Getting local and regional content into Europeana

Rob Davies, Scientific Coordinator

Europeana Local and Access IT

16 June 2010

rob.davies@mdrpartners com

Europeana Vision

“A digital library that is a single, direct and multilingual access point to the European cultural heritage.”

European Parliament, 27 September 2007

“A unique resource for Europe's distributed cultural heritage… ensuring a common access to Europe's libraries, archives and museums.”

Horst Forster, Director, Digital Content & Cognitive Systems Information Society Directorate, European Commission

EDL Foundation Governance

Funding & Orientation Group Linked to Member States Expert Group

Advisory & Budgetary roles

Holds legal power & Reports on finance &

strategy

Executive Committee

Board of Participants (European associations)

Council of Content Providers & Aggregators

Up to 5/6 elected

Up to 9 elected

Europeana today

• Content: 9 million items from every domain, every EU member

– images: photos, paintings, drawings, postcards, posters

– texts: books, newspaper articles, manuscripts, letters

– videos: movies, documentaries, TV broadcasts, public information films

– sounds: cylinders, 78rpm discs, radio, field recordings

Who submits data to Europeana?

Europeana

Individual institutionsAggregators

Projects Institutions

1st layer

2nd layer

3rd layer

TEL

BAM

SCRAN

Kultura.hr

EFG APENet

Connect BHL Europe

EUScreen Judaica

MIMO Travel

ATHENA

Local

CARARE

HOPE

Athena

APEnet

Biodiversity HeritageLibraries Europe

EUScreen

EuropeanFilm

Gateway

EuropeanaLocal

EuropeanaTravel

Musical Inst.Museums Online

Judaica Europeana

The European Library

EuropeanaConnect

Europeana v.1.0

Europeana Group of Projects

ArrowPrestoPrime

Europeana

Data Providing Projects

• Athena: museum objects

• Archives Portal Europe [APEnet]: national archives

• Biodiversity Heritage Library [BHL-Europe]: texts and taxonomies

• CARARE (architecture, archaeology, 3D/VR)

• European Film Gateway: film, scripts, posters, stills

• Europeana Connect: sound recordings

• Europeana Local: local/regional libraries and museums

• EU Screen: TV broadcasts

• HOPE: social history

• MIMO: Musical Instrument Museums Online

• And all aggregators supplying directly to Europeana

Europeana content objectives

• August 2009• 82% of the content came from 4 countries

• 70% of the content came from 4 providers

• 77.5% of the content classified as ‘image’

• 10 million items for Rhine release, summer 2010• Representation of National and European culture by all European

countries

• Representation of all domains and types of content

“However, I find it alarming that only 5% of all digitised books in the EU are available on Europeana.

I also note that almost half of Europeana's digitised works have come from one country alone, while all other Member States continue to under-perform dramatically.”

Viviane Reding,

EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media,

28 August 2009

Europeana Content Strategy

• Promotion and support of aggregators

• Collaboration between all Europeana related projects

• Content Acquisition Plan to ensure an even representation of all European countries and types of content

• Development of relevant themes of content available

What are the technical requirements?

•Metadata mapped to the ESE v3.2.2 Specifications This is the Europeana current data model which consists of the Dublin Core (DC) metadata elements, a subset of the DC terms and a set of twelve elements which were created to meet Europeana’s functionality needs.

•A link to the digital object’s location onlineThe digital object stays where it is

•A thumbnail of the object•Metadata Mapping & Normalisation Guidelines are also provided as normalisation on some values is necessary to enable

machine readability

•Vast majority of content harvested from OAI-PMH compliant repositories and aggregations

Steps to Provide Content

Future technical developments

• Short term (Rhine Release, summer 2010):Launch of a robust operational service with improved search and browsing

functionalities for 10m digital objects!

