EuropeanaConnect
Final Project Presentation
October 2011
Contents of presentation
• Background: Europeana and related
projects
• What is EuropeanaConnect
• Objectives
• Partners
• Specific content to be contributed to
Europeana
• Structure
• Achievements
Europeana
Europeana: the 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, Former Director, Digital Content & Cognitive Systems Information
Society Directorate, European Commission
www.europeana.eu: Content
• 20 million items are now accessible:
• 13,5 million images: photos, paintings, drawings, postcards, posters
• 6 million texts: books, newspapers, manuscripts, letters
• 145,900 videos: film, documentary, TV broadcasts, public
information
• 306,300 sounds: cylinders, 78rpm discs, radio, field recordings
Europeana is governed by Europeana Foundation and
supported by CENL
.
About
• “Best Practice Network”
• Co-funded by EC in the eContentplus programme
• Duration May 2009 – October 2011 (= 2,5 years)
• 30 project partners from 14 countries
• Coordinated by Austrian National Library
• ~ 900 Person Months total labour effort
• Total budget:
• 80 % EU funding:
5.625.000 Euro
4.500.000 Euro
Key Objectives
1. Provide a critical mass of audio content to Europeana and
implement an audio-enabling infrastructure
2. Build the Semantic Layer for Europeana
3. Facilitate multilingual access to Europeana
4. Develop novel access channels to Europeana (like mobile access)
5. Provide tools and methodologies for user-driven development and
for testing and evaluation
6. Build value-added services (like e-Books-on-Demand)
7. Implement key infrastructure components (like OAI-PMH infrastructure)
8. Build the Europeana Licensing Framework
9. Enable stronger and wider collaborative networking
Partner Institutions
• Europeana Foundation, The Hague
• 10 Universities and Academies of
Sciences:
• 8 Libraries:
• Austrian National Library
(Coordinator)
• Royal Library of Denmark
• National Library of Luxembourg
• National Library of the Netherlands
• Innsbruck University Library
• Göttingen State and University
Library
• German National Library
• National Library of Portugal
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Humboldt University Berlin
University of Vienna
Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon
VU University Amsterdam
National Technical University of
Athens
University of Amsterdam
University of Padua
Polish Academy of Sciences
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Slovenian Academy of Sciences
Partner Institutions
7 Research Institutes:
• OFFIS Institute for Information
Technology, DE
• XEROX SAS, FR
• CELI S.R.L., IT
• Knowledgeland, NL
• University College London
Consultants Ltd, UK
• Austrian Institute of Technology
GmbH, AT
• AIT Applied Information Technology
ltd., AT
• 1 Broadcast Company:
• Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg,
DE
• 1 Publishing House:
• Amsterdam University Press, NL
• 1 Institute for Literature:
• Institute of Lithuanian Literature
and Folklore, LT
• 1 Consultant Company:
• Eremo s.r.l., IT
Specific content contributed to Europeana
• EuropeanaConnect added a critical mass of audio content to
Europeana and
• Implemented an audio-aggregation infrastructure to harvest
audio from hundreds of audio archives
• By the close of EuropeanaConnect approximately 350,000
items had been harvested by Europeana
Work Structure
Work Package 1:
Creating the Europeana Semantic Layer
WP Lead: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, DE
• Semantic Data Layer Creation
• Aligning the Semantic Data
• Workflow Automation
• Functional Specifications for Semantics Based Operations
• Testing and Evaluation
• Networking and Clustering Activities
Work Package 2:
Multilingual Access to Content
WP Lead: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, DE
• User studies and evaluation of multilingual resources use
• Europeana Language Resources Repository
• Tools for multilingual mapping of controlled vocabularies and
subject metadata
• Translation modules for Europeana
• Testing and evaluation of translation modules
• Integration with Europeana retrieval framework
• Dissemination & Exchange of multilingual access strategies
for digital libraries
Work Package 3:
User Driven Development and New Access Channels
WP Lead: The Royal Library, DK
• Log analysis for future user-driven development
• Methodologies and tools for user involvement
• Spatio-temporal access channels for Europeana
• Mobile Access Channels for Europeana
Work Package 4:
Europeana Licensing Framework
WP Lead: National Library of Luxembourg, LU
• Recommendations for a core Europeana Licensing
Framework and validation thereof
• Creating tools for the Europeana Licensing Framework
• Evaluation and testing of the tools and proof of concept
• Deployment in Europeana
Work Package 5:
Enabling and Integrating Services for Europeana
WP Lead: Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, AT
• Europeana Metadata Registry
• Europeana Service Registry
• Europeana OAI-PMH Management Infrastructure
• Europeana Resolution Discovery Service for Persistent Identifiers
• Geographical Information Services
• Multimedia Annotation Services
• “eBooks on Demand” (EOD) Service
• User Testing, Evaluation and Assessment of the Services
• Cross-project Networking and Clustering
Work Package 6:
Audio Aggregation
WP Lead: Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg, DE
• Audio content aggregation, themes coordination
• Extension of the network to include new content providers
• Metadata harmonisation and data enrichment
• Content management tools, IPR
• Training activities and support
• Pilots, Testing & Evaluation
Work Package 7:
Dissemination and Concertation
WP Lead: EREMO S.R.L., IT
• Dissemination of project results
• Dissemination tools (website, project presentation, posters,
fact sheet, press releases, etc.)
