Europeana

History

Europeana, the European digital cultural platform for Europe, has been established in 2008.

The development of the Europeana portal and all related activities are (partly) financed by the European Commission through various funding programmes.

Since its beginning, Europeana has evolved into…
…a SEARCH PORTAL
providing access to over 50 million digital cultural heritage objects,
…an INTERNATIONAL NETWORK
of European cultural heritage experts and
…a PLATFORM
providing access to new technologies and tools for the cultural heritage sector.

Since 2015, Europeana has been funded as an infrastructure for digital services, and finally, in November 2021, the European Commission proposed that Europeana should form the basis for building a common European data space for cultural heritage in Europe!

Objectives

The overall objectives of Europeana are to:

  • empower the cultural heritage sector in its digital transformation
  • develop expertise, tools and policies to embrace digital change and foster innovation
  • make it easier for people to use cultural heritage for education, research, creation and recreation
  • contribute to an open, knowledgeable and creative society

If you are interested in more details about Europeana’s activities, dive into the website Europeana Pro!

Organisational matters

Europeana is made possible by the collaboration of three interlinked expert organisations:

  • The Europeana Foundation (an independent, non-profit organisation that operates the Europeana platform and works with other digital initiatives)
  • The Europeana Network Association (a strong and democratic community of experts working in the field of digital cultural heritage)
  • The Aggregators Forum (the network of national, domain and thematic aggregators who support cultural institutions providing data and content to Europeana.)

Future

The Europeana Initiative is at the heart of the common European data space for cultural heritage, with work to deploy it led by the Europeana Foundation with the support of the Europeana Network Association (ENA) and the Europeana Aggregators’ Forum (EAF), in collaboration with a consortium of 18 partners from nine EU countries. The three pillars of the Europeana Initiative (Europeana Foundation, Europeana Network Association and Europeana Aggregators’ Forum) will steward the data space.
Find here answers to frequent questions regarding the European data space for cultural heritage.

OpenUp! and Europeana

OpenUp! started as a 3-year CIP Best Practice Network (2011-2014), co-funded by participiants and the EU as part of the Information and Communications Technologies Policy Support Programme (ICT-PSP), with the aim of implementing an aggregation pipeline for natural history content to Europeana. Today OpenUp! is an accredited aggregator to Europeana and collects, transforms, and forwards the data of its international partners on a regular basis (three times a year). All OpenUp! services (data mapping, provision and enrichment) are constantly updated and synchronized with Europeana (metadata) developments and quality criteria.

Gerda Koch talking about Europeana in the podcast “Talking about Media 365” (Über Medien reden 365)

This podcast is only available in German.