PSNC Digital Libraries Team

The aim of the EuropeanaLocal project, which runs form over 2 years now, is to establish connection between local and regional cultural institutions and Europeana and to create standard proceudres for establishing such connections for institutions, which will be interested in such cooperation after the end of the EuropeanaLocal project.

An example of such activities in Poland is the Digital Libraries Federation, acting as a Polish metadata aggregator for Europeana. DLF was the first Europeana content provider connected to Europeana in the frame of EuropeanaLocal project, and this connection was made in December last year. Presently similar connections were established by aggregators of local and regional institutions from Spain, Norway, UK, Sweden, Greece, Germany, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Austria.

In september a major update of Europeana software is planned, to the version with the codename “Rhine”. Before this update the following countries are planned to be connected: Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Ireland, Hungary, Belgium, Holland, Portugal and maybe France. Such large scale confirms the idea of the creation of national metadata aggregators, which was the basis for the EuropeanaLocal project and later was included in the Europeana Content Strategy.

Map showing metadata aggregators currently registered in the EuropeanaLocal project is available at the website of this project.

In a recently published “Aggregators Handbook”, prepared by the Europeana v1.0 project for metadata aggregators willing to cooperate with Europeana, a case study showing the way for aggregator to start such cooperation has been included. The basis for this study were the experiences of the Polish Digital Libraries Federation. The text of this case study is also available at the information pages for potential Europeana partners.

Created and developed by PSNC Digital Libraries Federation since December 2009 is connected with Europeana. The Federation was the first metadata aggregator connected as a part of the EuropeanaLocal project, and currently is the 8th Europeana content provider in the terms of the number of objects delivered.

Very good news for all administrators of digital repositories created using DSpace platform. Vangelis Banos published a DSpace plugin which allows to expose Europeana Semantic Elements compliant metadata through OAI-PMH interface. Source code and detailed instruction can be found at author’s website. Plugin was already used in digital library created and maintained by Veria Central Public Library (Greece).

In case of Polish digital libraries connected to Europeana via the PIONIER Network Digital Libraries Federation there is no need to expose the metadata in the ESE schema on the level of particular digital library. Data in the Dublin Core schema harvested from digital libraries is automaticaly enriched with the mandatory ESE elements and exposed in this form for Europeana.

Issue 3/2009 of the PIONIER Magazine, published by PIONIER Consortium and Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center is available on-line in the PSNC Digtial Libraries Team Repository. This issue is devoted mostly to digital libraries.

On the 6th of January 2010 in the morning broadcast of the radio Emaus at 9:35 you could listen to an interview made by presenter Piotr Jóźwik with Marcin Werla from the PSNC Digital Libraries Team. The interview was related to the connection of the Polish digital libraries to Europeana, carried out during the EuropeanaLocal project.
Clicking below you can listen to this interview:

EuropeanaLocal – Interview in the Radio Emaus

Besides of the interview the fact of connection of the Polish Digital Libraries Federation to the Europeana, with significant help of the creators of Polish digital libraries, was mentioned in several Polish Press Agency news and also Polish Catholic Information Agency and also in many regional information services and popular Internet portals, including:

“Śląska Biblioteka Cyfrowa w Europeanie”

• wiadomosci.onet.pl
• ksiazki.wp.pl

“ŚBC posiada forum umożliwiające pracownikom współtworzących ją
instytucji oraz czytelnikom komunikację i wzajemną pomoc – techniczną i
merytoryczną. Wykorzystuje oprogramowanie dLibra; rozpowszechnione w
kilkudziesięciu bibliotekach cyfrowych, zrzeszonych w Federacji
Bibliotek Cyfrowych, a udostępniających łącznie w sieci ponad 260 tys.
publikacji.”

