WW1 roadshow in Vienna

Vienna, 22 July 2014

This year sees the 100th anniversary of the start of World War One. To mark this event, the crowdsourcing project Europeana 1914-1918 is collecting private memorabilia throughout Europe and making it all available in a public digital archive. More than 10,000 contributions with roughly 130,000 digital objects from 20 countries can already be researched at www.europeana1914-1918.eu. Now the project is coming to Austria for the first time, and everyone is invited to add Austrian history. Europeana is also launching a new, virtual world war exhibition using works owned by the Austrian National Library (ÖNB).

After more than 130 roadshows in Europe, a crowdsourcing event will now be held in Vienna on 1 August 2014 at the ORF RadioKulturhaus. This offers individuals the chance to take part in Europeana 1914-1918 with photographs, letters, field postcards, diaries, films, sound recordings or everyday objects and their stories. All of the contributions are professionally digitised at the roadshow, and added to the online archive with relevant information. The originals are immediately returned to their owners. This creates a unique, pan-European archive with memorabilia from World War One.

Europeana 1914-1918 Roadshow in Vienna
When: Friday, 1 August 2014, 10am until 6pm
Where: ORF RadioKulturhaus, Argentinierstraße 30a, 1040 Vienna

Ad Pollé, project manager at Europeana, explains the significance of the initiative: ´The success of the project underlines the great interest Europeans have in their common history. People pass on their stories within their families, and with Europeana they now have an opportunity to safeguard them for future generations and make them publicly accessible. Europeana offers a new type of access to cultural history because it links family stories with official remembrances of war events that we can research in national libraries and archives. So for the first time it is now possible to explore and compare many different private testimonies from the war period throughout Europe. The internet also facilitates cross-generation dialogue and debate regarding one’s own and others’ family histories.´

The Austrian national public service broadcaster (ORF) is part of and a partner of Europeana within the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). At the Vienna roadshow on 1 August, the ORF Archive will be supporting the crowdsourcing project as the local partner, helping with organisation and implementation. The digital copies will subsequently also be available to ORF for its programmes.

Herbert Hayduck, head of the ORF Archive: ´This year the ORF is focusing closely on evaluating and presenting the historical events surrounding World War One. To this end, the ORF Archive, the country’s electronic memory, is carrying out research and re-processing historical sources of materials in cooperation with the editorial staff at ORF. This is why we are delighted to be supporting the Vienna roadshow - because it provides an opportunity to collect private historical testimonies directly in an innovative manner, and make them public. We are building yet another bridge to the ORF audience.’

Digital cultural heritage
Europeana 1914-1918 is the most comprehensive European collection of original documents from World War One; institutions and private individuals from 20 European countries have contributed to this virtual collection so far. The impressive number of 400,000 documents from 10 national libraries, 660 hours of film material from 21 European film archives and more than 130,000 personal documents and memorabilia digitised during the numerous roadshows in 14 countries to date are all publicly available. Digital images of photographs, maps, diaries, newspapers, letters, drawings, books, leaflets, trench newspapers and much more can be found online.

Irrespective of the roadshow, anyone can register on the www.europeana1914-1918.eu website and contribute to the online archive by themselves with digital pictures and information.

Further information on the project can be found at:
www.europeana1914-1918.eu.
Press images can be downloaded at the following link:
http://pro.europeana.eu/1914-1918-press-images

’To my peoples!’ – new virtual exhibition of Europeana and the Austrian National Library
The new virtual exhibition of Europeana and the Austrian National Library (ÖNB) also focuses on World War One. To this end, roughly 80 exhibits of the analogue exhibition entitled ’To my peoples! World War One 1914–1918‘, which can still be seen in the Great Hall of the ÖNB until 2 November 2014, were digitised. They are now available online at http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/collection/stichting-europeana. For the first time Europeana uses for the virtual exhibition the innovative platform of the Google Cultural Institute.

Curated by renowned historian Prof. Manfried Rauchensteiner, the impressive exhibits recall the millions of deaths on the front line and the hardships of life for those at home. The main events and stages of the war are relived, from the assassination of heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand in 1914 to the people’s manifesto written by Emperor Karl in 1918 and the slow disintegration of the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian empire. Dr. Johanna Rachinger, Director-General of the Austrian National Library: ´It gives me great pleasure that this cooperation with Europeana means our large exhibition on World War One can now also be viewed online: significant articles and items on the Great War are now accessible to anyone interested, anywhere in the world.’

ORF focal area: World War One
For the entire year, ORF is dedicating itself to the ’100th anniversary of World War One‘. In the autumn for example, ORF 2 will be broadcasting Madame Nobel a film about the fictitious love story between Bertha von Suttner and Alfred Nobel, and the documentary film The unequal siblings – Germany and Austria. Culture and information channel ORF III is currently showing an extensive series of programmes on World War One, and every Thursday at 8.15 pm they broadcast Austrian films based on works by famous Austrian authors like Joseph Roth, Stefan Zweig or Franz Werfel. Documentary series 14 – Diaries from World War One by director Jan Peter describes World War One from the perspective of 14 people who experienced the conflict. Comprising eight parts, it will be shown by ORF III until mid-August.

About Europeana Europeana: Europe's digital library, museum and archive. Europeana collects and provides access to digitised material from libraries, archives, audiovisual archives and museums. It has more than 2,300 collaborating institutions and the website is available in 29 European languages. Europeana allows the public to discover and explore the cultural and intellectual heritage of Europe through a simple search engine and virtual exhibitions. Since its launch by the European Commission in November 2008, Europeana has grown to include 30 million documents and heritage works. All the stories and objects collected by Europeana 1914-1918 will also be made available through www.europeana.eu.