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The European
Library
www.theeuropeanlibrary.org
Alastair Dunning,
Programme Manager
@alastairdunning, alastair.dunning@kb.nl
RLUK Conference, Newcastle
November 2012

3. europeana
ict-psp programme
the european library
open aire
manuscriptorium
3
put your hands up if ...
Text
carare
apex
connecting europe facili
eu digital agenda
ese / edm

4. europeana
ict-psp programme
the european library
open aire
manuscriptorium
3
put your hands up if ...
Text
carare
apex
connecting europe facili
eu digital agenda
ese / edm

5. europeana
ict-psp programme
the european library
open aire
manuscriptorium
3
put your hands up if ...
Text
carare
apex
connecting europe facili
eu digital agenda
ese / edm

6. previously worked at jisc, as programme
manager for the content team
did not know much about the ‘european
scene’
4
was perhaps a smidgen innocent. i had no
hands up.

7. euro headlines
5

8. um, does it not say alastair dunning,
europeana on the agenda ? do you not
work in the europeana offices in the
national library of the netherlands ?
6

9. and all these names ... !
europeana.
the european digital library.
the european library.
7

10. europeana.
the european digital library
the european library.
8

11. european film gateway
europeana inside
europeana fashion
europeana cheese
9
helpful list of
europeana
projects - Pro
Europeana
website

12. let me explain.
10

13. sidenote: anyone
naming an online
resource should
read Claire
Warwick et al;
What's in a Name ?
(2006)
11

14. europeana is at the centre of a large
ecosystem of european, national projects,
services and aggregators.
12

15. each of these projects and aggregators
collect metadata relating to ‘european
cultural heritage’.
the metadata is mapped to the europeana
data model (edm) and then harvested by
europeana
13

16. Europeana
Libraries
Museums
Film & Sound
Archives
Archaeological
Heritage
Other
Cultural
Heritage
National
Aggregator
National
Aggregator

17. allegedly, the original idea of europeana
was to provide a european version of
google.
15

18. !!
16

19. while europeana maintains a shiny portal,
its focus is really on its CC0 linked data
store and its apis.
it is part of the eu digital agenda to
promote creativity and growth
17

20. but it needs to maintain the ecosystem that
aggregates the metadata (and, in the
future, content) .
18

21. Europ
The
European
Library
Culture
Grid (UK)
National
Aggregato
British Library
Belgian National LibraryBNF
and another
43 national libraries
University of Oxford
Trinity College Dublin
and metadata from
another 17 research libraries

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the european library, part of this
ecosystem, is actually a little older.

23. various projects have supported it since the
late 1990s.
it brought european national libraries
together via cenl *
21

24. funded and governed by national libraries
it created a shared european catalogue.
the european library acted as the
forerunner of europeana
22

25. the european library aggregates and
makes the bibliographic datasets of the 48
national libraries interoperable.
it also ingests metadata for digitised
content
clustering workflow identifies similar works.
the combined dataset is enriched via viaf*
and other sources.
23

26. the european library offers a portal to
search this european bibliography
its api gives access to the content.
an open dataset will be released as CC0
early next year.
the european library works on several
projects as well.
24

27. cendari - tracing local archives, libraries
related to ww1 and medieval era
newspapers - aggregating full text of
historic newspapers
diggicore - tracing citations in full text of
OA repositories
25

28. regia - medieval manuscripts
arrow - tracing copyright owners
research libraries - bringing research
libraries into the european library
26

29. cloud - building an infrastructure to share
and enrich metadata and content
ability for research community to build tools on
top of this content
building a research ‘view’ on content not just
from libraries but other cultural heritage
institutions as well.
27

30. the focus has been on metadata from
national libraries
but the european library is now beginning
to work with research libraries to do similar
things
aggregate metadata / make it available in
different ways / work on projects
28

31. the european library has been in informal
discussion with rluk about membership
individual research libraries can join as
members
much more cost-efficient for consortia to
join
29

32. an opportunity to share metadata on all
kinds of content, in different formats
an opportunity to expose hidden
collections metadata / and digitised
collections.
increasingly, a chance to aggregate full text
with the new research possibilities this
offers
30

33. an opportunity to highlight the collecting
institution as well.
this is the rationale for abes*, the french
library consortium.
31

34. a method of participating in EU projects
32

35. the ‘connecting europe facility’ aims to
provide 300m in funding for the europeana
eco-system from 2014 - 2020 (*)
significant funding for digital library
projects
33

