From 2020 onwards, while safeguarding the core components of the activities that have made Europeana an important agent of change over the past decade, the Europeana Strategy 2020-2025 sees Europeana focus on a single task: supporting the digital transformation of Europe’s cultural heritage sector.
‘The COVID19 crisis has shown how attached citizens are to their cultural heritage and the importance of making this heritage available online. In these times of accelerated digital transformation, Europeana, as the digital cultural flagship initiative of the European Union, has a key role for bringing the heritage sector into the digital age,’ says Rehana Schwinninger-Ladak, Head of the unit ‘Interactive Technologies, Digital for Culture and Education’ for the European Commission.
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The strategy has three priorities, each supported by a set of key objectives. We’ll look at each priority in turn over this series of Europeana Pro News posts, but here’s a quick summary:
Strengthen the infrastructure – The Europeana Initiative will invest in supporting innovation activities that keep the infrastructure aligned with state-of-the-art tech.
Improve data quality – The Europeana Initiative will invest resources in activities related to metadata and content improvement. It will use new technologies like machine-learning algorithms to enrich metadata records.
Build capacity – The Europeana Initiative will support institutions in their digital transformation. It will showcase the importance and added value of digitisation, adoption of standards, best practice and common solutions.
The strategy is informed by trends in four main areas: public expectations, market forces, technological innovation and global perspectives. It acknowledges the roles of each body within the Europeana Initiative: the Europeana Foundation, the Europeana Network Association and the Europeana Aggregators’ Forum. This collaboration creates a multiplier effect for the Initiative’s many activities at European level. Together with work undertaken at Member State level, this builds a balanced ecosystem to support Member States’ drive for digital transformation across the sector and across Europe.
Direct to Full Text: Europeana Strategy 2020-2025
Updated: June 11 (Link to Priority 1 Blog Post)
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