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The European Library

www.theeuropeanlibrary.org

Alastair Dunning, Programme Manager@alastairdunning, alastair.dunning@kb.nl

RLUK Conference, Newcastle November 2012

europeana ict-psp programmethe european libraryopen airemanuscriptorium

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put your hands up if ...Text

carareapexconnecting europe facilityeu digital agendaese / edm

europeana ict-psp programmethe european libraryopen airemanuscriptorium

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put your hands up if ...Text

carareapexconnecting europe facilityeu digital agendaese / edm

europeana ict-psp programmethe european libraryopen airemanuscriptorium

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put your hands up if ...Text

carareapexconnecting europe facilityeu digital agendaese / edm

previously worked at jisc, as programme manager for the content teamdid not know much about the ‘european scene’

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was perhaps a smidgen innocent. i had no hands up.

euro headlines

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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 ?

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and all these names ... !

europeana. the european digital library.the european library.

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europeana. the european digital librarythe european library.

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european film gateway europeana insideeuropeana fashioneuropeana cheese

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helpful list of europeana projects - Pro Europeana website

let me explain.

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

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

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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

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Europeana

Libraries

Museums

Film & Sound

Archives

ArchaeologicalHeritage

OtherCulturalHeritage

National Aggregator

National Aggregator

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

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!!

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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

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

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Europeana

TheEuropeanLibrary

CultureGrid (UK)

National Aggregator

British Library

Belgian National LibraryBNF

and another43 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.

various projects have supported it since the late 1990s.

it brought european national libraries together via cenl *

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funded and governed by national libraries

it created a shared european catalogue.

the european library acted as the forerunner of europeana

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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.

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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.

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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

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regia - medieval manuscripts

arrow - tracing copyright owners

research libraries - bringing research libraries into the european library

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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an opportunity to highlight the collecting institution as well.

this is the rationale for abes*, the french library consortium.

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a method of participating in EU projects

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the ‘connecting europe facility’ aims to provide 300m in funding for the europeana eco-system from 2014 - 2020 (*)

significant funding for digital library projects

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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

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

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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

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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

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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 ?

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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