Is there a publicly available list of provider names?
There is a list of contributors on the partners page of the Europeana.eu portal. The name of an institution appears on this list only once there is some data ingested. Institutions which have not yet finished submitting data don't appear on this list.
What does Europeana do if the aggregator is only temporary (i.e. for the duration of a project)?
The name of the current aggregator should still be entered in the data. Ongoing developments in the Europeana CRM system should allow us to connect a new name to existing data when necessary.
Why does the data provider name not show in the search results page in the Content Checker?
In the Content Checker the new ESE elements do not display exactly as they do in the live portal.
• In the Content Checker the Data Provider name appears in the full record only. In the Europeana portal it also appears above the Provider name in the search results view.
• The value in europeana:rights apears only as a plain text value in the Content Checker but in the Portal it will appear as a link and have a corresponding symbol under the full view of the record.
The decision to release ESE v3.3 while there was this mismatch in display was due to the amount of time it would have required to make these final adjustments to the current version of he Content Checker.
Portal
Europeana stipulates there should be only one "click" between the portal and the object. If content providers use an unusual image format which requires a plug-in, with an intermediate page to give users this information, this adds an extra "click" between the portal and the content. Is this acceptable?
If a second click is required in order to alert a user to the need for a plug-in, that is acceptable
In how many languages can content providers search Europeana?
Europeana can be searched in the languages of the ingested metadata. Metadata is ingested and indexed in the language in which it is provided. So for example, if a title is provided in Greek it will be indexed in Greek and a query in Greek will find that term in Greek. Neither the metadata nor the query terms are translated.
Providers may send metadata in more than one language if they wish.
Therefore, the number of languages that can be used to search Europeana is the number of languages represented in the ingested metadata. This is currently 26 languages.
Digital Objects
How does Europeana count the number of objects? For example, does a digitised book of 300 pages count as one object or 300?
Europeana counts the number of records. So if there are 300 pages to which you can navigate on the local site but only one record in Europeana it will count as one object.
What is the best level of granularity for objects to be submitted to Europeana?
The granularity should be a) at a level that is meaningful for a user and b) it should have a metadata record that relates to that level. For example, there is no point in providing a link to a page in the middle of a book if there is no meaningful metadata explaining the context and giving some information about that page.
What is a "digital object"? For example, museum descriptions are so rich they could be regarded as digital objects in their own right even though they have no digital "image" to accompany the description. They are essentially very full metadata records. What is the policy about including such objects?
Europeana is focusing on giving access to the digital version of physical objects held in museums and elsewhere rather than digital information about these objects. Such descriptions are not therefore considered as digital objects in the context of Europeana at the moment.
Europeana Semantic Elements (ESE)
How can content providers use ESE to give an indication of a broader historical context of an object? For example: a) to indicate that a particular instrument represented the shift towards the use of high technology in chemistry or b) that a particular essay by James Joule was fundamental to the work of Helmholtz in developing his concept of energy.
ESE does not easily allow the expression of the semantics given in these examples in the metadata. The data model that is under development for a later release of the portal should allow this kind of connection to be made, and the means of achieving it is currently being prototyped.
Until this more sophisticated model is available this kind of historical information could be put into a dc:description element. Alternatively (or indeed, additionally), a dc:relation element could be used to provide the URL of the related object from the described object. This would create the link but not state the nature of the connection.
When should we start providing data in ESE v3.3 format and what will happen to older data submitted in ESE v3.2?
You can start submitting ESE v3.3 data immediately. Older data will be unaffected by the changes and can be updated to v3.3 as part of a reharvesting schedule using the usual communication channels via your Project Co-ordinator or the Content Mailbox Content@KB.nl
Why have you released ESE v3.3 when you plan to implement to EDM in future?
ESE v3.3 has been released in response to two requirements from the Europeana partner network and will be implemented during the current Rhine implementation of the the portal. The requirements are:
1) The need to include the name of the data provider as well as the name of the aggregator.
2) The need to include well defined rights statements concerning the copyright status and availability of digital objects found through the portal.
