A presentation of the EuropeanaTech network, http://pro.europeana.eu/europeana-tech, at the Europeana Project Group Meeting, Sept. 2012: http://pro.europeana.eu/pro-blog/-/blogs/breaking-out-of-the-bubble%3A-the-europeana-project-group-meeting

1. EuropeanaTech - technical R&D in Europeana
Antoine Isaac
(with slides from Max Kaiser Maarten Brinkerink, Johan Oomen, Evelien
Wolda, Marlies Olensky & Juliane Stiller)
Europeana Project Group Meeting
September 11 2012

2. Research and Development in Europeana context
Identify
Marketing
Ingestion Evaluate Analyse
External Programme
m
Pr
R&D/expertise
Management
ea
od
lT
uc
ca
tT
ni
ch
ea
Implement
Te
Conceptualise
m
Specify
Product Development
Network EDM
R&D Agenda

3. Tasks
Foster a network of specialists from GLAM and
research institutions, who can advice on
technological topics when needed
Develop R&D agenda for Europeana: identify trends &
gaps, who is working on them, how we can support them
Feeding R&D results from the scientific / open source
community into the development of Europeana
The EDM model is improved and incrementally updated
Informing IT-related networks, e.g., the Linked Open Data
or Digital Libraries communities, on Europeana-related
R&D. disseminate our partners’ technological advances

4. Supporting project: Europeanav2.0 WP7
Tasks
 Developers' Network
 Development of innovative applications for user
interaction and UGC
 Semantic Web / Linked Data
 Multilingual Access / Translation

5. Supporting network: EuropeanaTech

6. EuropeanaTech
Community
Currently: Task This period:
• Persistent Identifiers • FLOSS inventory Developers
Forces
• EDM and FRBRoo Next period:
• Hierarchies • Software development
From MS37 Mission Statement:
"The mission of the EuropeanaTECH community is to gather task forces on
specific technical points (metadata display issues, extensions to the Europeana
Data Model, etc) and foster a Europeana Software Developers Network”

7. http://pro.europeana.eu/web/
network/europeana-tech/

9. Output 1: Inventory of FLOSS in the Cultural
Heritage Domain
Alr
ead
ent y 85
ries
!

10. Output 2: Market study on semantic feature
extraction
 Tools for the extraction of concepts and named entities
 Basis for decision-making for Europeana
 Available on EuropeanaTech Wiki as living document
http://pro.europeana.eu/web/network/europeana-tech/-/wiki/Main/Market+study+on+technical+options+for+semantic+feature+extraction

11. Two example foci: EDM and multilingual
issues

12. Focus: EDM status

13. Focus: EDM status
 First implementation
• Provided Objects, Web Resources, Aggregations, Agents,
Concepts, Places and TimeSpans
 Documentation
• Definitions, Primer, Mapping Guidelines, Object
templates, XML schema, RDF/OWL ontology
 Prototyping ingestion with partners
• CARARE, MIMO, HOPE, CulturaItalia
 Pilot export ESE->EDM as part of data.europeana.eu
 Ingestion chain ready in October

14. Focus: EDM next steps
 Assessing input data and processes with partners
• Getting mappings from original data to EDM
 Validate existing choices of properties
 Propose refinements or extensions
 Adapt data dissemination channels to interoperability needs
• Facilitate re-use of Europeana metadata by partners and third-parties

15. Focus: EDM next steps
Metadata enrichment
 Linking objects to contextual resources
• GeoNames, VIAF, domain-specific thesauri
 Linking contextual resources
• Thesaurus alignment
 Linking objects
• Clusters, FRBRization

16. Focus: EuropeanaTech EDM task forces
Model refinements on EDM
 Task force on Hierarchical Objects
 Task force on EDM-FRBRoo Application Profile
http://pro.europeana.eu/web/network/europeana-tech/-/wiki/Main/Market+study+on+technical+options+for+semantic+feature+extraction
http://pro.europeana.eu/web/network/europeana-tech/-/wiki/Main/Taskforce+on+hierarchical+objects
http://pro.europeana.eu/web/network/europeana-tech/-/wiki/Main/Task+Force+EDM+FRBRoo

17. Focus: multilingual issues
 Multilingual display, retrieval and interactions are not
commonly implemented in CH websites
• State-of-the-art analysis of 50 cultural heritage websites

18. Dimensions of multilingual access
 Interface
 Search (query translation or document translation)
 Result presentation
 Browsing

19. Europeana's efforts
 Interface translated into 26 languages
 Query translation: only prototype
 Query result filtering by country/language
 Document translation (user enabled)
 Semantic contextualization of objects
• Multilingual enrichment/annotation of metadata

20. Multilingual foci
 Focus on educating community
• Multilingual dimensions and effects on display and retrieval
• Multilingual handling in EDM and ESE
• Ingestion of multilingual contextual resources (thesauri etc)
 R&D: better use of language resources
• Natural language processing
• NB: some of “our” resources (thesauri etc.) are also language
resources!

21. Multilingual and semantics can go hand-in-hand

22. Fetching available linked data
E.g., from libraries
http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/XGR-lld-vocabdataset/

23. Interoperability
 Encouraging the use of RDF + common and simple elements

24. Interoperability
Encourage the use of common and simple data elements
<skos:Concept rdf:about="http://www.mimo-db.eu/InstrumentsKeywords/2308">
<skos:prefLabel xml:lang="fr">Piano carré</skos:prefLabel>
<skos:prefLabel xml:lang="it">Pianoforte a tavolino</skos:prefLabel>
<skos:prefLabel xml:lang="en">Square pianoforte</skos:prefLabel>
<skos:prefLabel xml:lang="de">Tafelklavier</skos:prefLabel>
<skos:prefLabel xml:lang="nl">Tafelpiano</skos:prefLabel>
<skos:prefLabel xml:lang="sv">Taffel</skos:prefLabel>
<skos:broader>
<skos:Concept rdf:about="http://www.mimo-db.eu/InstrumentsKeywords/2273">
<skos:prefLabel xml:lang="en">Pianofortes</skos:prefLabel>
</skos:Concept>
</skos:broader>
</skos:Concept>

25. Multilingual Access: users back in the loop

26. EuropeanaTech: lessons being learnt
 Need for active community support
• Highlight the added value to contribute to EuropeanaTech
• Actively disseminate outcomes
• Reach out to the wider community
also outside de EU!
 Need to actively manage task forces:
• Define stort-term, measurable goals
• Provide communication support
• Tasks are interleaved and should inform each other

27. How to contribute?
Several levels: organization, advice, code, data…
 Become a member of the EuropeanaTech community
• mailing list, twitter…
 Designate a "technical/R&D contact point" in their project?
http://pro.europeana.eu/web/network/europeana-tech/

28. How to contribute?
 React to our deliverables
 Contribute prototypes & demos in ThoughtLab
 Contribute deliverables & software to mindmaps
• semantic technology
• should we create other mindmaps?
 Contribute documented EDM metadata and mappings for
next steps of EDM
 Participate our coming meetings
• how about a joint technical meeting in 2013?
http://pro.europeana.eu/web/network/europeana-tech/

29. Thank you!
Antoine Isaac, Europeana
aisaac@few.vu.nl