Collections Trust Secures €8m Investment to Bring Collections Online

From a CT News Release:

The Collections Trust has secured major European Commission investment in projects worth a total of €8m to help museums, archives and libraries share their collections online safely and sustainably.

EUROPEANA INSIDE is a €3.8million research and development project in partnership with 10 leading Collections Management Software providers, all of whom are members of the Collections Trust’s ‘SPECTRUM Partner’ Scheme. The project will develop open-source tools, enabling cultural organisations to manage the sharing and re-use of their Collections online. Further information is available at http://www.europeanainside.eu

PARTAGE PLUS is a 24-month project worth €3m to digitise Art Nouveau objects, artworks, posters, and buildings to create around 75,000 items, including 2,000 3D models, of content for access through Europeana, the central channel for European culture online at http://www.europeana.eu. The project is being led by the Collections Trust, with partners from Member States across Europe.

ENUMERATE is a networking project which aims to provide up-to-date and comprehensive intelligence about the costs, methods and impact of digitising collections in museums, archives and libraries. Coordinated by the Collections Trust, the ENUMERATE network includes national coordinators in all 36 Member States of the European Union. Further information is available from http://www.enumerate.eu.

LINKED HERITAGE is a major initiative to help cultural organisations open up their collections as Linked Open Data, ensuring that it can be re-used to support new applications, innovation and creativity across Europe.

“This new investment by the European Commission represents a milestone in the Collections Trust’s international strategy and a huge opportunity to help museums, archives and libraries bring the richness of their collections to online audiences”, says Collections Trust CEO Nick Poole. “It is a recognition of our pre-eminent position in delivering complex projects on budget and on schedule and our role at the heart of some of Europe’s most active cultural networks. It provides a great foundation upon which we will build a leading role in the digital agenda for the sector.”