Australia: ABC Radio Airs Segment About Europeana

The segment aired on Thursday morning during the ABC Radio National Future Tense program and runs approximately 10 1/2 minutes.
You can stream the audio and/or download the mp3 audio. A text transcript is also available.
Jill Cousins, Europeana’s executive director, is interviewed.
From the interview:

Antony Funnell [Host]: Jill Cousins from Europeana, have you been able to get a gauge on how people are actually using the site, and also the sorts of people who are using it?
Jill Cousins: It’s very varied in terms of the sorts of people who are using it. There is a fair amount that is used for research, but it’s also used by people who enjoy various areas, so they are interested in the First World War or they’re interested in migration, or even genealogical type stuff. They come from all over Europe. The diaster is very interesting as well, so the sort of migration of Europeans into Australia, New Zealand, the States. You see them looking back and wanting to see some of their background and their culture and therefore looking those kinds of things up on the site.

Cousins later says:

The idea behind Europeana is that it collects the metadata from the institutions, and the content itself resides at the institution. That was partly to overcome rights issues but it was also…you think, well, why are you going to bother storing again the material? I think there are some good and bad sides to that. You can certainly produce a much better user experience if you are going to store centrally all the content, but in terms of, as I said, rights and ownership and the comfort that the museums et cetera feel, then we felt it was better to do a federated search.

Direct to Europeana Segment on ABC Radio National

Filed under: Interviews, News, Profiles