In addition, there is a recommendation to include xm:lang attributes where possible to support possible multi-lingual developments in the future.
The two new elements elements are optional in the current portal implementation but will eventually become mandatory when it is considered that providers are in a position to supply them. ESE data will be migrated to EDM when that is implemented in the Danube release in January 2011.
Should data still be provided to Europeana in ESE now that EDM has been published?
ESE v3.3 is the metadata format currently implemented in the Rhine portal. EDM will be implemented in the Danube release starting in January 2011. The transition from ESE to EDM will take place very gradually, over a period of several months starting in January 2011. Europeana will be migrating the current ESE data in the portal to EDM and attempting to enrich it. There will then be a programme to go back to providers to see if a richer EDM set can be supplied and ingested.
The Rights Guidlines say the Europeana will supply some tools to support selection of licenses, rights statements and public domain values for the europeana:rights element. Where can these tools be found?
There will be two tools to support choosing these values. Both are planned to be part of the Danube Programme and are therefore only in test or beta stage at the moment:
a) the License Selection Tool will help to identify an appropriate license or Rights Statement for an object. This will be integrated in the SIP Creator tool that is under development as part of the ingestion workflow for Danube. The test version is accesible but the appearance is not finalised and it is not fully stable. http://test.kl.nl/europeana/license_selection_tool/License_Selection_Tool.html
b) the Public Domain Calculator will step through the process of deciding if an object is in the Public Domain. The beta development version is available to test but it cannot be relied upon to be correct at the moment and it may not work on all platforms. http://test.kl.nl/europeana/PDCalculator/PDCalculator.html
XML Schema
Who should content providers contact for information about the XML schema?
How frequently does Europeana harvest data? Content providers may receive a few hundred new records a day.
The regular import pattern needs to be agreed between each Aggregator and Europeana: it will depend on the frequency, type (addition/deletion/change) and volumes of updates occurring on the Aggregator's side. As part of the planning each Aggregator should send to Europeana an estimation of those update aspects. Europeana will evaluate them against machine and human resources capacity, prioritise and integrate in the overall Europeana ingestion planning.
Thumbnails
What kind of thumbnails should text, video and audio have? Should it be a scan of the cover of the publication (book cover, record cover etc)? Or should audio and video have a preview that would play when the mouse pointer is hovered over it?
At the moment all thumbnails in the portal are images and they do not trigger any functionality. It is the choice of the provider what image they provide - a book or record cover is suitable but an image from elsewhere in the object can be chosen if it is thought to be more interesting or representative of the content of the object.
What size and format should thumbnails be?
Details of the thumbnails can be found in the document here
Is it acceptable to provide a thumbnail image that has a digital watermark on it?
In order to offer a good user experience, Europeana does not accept thumbnail images that contain a visible digital watermark.
Identifiers
Is Europeana coordinating a system of identifiers for submitted publications that could be used in place of DOI for example? If not, is such a system being planned for the future?
Europeana uses a custom system of identifiers for ingested data. Note that Europeana does not ingest publications, only the metadata, so the identifier is for the record, not the publication.
Another more standard mechanism will be adopted in future such as Purl, Ark, URN DOI etc but it has not yet been decided which technology will be adopted.
Moving to ESE v3.4
Will we have to start sending data in ESE v3.4 immediately?
There will be a transitional period when Europeana will accept both ESEv 3.3 and well as ESEv3.4. The date when this period ends will be announced well ahead of the date. We encourage providers to adopt the requirements of ESE v3.4 as soon as possible to support the improvements in the quality of the data in the portal.
Why are you moving to ESE3.4 now when you are in the process of changing to EDM?
ESE is a subset of EDM and several of its elements are critical to the functioning of the Europeana Portal. These quality improvements will have a positive effect on future EDM implemenation.
ESE is a subset of EDM so what effect will this have on the EDM specification?
These changes will be incorporated in EDM in the next release anticipated in mid-May.
When will the Content Checker V2.0 be available?
The Ingestion Team is currently in the process of acceptance testing but the date for release is not yet known.
The Aggregator's Handbook:
a practical guide to adding content to Europeana for prospective and current aggregators
