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EFG is one in a group of projects funded by the European Commission, which have been working towards the development
of Europeana and/or to enhance and extend The European Library.
The Europeana group comprises a number
of projects run by different cultural heritage institutions. Many are part-funded by the European Commission's
eContentplus programme. These projects will be contributing technology solutions
and content that will create and sustain the fully operational Europeana.eu.
The European Library, managed by CENL, is a free service that offers access to the resources of the 48 national
libraries of Europe in 35 languages. Resources are both digital and bibliographical (books, posters, maps, sound
recordings, videos, etc.). Currently The European Library gives access to 150 million entries across Europe but this
amount is constantly increasing.
The European Library has been officially acknowledged by the European Commission as the organisational structure for
Europeana. Europeana –
the European digital library, museum and archive is a prototype portal offering users direct access to more
than 12 million digital objects, including film material, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books,
newspapers and archival papers. The portal was launched on 20 November 2008 by Viviane Reding, at that time European Commissioner for Information Society and
Media, in Brussels. Europeana is a Thematic Network funded by the European Commission under the eContentplus Programme.
Below are a few examples of the related projects. The full list of projects from the Europeana group can be found here.
Arrow
ARROW, the acronym for Accessible Registries of Rights Information and Orphan Works towards
Europeana, is a project of a consortium of European national libraries, publishers and collective
management organisations, also representing writers – working through their main European
associations and a number of national organisations – which was launched in November 2008 and
will last for 30 months.
ARROW is one of the projects selected among 102 ones presented in 2007 at the European
Commissions eContentplus Programme which seeks to help make digital content in Europe more
accessible, usable and exploitable.
EUscreen
The EUscreen project aims to promote the use of television content to explore Europe's rich and diverse cultural
history. It will create access to over 30,000 items of programme content and information, and by developing a
number of interactive functionalities and dynamic links with Europeana it will prove valuable to the widest range
of cultural, educational and recreational users. EUscreen started in October 2009 and the project consortium, which
includes 27 partner institutions from around Europe, is being co-ordinated by Utrecht University.
KEEP
Started on 1 February 2009 with a duration of three years, the project will develop an Emulation Access Platform
to enable accurate rendering of both static and dynamic digital objects: text, sound, and image files; multimedia
documents, websites, databases, videogames etc. The overall goal of the project is to facilitate universal access
to cultural heritage by developing flexible tools for accessing and storing a wide range of digital objects.
The project is funded under the Seventh
Framework Programme of the European Commission.
PrestoPRIME
The project started in January 2009 and will last until June 2012. PrestoPRIME will research and develop practical solutions for the long-term preservation of digital media objects, programmes and collections, and find ways to increase access by integrating the media archives with European on-line digital libraries in a digital preservation framework. This will result in a range of tools and services, delivered through a networked Competence Centre.
OTHER RELATED PROJECTS
Images for the Future
The project aims to save a unique part of the audiovisual heritage of the Netherlands through conservation and digitisation. It will observe maximum accessibility to the audiovisual material for the targeted user groups: educational institutions, the general public, and the creative sector. To reach this goal, Images for the Future is developing and offering innovative services and applications. The project funded by the Netherlands Fund for the reinforcement of Economic Structure was kicked off in July 2007 and has a lifetime of seven years.
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