The common European data space for cultural heritage fosters the creation and reuse of content in the cultural and creative sectors and accelerates the digital transformation of Europe’s cultural sector. Explore its achievements from 2023 - 2024.
The common European data space for cultural heritage is the flagship initiative of the European Commission to accelerate the digital transformation of Europe’s cultural sector. The data space builds on Europeana's achievements, particularly in open data, community building and data aggregation, and the Europeana Strategy 2020-2025.
2023 - 2024 marks the second year of the deployment of the data space. This year, its potential to accelerate the digital transformation of the cultural heritage sector and foster reuse of cultural heritage data within and across sectors has become even clearer. At the Europeana Initiative, we are excited to grasp this potential to the benefit of the cultural heritage sector, those working within it, and those who reuse its cultural heritage data. Read on to discover highlights of the work undertaken across the data space from 2023 - 2024, or explore the data space on its dedicated landing page which was launched this year.
This year’s achievements have been made possible by strong collaboration between the Europeana Foundation, Europeana Network Association, Europeana Aggregators’ Forum, the 18 partners of the data space consortium and the wider data space and cultural heritage ecosystem. Together, we are working to shape and develop a data space which is inclusive, collaborative and open, and ultimately champions Europe’s triple transformation with its green, digital and social interlinked dimensions.
We work hard to ensure that the infrastructure and technologies which underpin the data space are high-performing, reliable, innovative and interoperable. In the second year of the data space, we upgraded and enhanced our systems to provide a robust and secure infrastructure and built connections with other data spaces with a focus on interoperability.
Persistent and reliable data - Persistent Identifiers are globally unique and long-lasting references to digital and non-digital entities. They are key to making cultural heritage data interoperable and reliable, encouraging reuse amongst audiences. This year we developed, gathered feedback on and began to implement a policy for Persistent Identifiers to ensure the stability of our resources and data.
Successful aggregation systems and models - We made it easier for data providers to share and improve the quality of the data by enhancing the Metis aggregation suite and implementing new aggregation models. Working closely with partners across the data space ecosystem, we explored and aligned aggregator roles, and collected examples of new types of data currently available and not yet shared within the data space, with a view to incorporating them in the future.
Interoperability and innovation - From enhancing our APIs and improving our ability to ingest data, to addressing data quality issues, we have continued to champion technical advances in the data space, supported by the expertise and activities of the EuropeanaTech Community. Interoperability has been a key area of work, as we supported the adoption of the IIIF standard and ensured that the Europeana Data Model remains a cornerstone for semantic interoperability within the sector.
We want data made available through the data space to be high-quality, usable and accessible. In the last year, we harmonised approaches to support data provision, enhanced data with automatic approaches, and raised the quality and amount of data available through the Europeana website, with a particular focus on 3D.
Harmonised approaches - Through our governance mechanisms, frameworks and standards, we harmonise and standardise approaches in the data space. This year, we implemented the Data Governance Strategy, reviewed our Publishing and Licensing Frameworks with a focus on 3D, and progressed implementing our Enrichment Policy. We conducted new research into copyright related to 3D and metadata, supported by the Copyright Community and its varied programme of activities.
Data quality improvements - Through a comprehensive programme of data improvement, and by cleaning and ingesting new, high-quality data, we raised the quality of data available on the Europeana website and in the data space. We worked closely with the institutions who provide data to us to support them and to reduce broken links. We used automated approaches to enhance image resolution and generate new metadata and experimented with watermark detection and language detection of metadata to support increased multilingualism in the data space.
Improvements in 3D - Working closely with partners in the data space consortium and in Member States, we have increased the amount of 3D content available in the data space. We increased support for 3D formats on the Europeana website, gathered data about 3D repositories in Europe and published resources to support 3D digitisation on our Knowledge Base. The Twin it! 3D for Europe’s culture campaign shaped our work, which invited - and supported - EU Member States to each submit one 3D digitised heritage asset to the data space.
This year, we continued to develop capacity among cultural heritage professionals to create high-quality data that can be reused by people working in education, academia, research, development and beyond, and also supported capacity building among those who reuse the data. We developed training, events and interaction programmes on how to use and engage with the data space’s tools and services, offered for the cultural sector and beyond.
Cooperation and collaboration - Through a joint thematic programme, community engagement and projects and partnerships, the three pillars of the Europeana Initiative - ENA, EAF and EF - worked together to advance the data space. This year, enhanced cooperation with valued partners in Member States has also been in focus through a pilot Country Groups initiative, collaboration in the Twin it! campaign and the development of dashboards which keep Member States informed about their contribution of content to the data space.
Events and training - We reached thousands of professionals through our conferences, webinars and events. We launched a pilot training programme, the Europeana Academy, including a new training platform, and events from the vibrant ENA communities supported knowledge exchange around topics including copyright, impact and tech. A highlight was the EuropeanaTech conference, which saw over 700 professionals come together in The Hague and online. These events, alongside all data space activities, were strategically promoted to professional audiences, activating and engaging their interest.
Reuse - From the digital spaces of Built with Bits, to events to foster exchanges between academia and the cultural heritage sector, to enhanced API services, our activities supported educators, developers, researchers and academics, and others to reuse cultural heritage data. A programme of user research helped us to better understand these groups, identify the support that they need and reach out to new audiences.
Educators, researchers, culture lovers and creatives share how they enjoy and reuse Europeana’s digital cultural heritage to reach their own goals.
The Europeana website is a gateway to Europe’s rich cultural heritage, and supports audiences to search for, learn about, discover and reuse cultural heritage items. We added new features and functionalities to support people to explore the website, and inspired them with exciting stories and initiatives.
A high-performing website - We ensured that the Europeana website is easy to access and performs well acknowledging needs and wishes from our users. We evaluated the website’s search functionality and made finding and exploring items easier. We made it more satisfying for audiences to share their feedback through a feature request page and feedback mechanism, and we developed an immersive storytelling experience to engage people on the website.
Multilingual experience - We want to give audiences the best possible experience of the Europeana website, and this includes using it in their own language. This year, we tested and integrated tools to detect language metadata into our Translation API, which improves the multilingual experience on the website. We streamlined the process for validating automatic translations of the website, and piloted new approaches to checking translations of editorial. Through these efforts, this year 88% of stories (blogs and exhibitions) on the Europeana website were published in more than one language.
Inspiring and engaging our audiences - We encouraged our audiences to engage with and reuse the digital cultural heritage on the Europeana website through inspiring stories and participatory initiatives. GIF IT UP encouraged people to remix digital collections, our Digital Storytelling Festival boosted participants’ storytelling skills, and Transcribathon events encouraged audiences to interact with historical documents. And we marked the exciting milestone of 1,000 stories available on the website, in more languages than ever before. These activities, as well as high-quality data, were strategically and creatively promoted through social media and newsletters.
The Europeana Foundation participates in projects which enhance the data space. In the last year, projects have enriched high-quality data, tools and services in the data space, used artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve the engagement and experience of our audiences, and fostered reuse of 3D content. We were also delighted to be represented in the ECHOES consortium, creating the Collaborative European Cloud for Cultural Heritage, which kicked off this year.