• Longer term (Danube Release, spring 2012):More content, new functionalities and services will stem from current and

future R&D developments such as:• Multilingual and semantic search and browsing• New APIs for individual Europeana functionalities (ie using the timeline)• Addition of User-Generated Content (annotations, tags, etc)• New services: multimedia annotation tools, e-books on demand, search

and location of objects using spatio-temporal elements, etc

Aggregators

“ An organisation that collects metadata from its group of content providers and transmits them to Europeana, helps content providers with guidance on conformance (…) and converts metadata (…), supports with administration, operations and training”

/to harvest – a manageable number

• Content must go into aggregations that Europeana will continue to harvest – a manageable number

Future InfrastructureModel 1: Vertical up to Europeana

Europeana

Ape netArchives

National Archives

TELLibraries

National Libraries

AthenaMuseums

Big Museums

EFGBHLetc

Film, Researchlabs etc

Future infrastructure Model 2: National cross-domain aggregation

Europeanaingest

Nationalaggregation 1

Nationalaggregation 2

Nationalaggregation 3

Nationalaggregation 4

Archives

Museums etc

Libraries Archives

Museums

Libraries

etc

Archives

Museums

Libraries

etc

Archives

Museums

Libraries

etc

EuropeanaLocal

Why EuropeanaLocal?

• EuropeanaLocal a proof of concept regarding the value of local and regionally sourced content

• But...... a short term approach to short term targets

• In fact, a Best Practice Network……• It is not a sustainable approach; there is no 'ELocal

aggregation' • Action is needed at national level to aggregate local and

regional content metadata • You need digital content first!

• Need for viable aggregator business models at national level

• Start something – ownership/governance can come later

What are ELocal partners?

• Heterogeneous organisation types

• Ministry of Culture, national libraries, national museums, national cultural agencies, regional cultural agencies, public libraries, local museum, research foundation, regional digital library provider, private sector organisations

• ELocal partners in each country are almost all aggregators, large or small, either

• already a major national or regional aggregator of local content

• OR where none exists, they might become the national or regional aggregator of local content

• OR main task is to ensure that the local and regional content they have aggregated becomes part of larger aggregation

EuropeanaLocal: where are we?

•Over half-way through

• Year 1 was preparation• Commission Review of preparatory year (July 2009) was

favourable

• Year 2 is implementation : getting content into Europeana

• Year 3 focus will be encouraging more sustained aggregation of local and regional content:national meetings

• Potentially important events in moving forward ‘aggregation politics’ in each country

• Towards a ‘sensible level of aggregation

Content from EuropeanaLocal

• Big opportunity to prove value of local and regional content• a great improvement in place-based discovery in Europeana

• Substantial amounts of content already being ingested by Europeana–Content from Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, Norway, Romania,

Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, UK etc ingested already– Something from almost every country by Rhine

• EuropeanaLocal will contribute over 3 million items to the 10 million Rhine target: the largest source (more by Danube)

• EuropeanaLocal partners are only a small sample of potential

• Accelerate the circulation of culture through exchange of skills in information technology

• Culture programme (2007-2013)• Strand 1.2.1 (cooperation projects)

• 1 May 2009 – 30 April 2011

• Partners• MDR Partners (Coordinator)

• Instytut Chemii Bioorganicznej Pan –PSNC (Poland)

• Veria Central Public Library (Greece)

• Belgrade City Library (Serbia)

• Hacettepe University (Turkey)

AccessIT

What are we doing?

• Focus on three target countries: Greece, Serbia and Turkey

• enhance digital library training and competence structures for local/regional cultural institutions

• practical training and skills development; skills audit, online course

• ‘launch conference’ in October

• Improve content flow to Europeana• enable smaller, local cultural organizations to prepare and

contribute digital content

• create repository/aggregation for ingestion

Why?

• Funding programmes for Europeana did not yet cover Serbia and Turkey

•(Except FUMAGABA - NL Serbia)•Culture programme: ‘transnational circulation of cultural and artistic works’

• Skills thinly distributed in all three countries

• Extend EuropeanaLocal coverage

What skills are we talking about?

• Good practice in digitisation and content creation• Management of metadata and vocabularies (using

Europeana standards)• Collection development, description and management• Selection and prioritization of digital content • Infrastructures for enabling metadata harvesting (OAI-

PMH)• Management and expression of content rights• Developing new services• Handling user generated content

It's all at....

www.europeana.eu

www.europeanalocal.eu

http://www.access-it.org