1. EuropeanaConnect Final Project Presentation
October 2011

2. Contents of presentation
Background: Europeana and related projects
What is EuropeanaConnect
Objectives
Partners
Specific content to be contributed to Europeana
Structure
Achievements

3. Europeana

4. 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

5. 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

6. .

7. 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: Euro
80 % EU funding: Euro

8. Key Objectives
Provide a critical mass of audio content to Europeana and implement an audio-enabling infrastructure
Build the Semantic Layer for Europeana
Facilitate multilingual access to Europeana
Develop novel access channels to Europeana (like mobile access)
Provide tools and methodologies for user-driven development and for testing and evaluation
Build value-added services (like e-Books-on-Demand)
Implement key infrastructure components (like OAI-PMH infrastructure)
Build the Europeana Licensing Framework
Enable stronger and wider collaborative networking

9. Partner Institutions Europeana Foundation, The Hague
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
10 Universities and Academies of Sciences:
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

10. Partner Institutions 7 Research Institutes: 1 Broadcast Company:
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

11. 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

12. Work Structure

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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

20. 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

21. Achievements

22. 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 ( ( 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

23. Audio Aggregation Platform
Virtual exhibition

24. Building the Europeana Semantic Layer
Survey of controlled and structured vocabularies among Europeana data providers 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: Tool documentation is available at

25. 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.

26. 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

27. Mobile client allowing searching Europeana via a mobile device

28. Europeana Licensing Framework
KEY RESULTS:
Contracts regulating the re-use of descriptive metadata: An initial set of Europeana Data Provider and Data Aggregator Agreements ( governing relationships between Europeana and its partners
Europeana Public Domain Charter:
A Public Domain Calculator” was developed
“Terms of use for User Generated Content”, deployed in a key pilot: the collection:

29. Integrating software and services in Europeana
Geographical Information Services (GIS) suite developed to enrich Europeana 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:
Evaluation platform (COMPASS) for the Map Annotation Tool developed:
EoD (eBook-on-Demand) Service, ( 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.

30. Dissemination and Concertation
Project web site:
Dissemination materials (brochures, fact-sheet, poster, ppt, etc.)
Continuous concertation with Europeana
All resources and public project results from
EuropeanaTech (Final Project Conference) new project web site:

31. THANK YOU