Europeana-UK Conference Great Success
Last Friday Collections Trust hosted the first Europeana-UK Conference at the Commonwealth Club in London.
The conference was part of programme of national events being held within the work of the ATHENA which is one of the Europeana Group projects. ATHENA is funded under the eContentplus programme, a multiannual European Community programme to make digital content in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable.
About 60 people from all over the UK attended the conference whose aim was to give them an update on the progress of Europeana and to inform them on where to go to contribute in the UK.
The day kicked off with a presentation by Neil Sandford on:
This looked at what funding is available and how to go about bidding for it. In particular it addressed the pitfalls you must avoid.
Next came a couple of presentations on Europeana. One from Jill Cousins, Director of Europeana, on:
This gave an overview of the functionality of Europeana and preview of future plans.
The second presentation was from Go Sugimoto, Interoperability Manager, on:
Metadata Preparation for Europeana V1.0
Here technical aspects were covered
Just before lunch there were a series of short presentations from representatives from a selection of Europeana Group projects:
Mary Rowlatt, MDR Partners - EuropeanaLocal
Paul Ayris, LIBER - EuropeanaTravel
Andy O’Dwyer, BBC - PrestoPRIME & Video Active
Rob Turnock, Royal Holloway, University of London - EUscreen
Each of these gave an overview of the project and highlighted the key aspects of the project’s work.
After lunch I gave a presentation on:
Here I gave an overview of the project and shared some of the results of the standards survey we carried out.
Next we had an example of best practise in the UK from Tanya Szrajber, Head of Documentation, British Museum on:
British Museum Collections Online
The last presentation was from Nick Poole, CEO of Collections Trust who covered the:
This included our role both within the UK and in relationship with Europeana.
The last segment of the day was a panel session with some of the speakers which covered such questions as:
What is the biggest mistake that can be made when bidding for European funding?
What evidence is there for the ways in which users wish to use cultural content?
How can the UK benefit more from the European programmes for digital libraries?
What is the first technical step to contribute your content to Europeana?
How do you see aggregation in Europe working?
So did the conference succeed in its objectives? I think so. I gave a great overview of the current state of the art. From the front I could see furious scribblings into notepads at times!
Finally, I was approached by a number of delegates asking how their content could be gotten into Europeana - Job Done!
