Europeana: Europe’s cultural heritage online

Europeana, Europe’s multimedia online library, museum and archive, is an ambitious project which makes European cultural heritage accessible to all on the internet.  It is a unique portal that allows exposition of Europe’s cultural and scientific resources not only for scientists but also for every citizen. The content has been provided by over 1,000 heritage collections, including works from famous museums like the Louvre in Paris and Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam along with the British Library in London. Many other national libraries all over Europe have contributed their printed and manuscript materials.
Since its first beta launch, containing 2 million digital items in November 2008, the Europeana collection has doubled . Currently its database provides free access to 4.6 million digital items which are divided into four main categories: images, texts, sounds and videos. It consists of digitalized collection of European books, newspapers, archival papers as well as work of art; paintings, drawings, and pictures of museum objects. Modern audiovisual collections: films and television images together with music, tapes and radio broadcasts are also being exhibited in a digital form. Funded by the European Commission under the eContentplus Programme as a part of the i2010 Policy, Europeana distributes the Member States’ diverse cultural heritage while at the same time integrating the Europe through its common history. A core team, based in the National Library of Netherlands, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, is responsible to run the project while many institutions and cultural bodies form all EU Member States involve into the process, as partners and contributors. Also the European Digital Library Foundation (EDL) which contains key European cultural heritage associations from the four domains was set up to assist formal agreements between museums, archives and libraries whereas providing a legal framework for the use of the EU funding.  The website is a prototype. To upgrade the Europeana prototype into fully functional website, a new project, Europeana version 1.0 is being carried out to make 10 million digital items available for users by 2010. It is a 30- month Thematic Network Project which began in February 2009. Under the project, huge amount of digitized content from contributors will be streamed automatically into portal. The national aggregators will be responsible to collect items from individual institutions in their domain. After working on issues; harvesting, mapping ingestion and intellectual property rights, aggregators will direct the standardized metadata into Europeana. This cooperation will lead to Europeana to reach its targets of 10 million items in 2010, 25 million items by 2012 and increase its content further in the future. Europeana’s main interface is multilingual but still most of the information is in English. Users have access to all digital items through keyword search box including more advanced options and a timeline browsing.  However registered Euroepana users can save their favorite items and searches, share or tag items. Communities’ pages allow to share, discuss, reuse or blog Europeana content. An e-Bulletin is published to keep the users up date about Europeana portal in every two months.   Europeana is open to users’ opinions and suggestions to allow the involvement of users into development of the project according their requirements.
The European Commission has been working on many projects to improve the digital economy. These activities prepared a ground to bring Europe’s culture heritage online. The idea of Europeana came from six Heads of State and Government who send a letter to the President of the European Commission and the European Council on 28 April 2005, suggesting the creation of a European digital library. The aim was to make Europe’s cultural and scientific resources accessible for all on the internet. It was followed by the launch of   i2010 digital libraries initiatives in September 2005. The European Commission published the i2010 communication on digital libraries on 30 September. It defined the importance of promoting and supporting the creation of a European digital library as a strategic goal within the European Information Society i2010 Initiative. Europeana is built on the aim to make European information resources available in an online platform while combining multicultural and multilingual environments with technology and new business models.   Europeana.eu was opened to public on 20 November 2008 in consequence of a 2-year The Europeana prototype project. It was launched by Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, who defined Europeana as a common access to point for Europe’s digital cultural and scientific heritage. It is a Thematic Network which is funded by the European Commission under the eContentplus Programme, as a part of the i2010 policy. The National Library of Netherlands, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek runs the project while TheEuropean Library develops the project management and technical expertise. EDL Foundation is in charge to provide access to Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage, to co-operate in the delivery and sustainability of the joint portal, to stimulate activities to organize existing digital content and to support digitization of the items.
Europeana is a dynamic project that will continue to develop in long term. The Europeana Group contains a number of projects from different cultural heritage institutions. These projects, part- funded by the European Commission’s eContentplus Programme, will contribute technology solutions and content during the 2009-2011 to create the fully operational Europeana. The EDL Foundation acts as a partner and coordinator for the Europeana Group. With the core technology projects; European version 0.1, developing fully operational Europeana web- site and EuropeanaConnect, developing multilingual searching and mobile access, Europeana will be able to answer  all needs of users. Its content will be used on mobile devices while the search system will work across languages. Also various content suppliers are involved in developing and aggregating the content of Europeana. Biodiversity Heritage Lib­rar­y-Europe which provides taxonomic materials and other biodiversity resources and EuropeanaLocal which brings content from regional and local museums, libraries and archives, are only two of the ten content suppliers. Moreover, the European Commission released a planning communication, “Next Steps” on 28 August 2009 to define the next phase of development of Europeana and its orientation for the future. The key challenges to enrich Euroepana’s content with public domain and in copyright material of the highest quality as well as a sustainable financing and governance model were set out. Also it was remarked that the contribution by different Member States to European was still unbalanced. In order to provide accession of the relevant parties in to the process, the European Commission has launched a consultation that consists of series of questions. Interested parties are invited to submit their comments by answering the questions by 15 November 2009.