Europeana v1.0 Launched
Just back from attending the launch of Europeana v1.0 at the Royal Library in the Hague.Europena v1.0 is a EC-funded project setting up a ‘network’ and is a successor to EDLnet which created the EDL Foundation and the Europeana prototype. Its purpose is to develop an operational Europeana service, solving issues related to this.
The project will involve a number of key stakeholders, including the general public, and that is where we come into the picture.
I was asked to attend and provide input into:
Work package 3 - Further Specification of Functionality and Interoperability aspects of Europeana.
In an interesting session we looked at the ‘Object Model’ that is being developed to represent the data being held in Europeana. It will replace the Dublin Core based data model Europeana has at the moment. We also made suggestions about what kinds of relationships there are between different pieces of content in the system. For example a book might be part of a series or is an edition that replaced an earlier version.
One of the inspiring aspects of Europeana is its focus on getting as much as possible of our cultural material in one place for searching. It has a target of 10 million items by 2010. This will be done in two ‘releases’ - Rhine and Danube. These two names were chosen to represent rivers that flow through most of Europe. I cannot make any comments on the fact that neither flow through the UK!
The kick-off also gave me an opportunity to hear about the ‘Europeana Group’ projects that are feeding content to Europeana:
- Biodiversity Heritage Library;
- EuropeanaLocal;
- ATHENA;
- PrestoPrime;
- EUScreen;
- European Film Gateway (EFG);
- EuropeanaTravel;
- Judeica;
- Archives Portal Europe (APEnet).
Europeana v1.0 will also be define APIs for its data so that it will be possible to use Europeana data in your own applications.
All in all an interesting couple of days.
For more information see the Europeana v1.0 website.
Tags: API, concertation, Europeana v1.0
