Think culture: Europeana.eu from concept to construction
| Pages | 919-937 |
| Published date | 13 November 2009 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470911004039 |
| Date | 13 November 2009 |
| Author | Jon Purday |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Think culture: Europeana.eu
from concept to construction
Jon Purday
Royal Library, The Hague, The Netherlands
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the construction of the prototype of Europeana.eu,
the cross-domain cultural heritage portal funded by the European Commission, to look at the political
vision behind the project, and examine the user scenarios that informed the build, to detail
Europeana’s metadata schema and object model, and to give an overview of the new projects that will
bring the prototype to full operational service.
Design/methodology/approach – As the project to build the prototype ends, this is a narrative of
Europeana’s genesis, development, launch, and an overview of the scope of future plans.
Findings – A cross-domain, cross-border cultural heritage site has been successfully created. A total
of 4.5 million items across the range of image, video, text and sound formats have been integrated and
user interest has proved higher than anticipated.
Research limitations/implications – Key issues have been found to be metadata standards and
quality. Usability/searchability of Europeana.eu is only as good as the metadata provided by content
owners.
Practical implications – Greater standardisation of metadata across the cultural heritage domain
will increase in importance so providers can deliver content to portals and aggregators. Metadata
enhancement, both by content providers and by using automated processes, will likewise become a
priority.
Originality/value – This is the on-the-record account of the building of Europe’s digital library,
archive and museum.
Keywords Digital libraries,European Union, Product development,Heritage, Portals, Product launch
Paper type Case study
Introduction
Europeana.eu, Europe’s digital library, museum and archive, was launched on 20
November 2008 by the President of the European Commission, Jose
´Manuel Barroso.
The portal gave access to 4.5 million digital objects from over 1,000 contributing
heritage collections from every member of the European Union via a multilingual
interface. Overwhelmed by public interest – some 10 million hits an hour – the site
slowed to a crawl and was taken down for a substantial hardware reconfiguration. The
portal was online again in December in test mode with limited interactive features, the
full rebuild and stress testing were completed within the first quarter of 2009, and all
elements of the service were fully functioning by April 2009.
This article looks at the genesis, development, launch and future of Europeana.
Political endorsement
The catalyst for Europeana was a letter sent by Jacques Chirac, President of France,
together with the premiers of Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and Hungary to President
Barroso in April 2005. The letter recommends the creation of a virtual European
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm
Europeana.eu
from concept to
construction
919
Received 20 May 2009
Revised 8 June 2009
Accepted 23 June 2009
The Electronic Library
Vol. 27 No. 6, 2009
pp. 919-937
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/02640470911004039
library, to make Europe’s cultural heritage accessible for all. The first paragraph
carries the weight of the letter:
Le patrimoine des bibliothe
`ques europe
´ennes est d’une richesse et d’une diversite
´sans e
´gales.
Il exprime l’universalisme d’un continent qui, tout au long de son histoire, a dialogue
´avec la
reste du monde. Pourtant, s’il n’est pas nume
´rise
´et rendu accessible en ligne, ce patrimoine
pourrait, demain, ne pas occuper toute sa place dans la future geographie des savoirs[1].
[The heritage held in Europe’s libraries is of unequalled richness and diversity. It exemplifies
the universal outlook of a continent which, throughout its long history, has been in constant
dialogue with the wider world. However, if it is not digitised and made accessible online, this
heritage will not occupy its rightful place in the future knowledge landscape.]
The catalyst for this letter had been Google’s announcement of a programme to digitise
the printed word, and their partnerships with a range of major US and UK libraries.
There was concern in Europe that the project would be directed towards Anglophone
content and that a complementary approach should be taken to digitise the European
intellectual tradition in its original languages.
There was also disquiet that the large scale digitisation plans of Google and
Microsoft would transfer a significant amount of public domain intellectual resource
into the private sector, and that therefore equivalent European programmes ought to
be conceived of as broadly open access, open source and non-exclusive.
The letter added resonance to the work that the Commission’s Information Society
and Media Directorate had been engaged in for over a decade, with programmes such
as Telematics for Libraries. It gave strong political endorsement to the D irectorate’s
strategy, i2010: Communication on Digital Libraries[2] which was published on 30
September 2005. The strategy announced the intention to promote and support the
creation of a European digital library, as a goal within the European Information
Society i2010 Initiative[3], which aims to foster growth in the information society and
media industries.
The intention was endorsed by the Council of Ministers in November 2006, followed
in September 2007 by a vote in the European Parliament which overwhelmingly
adopted the Commission plan.
From the first, the purpose of the Digital Libraries Initiative was “to make Europe’s
cultural, audiovisual and scientific heritage accessible to all”[4]. The scope was thus far
wider than simply a library digitisation project, and the target audience conceived in
very broad terms.
The concept was to create a space in which all manifestations of Europe’s cultural
and scientific heritage could be connected and integrated within a single portal, in a
multilingual environment. In part, the idea took shape because technology now enabled
it; to a greater degree, however, it was born of a sudden leap in user expectations.
Anybody who was using Web 2.0 sites was used to being able to watch video, listen to
audio, see images or read text in the same space.
The European heritageand information domains – museums, libraries, archives and
audio-visual collections – had been digitising significant pictures, films, books,
photographs, sounds, newspapers, manuscripts and archival records over the previous
decade. While thedigital material featured in the catalogues and databasesof individual
institutions,it was deep web content and particular itemswere rarely findable by search
engines. It was recognised that what users could not find online did not exist for them.
EL
27,6
920
To continue reading
Request your trial