Introduction and background to Europeana and EuropeanaLocal

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Introduction and background to Europeana and
EuropeanaLocal

• Mary Rowlatt
• MDR Partners
• Scientific Coordinator

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A common, online multilingual access point to
Europes distributed digital heritage

• Direct access to 10 million digital objects
  film, photos, paintings, sounds, maps,
  manuscripts, books, newspapers, archival papers

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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Europeana Project Universe
PrestoPrime
Arrow
Europeana
IMPACT
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Europeana Group homepage
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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

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EuropeanaLocal - basic facts

• Duration 36 months
• Budget 4.3 million Euro (80 funded)
• 1031 Person-months in total
• 32 Partners
• 39 Deliverables

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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.

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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

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Europeana content holders
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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

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EuropeanaLocal partners types of organisation

• 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

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Main phases of work

• 2008/9 Analyse, prepare and understand, train,
  provide guidance, install repositories
• 2009/10 Implementation
• Ingest and test harvested metadata from bulk of
  partners for Europeana Rhine release July 2010
• 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.

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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

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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

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Conclusion

• Europeana is not just a project its 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!

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Thank you!

• Questions/comments?
• mary.rowlatt_at_mdrpartners.com
• MDR Partners
• Scientific co-ordinators EuropeanaLocal
• www.europeanalocal.eu