- Europeana Libraries will add over 5 million digital objects to Europeana from 19 of Europe’s leading research and university libraries.
- Europeana Local brings content from regional and local content holders.
- Europeana Regia is digitising royal manuscripts from Medieval and Renaissance Europe.
- EURO-Photo digitises photographs from news agencies.
- EUscreen contributes television material to Europeana.
- Europeana Travel will bring material associated with travel, trade, tourism and migration into Europeana.
- Heritage of People’s Europe (HOPE) aims to improve access to digital social history collections.
- JUDAICA Europeana looks at the Jewish contribution to Europe's cultural heritage.
- Linked Heritage aims to add substantial new content from commercial and public sectors, and enrich Europeana's metadata with a "linked data" approach.
- Musical Instrument Museums Online (MIMO)
- Natural Europe connects the digital collections of natural history museums.
- OpenUp! brings Europe's natural history heritage to Europeana
- PATHS
- The European Library aggregates the content of national libraries.
- thinkMOTION gathers content from the field of motion systems.