Europeana’s Cultural Dataset (20 Million Objects) Opens For Re-Use, Released Under CC0

From a Europeana Announcement:

Opportunities for apps developers, designers and other digital innovators will be boosted today as the digital portal Europeana opens up its dataset of over 20 million cultural objects for free re-use.
The massive dataset is the descriptive information about Europe’s digitised treasures. For the first time, the metadata is released under the Creative Commons CC0 Public Domain Dedication, meaning that anyone can use the data for any purpose – creative, educational, commercial – with no restrictions. This release, which is by far the largest one-time dedication of cultural data to the public domain using CC0 offers a new boost to the digital economy, providing electronic entrepreneurs with opportunities to create innovative apps and games for tablets and smartphones and to create new web services and portals.
Europeana’s move to CC0 is a step change in open data access. Releasing data from across the memory organisations of every EU country sets an important new international precedent, a decisive move away from the world of closed and controlled data.
Importantly, the change represents a valuable contribution to the European Commission’s agenda to drive growth through digital innovation. Online open data is a core resource which can fuel enterprise and create opportunities for millions of Europeans working in Europe’s cultural and creative industries. The sector represents 3.3% of EU GDP and is worth over €150 billion in exports.
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Applying the CC0 waiver also means that Europeana’s metadata can now be used in Linked Open Data developments. This holds the potential to bring together data from Europe’s great libraries, museums and archives with data from other sectors such as tourism and broadcasting. The result could be a powerful knowledge generating engine for the 21st century.
Jill Cousins, Executive Director of Europeana said: “This move is a significant step forward for open data and an important cultural shift for the network of museums, libraries and galleries who have created Europeana. This is the world’s premier cultural dataset, and the decision to open it up for re-use is bold and forward looking – it recognises the important potential for innovation that access to digital data provides. This development means that Europe now sets the worldwide standard for the sector.”
The raw data is published in two RDF syntaxes: RDF/XML and N-Triples. It is also marked up on the Europeana portal in RDFa.

See Also: Europeana Terms of Use Info

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