Gerda KOCH1 / Sigrid REINITZER2
(1AIT Angewandte Informationstechnik Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, Graz, Austria/ 2Universität Graz, Austria)
“On 30 September 2005 the European Commission published the i2010: communication on digital libraries, where it announced its strategy to promote and support the creation of a European digital library on European scientific and cultural heritage (Europeana). The European Commission’s goal is to make European information resources easier to use in an online environment by means of combining multicultural and multilingual environments with technological advances and new business models.
The Europeana prototype (www.europeana.eu) went live at the end of year 2008, launched by Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media.”
In spring 2009 two projects (Europeana V1 and EuropeanaConnect) with the common task to develop the final operational services of Europeana started. Europeana Version 1.0 will launch in 2010 with links to over 10 million cultural and scientific digital objects.
Besides that a number of other projects concentrate on the aggregation of content for the Europeana portal. Among these are EuropeanaLocal (for local and regional content) and BHL Europe (the Biodiversity Heritage Library Europe).
Europeana provides a unique possibility for cultural and scientific institutions of any size to promote their holdings to a wide international audience via linking to digital objects (images, videos, audios, texts) of their collections.
The presentation will give an overview on the current status in the development of Europeana Version 1.0 and will inform about how institutions can join the Europeana network and use the offered services (EuropeanaConnect, BHL Europe, EuropeanaLocal etc.).
Keywords: Europeana, i2010, European Digital Library, Content Networks, Digital Objects