• Concertation with Europeana v1.0
• Concertation with EU activities
Work Package 8:
Project Management
WP Lead: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, AT
• Financial coordination
• Internal consortium management and coordination
• Overall monitoring
• Liaison with the Commission
• Evaluation and Quality control
Achievements
Adding music audio to Europeana
• About 350,000 audio items were made available through Europeana via
the DISMARC-EuropeanaConnect Audio Aggregation Platform
• A virtual Audio Exhibition was developed
(http://econnect.ait.co.at/wedding-exhibition/)
(http://exhibitions.europeana.eu/exhibits/show/weddings-in-easterneurope/themes). It delivers content on 'Weddings in Eastern Europe' and
includes audio, text, images and video
• The Audio Aggregation Platform can be fully or partly deployed on a
‘virtual machine’ which requires only a computer system with an internet
connection
• Set of tools for content management developed
• Enable content owners to manage their data online and allow users to
add their own comments about particular pieces of music
Audio Aggregation Platform
Virtual exhibition
Building the Europeana Semantic Layer
• Survey of controlled and structured vocabularies among Europeana data providers
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carried out
Selected vocabularies successfully migrated to SKOS
Specification of semantic functionality created and checked with selected expert
users
A substantial contribution was made to the Europeana Data Model (EDM),
assisting with its specification and stabilisation
A semantic layer prototype running AMALGAME was developed:
http://semanticweb.cs.vu.nl/europeana/. Tool documentation is available at
http://semanticweb.cs.vu.nl/amalgame/.
Multilingual Access to Europeana
• Report on user preferences and information retrieval scenarios for
multilingual access in Europeana produced
• Specification for the Europeana language resources repository developed
• Multilingual mapping of controlled vocabularies was carried out with an
exploration of available resources
• A query translation module for all 10 EuropeanaConnect languages
(translating from any of the 10 languages into any of the 10 languages)
was developed and evaluated.
Understanding User Needs / New Access Channels
• Developed a methodology for understanding what users do when they
visit Europeana (aimed to improve their experience)
• Carried out log-file analysis and developed a personas catalogue as a
tool for user evaluation
• Developed a protoype of a spatio-temporal interface to enable users to
explore Europeana by time and location
• Developed and included in Europeana a generic mobile client, adapting
to the user‘s mobile, allowing to search the Europeana database from a
mobile device
Mobile client allowing
searching Europeana via
a mobile device
Europeana Licensing Framework
KEY RESULTS:
• Contracts regulating the re-use of descriptive metadata: An initial set of
Europeana Data Provider and Data Aggregator Agreements
(http://www.europeana-libraries.eu/web/europeanaproject/newagreement/) governing relationships between Europeana and
its partners
• Europeana Public Domain Charter:
http://version1.europeana.eu/web/europeana-project/publications
• A Public Domain Calculator” http://www.outofcopyright.eu was developed
• “Terms of use for User Generated Content”, deployed in a key pilot: the
1914-1918 collection: http://www.europeana19141918.eu/en/about/terms
Integrating software and services in Europeana
• Geographical Information Services (GIS) suite developed to enrich Europeana
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metadata and content with explicit geographical metadata and references
Universal Multimedia Annotator suite to provide Europeana with annotation
capabilities for audio and video content, images and maps. On-line media
annotation suite, available at: http://dme.arcs.ac.at/annotation/
Evaluation platform (COMPASS) for the Map Annotation Tool developed:
http://compass.cs.univie.ac.at/
EoD (eBook-on-Demand) Service, (http://books2ebooks.eu/) network was
significantly extended and a connector was produced to allow Europeana to
harvest metadata of already digitised books
The REPOX software was developed to automate the process of adding content
to Europeana
The Europeana Resolution Discovery Service (ERDS) was developed to
challenge the persistent identification of digital objects across different resolution
services in use by cultural heritage institutions.
Dissemination and Concertation
• Project web site: www.europeanaconnect.eu
• Dissemination materials (brochures, fact-sheet, poster, ppt,
etc.)
• Continuous concertation with Europeana
• All resources and public project results from
http://www.europeanaconnect.eu/results-and-resources.php
• EuropeanaTech (Final Project Conference) new project web
site: http://www.europeanaconnect.eu/europeanatech/
THANK YOU