Presentation for JISC / British Library Discovery Summit of 2013. Focusses on Europeana and The European Library and their work in exposing metadata

1. Breaking the Waves
Alastair Dunning
(The European Library / Europeana)
Discovery Summit
London, Feb 2013
@alastairdunning

6. “There is a tsunami of data that is crashing onto
the beaches of the civilized world. This is a tidal
wave of unrelated, growing data formed in bits
and bytes, coming in an unorganized,
uncontrolled, incoherent cacophony of foam….
we see graphic designers and government
officials, all getting their shoes wet and slowly
submerging in the dense trough of stuff…. they
walk stupidly into the water, smiling—a false
smile of confidence and control. The tsunami is a
wall of data—data produced at a greater and
greater speed … in amounts that double, it
seems, with each sunset ....

7. ... [Thankfully]
Google mastered the
technical art of the
search.”
http://intdev.stc.org/2012/02/question-information-quest-inform/

8. But Europeana’s Trusted data from
aims are different European cultural
heritage

9. Before that - a quick
aside

10. Europeana - Europe’s cultural heritage portal
• 26m (Feb 2013) metadata
records from 2,200 European
galleries, museums, archives and
libraries
• Books, newspapers, journals,
letters, diaries, archival papers...
Paintings, maps, drawings,
photographs… Music, spoken
word, radio broadcasts…
• Only links to digitised content
• 31 languages
• Started in 2007
• Based in National Library of
Netherlands

11. The European Library (TEL)
Europe’s library aggregator
• Centrally indexes 115m
bibliographic records, plus 16m
digital links
• 48 National Libraries of Europe
• Plus 19 research libraries
• Links to digitised content and
bibliographic records at
libraries
• Started in 1990s - ‘Mother’ of
Europeana. Now aggregates
content for Europeana
• Also hosted in National Library
of Netherlands

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

13. National ATHENA
The Aggregator
European
Library
Euro. Film
Gateway
Culture
Grid (UK) Europeana
CARARE
ApeNet Other
Aggregators

14. National ATHENA
The Aggregator
European
Library
Euro. Film
Gateway
Culture
Grid (UK) Europeana
CARARE
ApeNet Other
Aggregators

15. Italian
Spanish
National Libraries
National Library
French
National Library German National Library
British Library
and another
43 national libraries National
The Aggregator
European
Library
19 research libraries
and RLUK
Culture
Grid (UK) Europeana

16. End of aside

17. The obvious way of exposing data:
Europeana Portal

18. More contemporary dissemination:
Europeana API

19. More contemporary dissemination:
Europeana Linked
Open Data

20. More contemporary dissemination:
Europeana SPARQL
Endpoint
(experimental / temporary URL in 2013)

21. Linked Data &
aggregation of data
for others - source
and quality of data is
paramount

22. Europeana and TEL
are testing the
waters of resource
discovery

23. Are we making
progress?
And what is impeding progress ?

24. The European Library to
release
>115m bibliographic
records to be released as
CC0 this year (2013)
API and Linked Data
to be published this Working with RLUK
year (2013) as well to release members’
metadata as linked
data

25. 22m+ metadata
records released as
CC0 by Europeana
c.2,200 institutions

26. Some of largest
cultural datasets in
the world
Hooray !

27. but ...

28. Cool URIs

29. 97% of links resolve
properly

30. 660,000 (c.3%) of
records have broken
links

31. Licencing

32. 64% of records
do not come
with clear
licensing about
the content

33. a good example

34. Current licence distribution in Europeana
(end of 2012)
Europeana has launched a rights labelling campaign to improve this

35. and even when
metadata is
technically well
formed ... it might
not help user
discovery

36. Quality of
metadata ?

37. User path ?
This example leads to the
user to a copyright
message in German, then
then the jpeg without any
metadata

39. Lack of
context ?
Again, the user is led to a
jpg without any
explanation of the image

40. Multiple
records for
one item

41. The perils of
basic search

42. And of course
semantic differences

43. Much of this is
‘basics’ - licencing,
permanent URIs,
quality of metadata
intelligent URIs

44. More complex
issues such as
semantics and
clustering of records
and relevancy ...
... are being
addressed by the
Europeana Data
Model

45. no point aggregating if you can’t
reuse

46. for europeana and TEL, finding
re(users) is critical

47. Europeana API: 77 prototypes
based on Europeana data

48. Multimedia HTML5 Music Player

49. Stackathon - Artwork Audio Annotations

50. API Implementation by Royal Museum for Central Africa

51. API Implementation by Digital New Zealand

52. Europeana exposes
content to
HistoryPin,
Wikipedia, Pinterest,
among others

53. How do I get
involved?

54. Text
Culture Grid - UK Aggregator

55. The European Library - Europe’s library aggregator

56. Europeana Network
Open forum for cultural heritage
community

57. Following the guidelines
form the Discovery
Programme will also help

58. Adopting open licencing Optimising data for reuse
Ensuring data currency and
accuracy Clear and documented APIs

59. So rather than
Canute holding back
the waves ...

60. HMS Discovery
charting new
waters.
Thank
you !

61. Screenshots / Image Credits
Slide 1 - http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/vicpopmus/t/zoomify87477.html
Slide 4 - http://www.googleartproject.com/en-gb/collection/freer-gallery-of-art-smithsonian/artwork/waves-at-matsushima-tawaraya-sotatsu/326469/
Slide 5 - http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/browse/canute
Slide 8 - http://digitalcollections.tcd.ie/home/index.php?DRIS_ID=MS1209_131 "
Slide 21 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/visulogik/99768766/
Slide 22 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/ogil/25304809/
Slide 28-30 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/andreiz/1089900128/
Slide 31-32 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/ztephen/3923577405/
Slide 36 - http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/tel4/search?query=canute
Slide 37 - Start at http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/tel4/record/2000082153642
Slide 38 - Start at http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/tel4/record/1000128081500?
Slide 40 - http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/tel4/search?query=the%20ruler%20of%20the%20sea
Slide 41 -http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/tel4/record/2000085282188?query=canute
Slide 42 - http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/tel4/record/2000068816371
Slides 45,46 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcusq/3032678489/
Slide 47 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/epsiplatform/5579883591
Slide 60 - http://www.freezeframe.ac.uk/collection/photos-british-arctic-expedition-1875-76/ls99-3-9?mode=giant