Europeana: The EU’s Digital Library

Europeana is a gateway to the digital resources of Europe’s museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections.

It is a multilingual space where users come to engage, share in and be inspired by the rich diversity of Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage.

Europeana is a trusted source connecting users directly to authentic and curated material.

What is Europeana?

to provide access to Europe's cultural and scientific heritage by way of a cross-domain portal

to facilitate formal agreement across museums, archives, audiovisual archives and libraries on how to co-operate in the delivery and sustainability of a joint portal

to stimulate and facilitate initiatives to bring together existing digital content

to support and facilitate digitization of Europe's cultural and scientific heritage

LEGAL STATUS: 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.

Purpose and Legal Status

For users:Europeana is a single access point to millions of books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records that have been digitized throughout Europe. It is an authoritative source of information coming from European cultural and scientific institutions.

For heritage institutions:Europeana is an opportunity to reach out to more users, increase their web traffic, enhance their users' experience and build new partnerships.

For professionals in the heritage sector:Europeana is a platform for knowledge exchange between librarians, curators, archivists and the creative industries.

For policy-makers and funders:Europeana is a prestigious initiative endorsed by the European Commission, and is a means to stimulate creative economy and promote cultural tourism.

What is Europeana: 4 perspectives

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 No direct downloads

Content

Country Total Percentage

Total of all records 20,016,847    

France   3,227,352 16.12%

Germany 3,162,254 15.80%

Italy 1,946,040 9.72%

Spain 1,647,539 8.23%

Norway 1,557,738 7.78%

Sweden 1,489,488 7.55%

Netherlands 1,208,807 6.04%

Ireland 960,554 4.75%

UK 944,234 4.72%

Finland 795,810 3.98%

Poland 639,099 3.19%

Europe 526,928 2.63%

Belgium 338,098 1.69%

Austria 310,625 1.55%

Slovenia 244,652 1.22%

Facts and Figuresover 20 million objectsfrom more than 1500 institutionsfrom 32 countries.

Centralized funding and coordination Content aggregation model Content recruitment through Council of

Content Providers and Aggregators Ingest and improve metadata Portal and APIs Virtual exhibits

The Europeana Model

Works with a mixed metadata model as each provider uses metadata that is appropriate to the project and/or sector (library, museum, archive)

Uses the European Data Model EDM is designed as a framework for collecting, connecting

and enriching the descriptions provided by Europeana data providers

Uses well-known standards such as the Resource Description Framework (RDF), the OAI Object Reuse and Exchange (ORE), and Dublin Core namespaces

Metadata

Uses a Semantic search engine Based on who, what, when, where

◦ Who: Names of actors, authors, architects, artists, choreographers, composers, conductors, dancers, film directors, musicians or photographers.

◦ What: Words from titles of books, poems, newspapers, paintings, photographs, films or television programmes.

◦ Where: Names of towns, cities or countries within Europe or around the world.◦ When: Dates (e.g. 1945) such as the year you were born in or a famous date

in history or a period (e.g. Roman or Medieval).

Supports Boolean logic You can also filter your search results

◦ By media type - will display only objects of a selected media type (images, text, video or sound)

◦ By language - will display only objects with descriptions in selected languages

◦ By date - will display only objects with selected dates◦ By country - will display only objects from selected countries◦ By provider - will display only objects from selected institutions◦ By rights - will display only objects with selected rights of use

Searching Europeana

With curatorial expertise: Our virtual exhibitions help you discover and learn more about specific themes,.

Yiddish Theatre in London World War One in pictures, letters and memories

By Newest content: See the latest contributions from our partner museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual archives

By provider: Browse through the collections from a specific institution and open doors to any museum, library, archive and audio-visual archive that provides content to Europeana

Through time: The interactive Timeline lets you see items categorised by date

World War On a map: The Map view shows as purple circles with the size of the circle

indicating the amount of objects on Europeana for the given search in a specific location.

Isaac Newton

Exploring Europeana