The document discusses the development and role of Europeana as a digital library and aggregation platform, emphasizing its evolution since 2005 and its significance in connecting various datasets across Europe. It outlines the collaborative efforts behind Europeana's content curation, including contributions from multiple organizations and crowd-sourcing initiatives. Future developments include creating a Europeana Cloud infrastructure to facilitate better metadata handling and access for research purposes while promoting non-commercial use.

1. Europeana in a research context
Alastair Dunning, @alastairdunning
The European Library / Europeana Foundation
Mining Digital Repositories Conference
National Library of Netherlands, April 2014

2. Oxyrhynchus
Papyrus No. 20
Fragment of
Homer's The Iliad,
2nd century
Common Era
British Library,
London
Image via
Wikimedia
Commons

3. Metadata record
for Oxyrhynchus
Papyrus No. 20
(numbered 742)
from British
Library, London

4. Metadata record
for Oxyrhynchus
Papyrus No. 20
from University of
Oxford

5. Tool for
transcribing
Oxyrhynchus
Papyrus from
Ancient Lives
project

6. Tool for
measuring
Oxyrhynchus
Papyrus from
Ancient Lives
project

7. Discussion
Forum
Oxyrhynchus
Papyri from
Ancient Lives
project

8. Images
Hi-res TIFF – British
Library
JPEG – University of
Oxford
Full-text
Multiple
transcriptions –
Ancient Lives
Project
Metadata
Version 1 – British
Library
Version 2– University
of Oxford
Version 3 – Ancient
Lives
Unstructured
Commentary
Ancient Lives Project

9. The richness of this
information is created
by many parties, but it
sits in different places,
took many projects to
make happen and still is
not fully connected.

10. Europeana as a data
brain, helping connect
disparate datasets
Rather than Europeana
as end-user facing portal

11. 2005 A letter to the European Commission from 6 Heads of State (from
France, Poland, Germany, Italy, Spain and Hungary) suggests the creation of
a European digital library.
2007 The European Digital Library Network - EDLnet - begins to create a
prototype, funded by i2010.
2008 Europeana's prototype is launched on 20 November.
2009 Europeana's collection reaches 5 million items.
2010 A European Parliament report approved in February asks for more
content and funding for Europeana. It is unanimously approved.
2012 Europeana releases all metadata under a CC0 waiver, making it freely
available for re-use. Europeana’s collection reaches 25 million items.
2013 Europeana continues to further its position as a catalyst for innovation
and digital enterprise in support of the Digital Agenda of Europe - one of the
pillars of the EU’s Europe 2020 strategy

12. How does Europeana get its content?
 Through its aggregation structure, Europeana represents 2,300
organisations across Europe
 From 150 Aggregators
• Promoting national aggregation structures
• More efficient than working with every individual content provider
• Helps to achieve international standardisation
 End-user generated content
• Crowd-sourcing projects such as Europeana 1914-1918 and
Europeana 1989

13. Who submits data to Europeana?
Domain Aggregators National initiatives
Audiovisual
collections
National Aggregators
Regional Aggregators
Archives
Thematic collections
Libraries
e.g. Musées
Lausannois
e.g.
Culture
Grid,
Culture.fr
e.g. The
European
Library
e.g. APEX
e.g. EUScreen,
European Film
Gateway
e.g. Judaica Europeana,
Europeana Fashion

14. The evolution is to Europeana Cloud : a
infrastructure for aggregators and data
providers.
 This would allow members
of Europeana Cloud to:
1.Upload metadata
2.Define who can use that
metadata and in what ways
(download, annotate, delete)
3.Give third parties access
via APIs
4. Capability for sharing
content also feasible

15. Development of Europeana
as portal not platform
Cloud
infrastructure sits
at heart of this
“Portals are for
visiting, platforms
are for building on”

16. Europeana Labs as a
platform for the creative
industries
Europeana Research as a
platform for humanities,
social sciences

17. Europeana Research will not be a
single discovery portal; however at
it will offer researchers access to
APIs and downloadable to „raw data‟
stored in Europeana Cloud
Third parties can build their own
specific tools using these APIs or
downloadable data

18. Europeana Research will give access
to data that can only be used in a
non-commercial context
Europeana Research will have open
APIs to allow bi-directional access
(read, write) to metadata in
Europeana Cloud (dependent on
permissions)

19. Pilot Study 1:
Tool to search
through
Europeana (and
other content)
related to
philosophy of
logic
http://greenlearningnetw
ork.com/axiom/

20. Pilot Study 2:
Musicologists‟
tool to annotate
early music
manuscripts from
disparate sources
(Work in Progress)

21. Other Possibilities
Service and end-user tool to allow for
transcription of multiple documents
aggregated from multiple sources
Service to allow for extraction of geographic
or other terms from aggregation of services
Aggregation of text documents for download
for text mining

22. Text Mining Opportunties
Aggregation of corpora of primary sources, with
harmonized licencing
Versioning corpora of primary sources
Enrichment of corpora via third-party tools
Brokerage of in-copyright material for non-commerical
usage ? (Primary and secondary sources)
Ability to upload algorithms / software ?

23. Cons
Lack of maturity in research
community in building APIs
Time taken for tool
development
Quality and extent of
underlying data still essential
Still needs engagement with
research communities / tools
builders
Pros
Europeana leverages its
aggregation network to provide
single access point to data
Tools can be built to help
specific questions for
researchers
Responsibility for sustainability
and outreach are distributed
Works very well for time-limited
projects
Europeana licencing framework
provides standards for access to
data

24. Thank you
Alastair Dunning, @alastairdunning