EC Reflection Group on digitisation seeks views on boosting cultural heritage online
August 20, 2010 1:20 PM

The European Commission's Reflection Group ("Comité des Sages") on digitisation launched on 18 August 2010 a consultation on how best to foster the online presence of cultural heritage. As Europe's creative and cultural sectors undergo a revolutionary transition, innovative solutions are needed to keep up with technological advances and reap their full benefits. The Commission has asked the Reflection Group to look at how best to speed up the digitisation, online accessibility and preservation of cultural works across Europe. Contributions to this consultation will feed into the recommendations the Group will make before the end of the year (see IP/10/456).

The consultation is available at http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/ipm/forms/dispatch?form=comitedessages and will run until 30 September 2010.

 

By Europeana Info
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A richer data model for Europeana
August 13, 2010 3:05 PM

The Europeana Data Model (EDM) – a new way of structuring data that will bring the benefits of Semantic Web technology to Europeana.eu – has just been published.

The release of the EDM indicates a qualitative change in the way Europeana will deal with metadata gathered from content providers. It will open up the possibility for browsing Europeana in new and revealing ways which are not possible with the current Europeana Semantic Elements data model.

For example, the EDM will allow a digital object from one provider to be shown alongside a relevant article about the object or a thesaurus offered by other institutions, offering more context and information for users.

Once Europeana starts receiving content formatted using the EDM next year, it will also enable the use of linked data, which allows connections to be made between search terms. With linked data, a search for the "Virgin Mary" could lead to results not just for that single term, but also to objects labelled as "Mary, Mother Of Christ", "the Blessed Virgin" or "Heilige Maria".

Developed by members of Europeana v1.0, EuropeanaConnect and experts from academic and cultural circles, the EDM has been validated by technical specialists at libraries, museums, archives and audio-visual collections. This group will continue to make refinements to the EDM over the coming months, as testing is carried out between now and January 2011. The EDM is backwardly compatible with ESE, and will start to be used by data providers during 2011.   

The EDM Primer and the Definition of the EDM Elements are in the Technical Documents section of the v1.0 website.

By Europeana Info
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Greek Library Receives $1 Million Award
August 12, 2010 3:29 PM
The Veria Central Public Library – a contributor to Europeana.eu – has received a $1 million award for its creative use of information and technology services.
 
The 2010 Access to Learning Award was presented by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and will be used to help the Veria Library expand its network, upgrade its IT infrastructure and increase its reach through websites and social networking.
 
The Veria Library was the first in Greece to provide free access to computers and, in 1997, to have its own website. It also helped over 60 Greek public libraries develop their own websites.
 
“It’s a testament to Veria’s ingenuity that such a small library in the mountainous region of Northern Greece is paving the way for its users and for others who can and have learned from its innovative use of technology and exciting programs,” said Deborah Jacobs, director of the Global Libraries initiative for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

See works from the Veria Central Public Library on Europeana.
 
By Europeana Info
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Event Updates July & August 2010
August 11, 2010 4:12 PM

 

76th IFLA General Conference and Assembly, 9. -13. August, Goetheborg, Sweden
IFLA's World Library and Information Congress which is also the IFLA General Conference and Assembly is traditionally held annually in varying parts of the globe. This year the event will be hosted in the Swedish Exhibition and Congress Centre, Gothenburg and will focus on all aspects of the open access to knowledge.
 
Steffen Hennicke, a member of EuropeanaConnect and Europeana v1.0 projects, will present a joint paper of a Europeana v1.0 WP3 team on the new Europeana Data Model (EDM) on the last conference day.<<More>>
 
11th ISMIR Conference, 9.-13. August 2010, Utrecht, the Netherlands
The annual International Society for Music Information Retrieval conference is the premier international forum for those working on organizing and accessing digital musical material. The ISMIR event reflects the tremendous recent growth of available music-related data and the consequent need to search within it to retrieve music and musical information efficiently and effectively.
 

MIMO (Musical Instrument Museums Online), a member of Europeana project group, will be highlighted by Ignace de Keyser from the Africamuseum in Tervuren on the last event day.<<More>>

 
Judaica Europeana Digital Humanities Workshop, 30 July 2010, Ravenna, Italy
The event is hosted by the University of Bologna and will be sponsored byCOST Action 32 Open Scholarly Communities on the Web. It will address Jewish studies scholars and present the tools that are most frequently used on the WEB as well as some specific new tools developed during the Action COST A32, "Open Scholarly Communities on the WEB" in order to facilitate scholars’ research activities. <<More >>
 
IX Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies, 25. -29. July, Ravenna, Italy
The main theme “Judaism in the Mediterranean context” will be elaborated in 16 sections covering ancient to contemporary Jewish history, languages and arts. Congress participants will be also able to visit an Exhibition of Judaica at the Biblioteca Classense and see Hebrew manuscripts held in this Library, including some fragments of Medieval Hebrew manuscripts in parchment, reused to bind books, which were found in the city. <<More>>
 
Cologne Conference on Interoperability and Semantics in Knowledge Organization, 19. – 20. July 2010, Cologne, Germany

Antoine Isaac, Europeana's scientific coordinator and researcher at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, will give a presentation about “A semantic web view on concepts and their alignments – from specific library cases to a wider linked data perspective” on the first event day. <<More>>

By Europeana Info
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