Europeana - next steps Policy and practice Yvo Volman European Commission DG Information Society and Media Conference on the integration of Bulgarian cultural heritage into Europeana Plovdiv, April 2010

A changing environment Internet: new ways to deal with information –Consultation, but also interactivity, follow- on creativity New devices –Towards the e-book, the i-museum Changing role/methods of cultural institutions –Reach out to the user –Place of born digital material –Consequences for financing?

The Digital Libraries Initiative Launched in 2005, deals with digitisation, online accessibility and preservation  Cultural information, scientific information Strong political support  Council Conclusions, European Parliament Resolutions Work ongoing along different axes:  Work with Member States (Recommendation)  Work with stakeholders (High Level Group)  Support for technologies (framework programme for R&D) and deployment (CIP programme)  Most visible part is Europeana

Europeana Common multilingual access point to Europe’s digital cultural heritage Direct search in different types of collections, content stays with the contributing organisations Launched in November 2008 as part of the digital libraries initiative Now 7 million digital objects accessible books, maps, manuscripts, photographs, museum objects, audiovisual fragments, sound aim: 10 million objects by end 2010 Run by cultural institutions, unprecedented collaboration between libraries, museums, archives

Europeana – challenges Improving the site 2009 user survey, positive feedback Search, multilingual features Ensuring a sustainable financing model Awareness raising More and better balanced content for Europeana Strengthening MS policies on digitisation and digital preservation At present 37 % of the content comes from France, from some MS, including Bulgaria (!), there is hardly anything

Bulgarian content for Europeana Ensure that all the content from Bulgaria that has already been digitised goes into Europeana Through aggregators e.g. TEL or a national aggregator Masterpieces: main literary works, paintings, archeological sites and museum objects But not only! Raise the visibility of your collections on the Internet (visitors, tourism) Reach out to the users to better fulfill your mandates You will see the synergies with collections from cultural institutions from across Europe

Funding issues Who pays for digitisation? Investment in the information infrastructure of the future Public private partnerships Conditions? Competitiveness and innovation programme Call for proposals open, closes on 1 June Structural funds

How to bring in-copyright content into Europeana From the start a key issue in the Digital Libraries initiative avoid a 20 th century black hole Two models: links to sites of the rights holders, or licenses Urgent need to deal with orphan works and find pragmatic solutions for out of print works Cross-border access How to ensure that public domain material stays in the public domain once digitised?

Conclusion Europeana is here and will further develop in the coming years –Access to Europe’s cultural heritage for leisure, study or work There is a need to bring in Bulgarian content! –Your help is necessary to make Europeana successful and to turn it into a mirror of Europe’s culture –Increase the visibility of Bulgarian culture and history across Europe