Europeana Openings: Promoting & Sharing European Cultural Heritage

The first time I've heard about Europeana was in a Gordon Cook's presentation. He was explaining how Internet can be exploited to help people experience foreign cultures without travelling by allowing access to digital forms of cultural items. As is always the case, it is not a matter of technology rather a matter of determination, political will and solving the intellectual property rights riddle.

Europeana - the European digital library, museum and archive - is a 2-year project that began in July 2007. It will produce a prototype website giving users direct access to some 2 million digital objects, including film material, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books, newspapers and archival papers.

The idea emerged on September 30th, 2005 when the European Commission published the i2010: communication on digital libraries, and announced its strategy to promote and support the creation of a European Digital Library, as a strategic goal within the European Information Society i2010 Initiative, which aims to foster growth and jobs in the information society and media industries. As stated by the European Commission, the overall goal of the European digital library is to make European information resources easier and more interesting to use in an on-line environment. It will build on Europe's rich heritage combining multicultural and multilingual environments with technological advances and new business models.

Europeana was launched the 20th of November and the response from the internet users was immense averaging at 10 millions hits per hour and eventually bringing the site down! José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission saluted the launch of European in a special event held in Brussels yesterday.

Another headline service made possible by visionary minds and broadband connectivity!

Also posted on broadbandprime.blogspot.com