Article in IFLA Journal

In this issue of IFLA Journal you can find an article on The European Library, written by the general manager, interoperability (metadata) manager and marketing manager of The European Library.

The paper presents www.TheEuropeanLibrary.org which aggregates the collections of 48 European national libraries into one single portal, promotes the outstanding collections of these libraries and enables users to discover and access a wealth of materials.

Read: “The European Library – gateway to the resources of Europe’s national libraries”

 

European Film Gateway – A Short Intro

Some more information about EFG, one of the projects relating to Europeana – the European digital library, museum and archive:

“EFG – The European Film Gateway is a 3-years project which started on 1st September 2008. It will develop an online portal, providing direct access to about 790.000 digital objects including films, photos, posters, drawings, sound material and text documents.” AND: “The European Film Gateway will be linked to the Europeana portal (…) The participation of the EDL Foundation as a project partner will ensure the appropriate cooperation with Europeana, which the Foundation oversees.” – This is how EFG introduces itself on its website.

The Work Packages have titles such as:

User needs and service requirements

Technical interoperability and access

Content enrichment and semantic interoperability

Service implementation and operation, web platform

IPR management and administration

Legal and organisational governance, sustainability planning

Later this month all partners will meet to attend the kick-off meeting of the project. Speaking of which… The envisioned central access point to film archival content will be created with the help of at least 22 partners and 16 content partners. DRIVER (Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research) will support the creation of the gateway technically. The content will be based both on catalogues as on film content.

The project is co-ordinated by Georg Eckes, project manager at the Deutsches Filminstitut.

This photo of Mister Eckes was taken last April at the international working conference ‘Economies of the Commons – Strategies for Sustainable Access and Creative Reuse of Images and Sounds Online’, The Netherlands (blog where I found this picture)

Further information:

http://www.europeanfilmgateway.eu/index.php

Or you can download Eckes’ EFG presentation which he held at an Econtent information day – NB: it is in German

 

EDL Gets Local and Regional Dimensions

EDLocal – The Start of A New Project

From next week onwards also local and regional cultural institutions from across Europe will work with EDL Foundation. Together they will find ways through which the institutions can easily make their content available to Europeana. Or to use the official terminology – the projects aims to improve the interoperability of the digital content held by these institutions and to make it accessible through the Europeana service of the European Digital Library and to other services.

Okay let’s think about this…All these different institutions hold an enormeous amount of digital resources. In fact, they give access to an amazing amount of material of all types, cultures and languages. And now with EDLocal access will also given via Europeana. Let me give you a figure: EDLocal will make over 20 million items available to Europeana.

A few more details

EDLocal is a so-called ‘Best Practice Network’, an eContentplus project that falls under the digital libraries inititiative. The project will run for three years. It builds on existing multiplier networks of local institutions to bring together a consortium that represents 27 countries with broad ranging experience of the cultural sector, digital libraries, standards and aggregation services.

The expected results include the establishment of a network of regional repositories that are highly interoperable with Europeana, an integrated Europeana-EDLocal prototype service and the development of thematic areas for Europeana services which integrate content from both the national and the local/regional level.

The element of “improving interoperability” entails the use of Europeana’s infrastructures, tools and standards (OAI-PMH repositories and Europeana Metadata Application Profiles initially, but moving forward to semantic web technologies later).

Rob Davies (MDR Partners) is Scientific Coordinator of the EDLocal Best Practice Network. (NB: The photo of mister Davies has been copied from this page)

About “Best Practice Networks“

The EU explains on one of her websites that these networks “should combine a consensus building and awareness raising function with implementation in a real-life context of the solutions discussed. Their main objective is to promote the adoption of standards and specifications for making digital content in Europe more accessible and usable.” Continue reading at the FAQ 2008 page of eContentplus projects