Europeana is the common access point to the collections of European libraries, archives and museums from all around Europe. The portal 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.
Europeana is a simple but powerful tool for finding resources from all over Europe. All data will be available for everyone to consult – and to use, copyright permitting. For example, the library is a rich source of materials for the creative and information industries in developing new products and services, for tourism and for teaching.
Experience shows that online library services work. Gallica, the online section of the French National Library, gets 4 000 downloads a day and 1.5 million hits a month.
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.
Adding material and improving search tools:
After the launch of the prototype, Europeana has developed into a fully operational service, and more content is continuously added to the library. At the end of 2010 over 15 million digital items are accessible.
New features – such as annotation tools for researchers – are being developed and added to Europeana in response to user demand. And in due course, the intention is for users to contribute materials too (through an open-source approach, like Wikipedia ).
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.
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.[8] 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.
- 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.
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. In order 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.
The European digital library does not bring together content into a single database but Europeana is a single access point, linking up to databases all over Europe. Users no longer need to search digital libraries individually to find what they are looking for.
The single access point ("portal") is run by Europeana Foundation. Created on 8 November 2007, the Foundation is a collection of European cultural institutions – all committed to the project but retaining their independence, for example in hiring staff or seeking sponsorship.
Its founding members include European associations of libraries, archives, museums and audiovisual archives. The operational structure supporting Europeana is hosted by the Dutch National Library.
What does "EUROPEANA" mean?
EUROPEANA was chosen as a name of Graeco-Latin origin meaning "European collection", to refer to its rich cultural content and to the different types of media available (books, newspapers, photos, maps, films and sound). Major libraries and important collections about authors or places have often been given names with a similar latinate construction (e.g. Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Gallica, Belgica, Bodleiana, Luxemburgensia, Kantiana, Voltairiana).
Click here to access the library.
Source: Wikipedia
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