“Zbiory biblioteki Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego w portalu Europeana”

• wiadomosci.onet.pl
• wiadomosci.gazeta.pl

“…za upartą realizację marzenia o stworzeniu polskiego systemu
rozproszonych bibliotek i włączenia go do europejskiej sieci wielkie
uznanie należy się Zespołowi Bibliotek Cyfrowych Poznańskiego Centrum
Superkomputerowo-Sieciowego, który przygotowuje i ulepsza informatyczne
narzędzie, koordynuje funkcjonowanie polskich bibliotek w sieci krajowej
i międzynarodowej.”

“Podkarpackie książki w europejskiej sieci”

• rzeszow.gazeta.pl

“Zasoby Podkarpackiej Biblioteki Cyfrowej, wchodzące w skład Federacja
Bibliotek Cyfrowych, zostały udostępnione w największej bibliotece
cyfrowej w Europie.”

“Księgozbiór Wirtualny FIDES w Europeanie”

• info.wiara.pl

“12 grudnia 2009 r. zbiory cyfrowe umieszczone w Księgozbiorze
Wirtualnym Federacji FIDES stały się widoczne w portalu Europeana dzięki
uczestnictwu w serwisie Federacji Bibliotek Cyfrowych, wraz z ponad 250
tysiącami obiektów z polskich bibliotek cyfrowych.”

From 11 December 2009, in the European Digital Library – Europeana, there are avaialble resources of dozens of Polish digital libraries congregated around the PIONIER Network Digital Libraries Federation. These resources include over 250 000 digital objects made available by the hundreds of cultural and scientific institutions from different parts of Poland. Among them are both treasures of our national heritage, as well as interesting regional materials or modern scientific and educational publications. The vast majority of publications is available to all Internet users without any restrictions.

Europeana, one of the flagship initiatives of the European Commission, is a web portal which is point of access to digital versions of cultural and scientific heritage. The portal is available from November 2008. In the official launch day it allowed to reach some of 2 million digital objects scattered throughout the Europe. In December 2009, after the data ingestion from the Polish digital libraries, the number of objects in the Europeana exceeded 5 million, of which ca. 5.5% comes from the Polish digital libraries. According to current development plans, Europeana is projected to reach 10 million objects in July 2010. Portal performs a critical role in providing and promoting the cultural heritage of European countries and it is important for Poland to be adequately represented in Europeana.

Polish digital content aggregator for Europeana is Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, the operator of the PIONIER Network Digital Libraries Federation and the PIONIER Network operator.

The PIONIER Network Digital Libraries Federation (PIONIER DLF) integrates network of Polish digital libraries, which have been systematically created since 2002. PIONIER DLF was launched in June 2007 by the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center. PIONIER DLF currently provides search within descriptions of over 315 000 digital objects. Moreover, it maintaines an extensive database about Polish digital libraries, as well as it is a key element in digitization coordination in the Polish digital libraries. It is worth mentioning that about 10 000 new objects each month is made available by digital libraries connected to the PIONIER DLF . By PIONIER DLFs connection with Europeana, these objects will be more visible and promoted worldwide.

Wrocław University Library and PSNC are happy to invite you to participate in the ENRICH and EuropeanaLocal projects joint workshop. The workshop will take place in Wrocław, Poland on the 23rd of June, 2009. Participation is free of charge.

Detailed information (in Polish) can be found on the workshop website: http://www.bu.uni.wroc.pl/warsztaty-enrich-europeana-local/.

The MyEuropeana, a set of features for Europeana personalisation is available again. It is related to the beginning of final stage of Europeana end-users functional tests. We encourage you to use it and to report any issues (please report to: info@europeana.eu).

Since the 25th of February on the Europeana website the new version of Europeana metadata schema is available. The newest version is marked as 3.1 and according to its creators it is stable enough, to be the basis for the development of dedicated interfaces for exposing the metadata to Europeana.

Europeana Semantic Elements ver. 3.1 specfication is available here.

Today we have finished the first stage of EuropeanaLocal survey on the Polish digital resources. We have surveyed over 20 of such initiatives. This data should significantly ease the connection of Polish digital libraries to Europenana.

Many thanks to all those, who have helped us!