Europeana
 |
|
|
Type of site
|
Meta-aggregator and display space for European digitised works |
|---|---|
| Owner | Europeana Foundation |
| Website | europeana |
| Alexa rank |
 44,210 (April 2014[update]) |
| Commercial | no |
| Launched | 20 November 2008 (prototype), February 2009 (official version 1.0) |
| Current status | official |
Europeana.eu is the EU digital platform for cultural heritage.Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer, the works of Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton and the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are some of the highlights on Europeana.
More than 3,000 institutions across Europe have contributed to Europeana. These range from major international names like the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the British Library and the Louvre to regional archives and local museums from every member of the European Union. Together, their assembled collections let users explore Europe's cultural and scientific heritage from prehistory to the modern day.
The catalyst for Europeana was a letter sent by Jacques Chirac, President of France, together with the premiers of Germany, Spain, Italy, Poland and Hungary to the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, in April 2005. The letter recommended the creation of a virtual European library, to make Europe's cultural heritage accessible for all.
The letter added resonance to the work that the European Commission's Information Society and Media Directorate had been engaged in for over a decade, with programmes such as Telematics for Libraries. It gave strong political endorsement to the Directorate's strategy, i2010: communication on digital libraries, which was published on 30 September 2005. The strategy announced the intention to promote and support the creation of a European digital library, as a goal within the European Union, which aims to foster growth in the information society and media industries.
...
Wikipedia