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the european library has significant expertise in
preparing and executing project proposals
the 2013 psp-ict programme will also have
funding for digital libraries

38. chance to build on ‘hidden collections’
report
retro-cataloguing can be unattractive to
funders
but the technologies to create and
enhance metadata are more likely to be
funded
a pan-european approach to projects is
also attractive to other funders
36

39. but the technologies to create and
enhance metadata are more likely to be
funded
a pan-european approach to projects is
also attractive to other funders
37

40. to conclude
the european library has a specific role in
aggregating / presenting / distributing
sharing, enrich metadata and content at an
international level
via both its services and project
38

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But the focus has been on
• 48 National Libraries
• Bibliographic data
• Europeana Libraries project (2011-2)
began working with research libraries
and research content
• How do we include Research
Libraries at a service level ?

44. 42
New(ish) forms created in digital research
libraries
• Research datasets
• OA journal articles (and monographs)
• Digitisation of special collections
• Theses
• Mass book digitisation
• Grey literature
• Digitised special collections (and
descriptions)
• Open Educational Resources

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Plenty of other significant players in this
field
• OCLC World Cat
• Google Book Search
• Google Scholar
• Microsoft Research
• Hathi Trust
• arXiv, Cessda, PubMed Central, DARIAH
• Open-AIRE (Driver), BASE

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Special Collections
 “… as non unique and common research
material becomes more accessible online, often
without the need for library mediation (e.g.
Google Books), the salience of Unique and
Distinctive Collections grows stronger still.
They can attract researchers and research
funding, and enhance the institution’s extramural
reputation … a valuable asset.”
 http://www.rluk.ac.uk/files/UDC%20Project%20Plan%20revised%20post%20Board%2011%20Oct.pdf (RLUK
Unique and Distinctive Collections Project)

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Special Collection
descriptions
“To be used effectively Unique and Distinctive
Collections must be visible and their contents
discoverable. Their existence needs to be
promoted. Collection level descriptions need to
be widely disseminated. At item level full online
cataloguing is usually essential; often more
detailed indexing may be necessary in the case
of specialist materials and discovery of content.”
 http://www.rluk.ac.uk/files/UDC%20Project%20Plan%20revised%20post%20Board%2011%20Oct.pdf (RLUK
Unique and Distinctive Collections Project)

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Special Collection
descriptions
 Many collections are not known to networks of
research communities
 TEL can provide a point for item and collection
descriptions of special collections
 Can do this within a European context, ie shared
with similar collection descriptions of other
libraries
 Provides greater institutional awareness as well

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Digitised Collections
 However, descriptions not enough … access to
full-text (or digitised item) is taken as the norm.
 Therefore, where materials are digitised, TEL
offers opportunity to aggregate on a large scale
 Not just special collections - books and
newspapers
 Again, this can help with discovery and provide
link back to original library
 Two examples – manuscripts / newspapers

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Digitised Collections
 Aggregations of full text also give opportunity for
new research uses
 Digital Humanities are galvanised by existence
of such corpora
 Multiple methodologies in linguistics, geography,
literature, history to exploit such text
 Related opportunities for enriching texts –
annotation, entity recognition, crowdsourcing etc.
 Working with research libraries, TEL can provide
aggregation
 Developing relationship with related projects

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A European research platform
 Europeana Cloud project (2013-5) puts
some of this into practice
• Ability for contributing partners to share and
retrieve content within a common space (‘a
cloud’)
• Ability for research community to build tools
on top of this content
• Europeana Research platform, led by TEL
 Utilising Europeana networks and position
as part of ‘Connecting Europe Facility’

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 But special collections are far from a
library’s only contents.
 TEL will aggregate any metadata from
research library.
 Exposing aggregated data as linked data
and via an API
 Exposing data via other sources (EBSCO,
ProQuest, ExLibris)
 Aggregating full text also feasible

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 Opportunity to create links between
different formats from different sources –
digitised book and OA article
 Opportunity to create ‘views’ specific for
different subject areas, particularly
humanities and social sciences
 Exploring relationship between citation
patterns (DiggiCore project)
 Dependent on further work on metadata
development and semantic enrichment

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In practice …
 Sustainability ... Inviting Research
Libraries to join TEL
 Exposing / linking to their metadata /
content / institutional holdings
 Asking Research Libraries via CERL and
LIBER to contribute to TEL strategy
 Exploiting the aggregation of digitised
material – not just bibliographic records
 Development of Europeana Cloud project
 A Europeana Research platform