EUROCLIO partner Europeana announced the publication of two major documents.
The first is the Europeana Licensing Framework. The Framework is the fulfilment of two years’ work in EuropeanaConnect. It establishes the co-ordinates of Europeana’s position on open data, the public domain, and users’ rights and responsibilities. The goal of the Framework is to standardise rights-related information and practices. Its intention is to explain this complex area and make transparent the relationship between providers of cultural heritage information and people who want to use it.
The new Europeana Data Exchange Agreement is at the heart of the Licensing Framework. All aspects of the DEA are clearly explained and there is full information about the use of previews and the display of rights information. The Framework sets out what the Exchange Agreement is trying to achieve with its emphasis on open data.
We continue to encourage partners to sign the new Agreement http://version1.europeana.eu/web/europeana-project/newagreement in order that we can open the dataset in July 2012 for new apps and Linked Open Data initiatives, and we heard yesterday that all the natural history museums represented by the Biodiversity Heritage Library have signed up.
This, our second White Paper, is published to meet a growing need among our partners for a new business model that weighs the current digital opportunities against traditional concerns about ownership and control. It makes recommendations that will guide further investigation and concludes that “the benefits of open data sharing and open distribution... outweigh the risks”.
The White Paper is the culmination of more than 20 workshops we’ve been holding during the past year and which over 200 partners have attended. It features Case Studies which include organisations that are in the vanguard of open data, such as Yale University, the German National Library, Cambridge University and the British Museum.
We hope that the two publications help to shine more light on this complex area, and lead to greater recognition of the potential of open data to generate social and economic value.
The Licensing Framework is published online:
and also in hard copy. For printed copies please contact
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Please also see our press release on the White Paper and distribute this message widely to your project partners, colleagues and press networks
http://bit.ly/secondwhitepaper
With regards,
The Europeana Team
Europeana was launched in 2008, with the goal of making Europe's cultural and scientific heritage accessible to the public. The project is funded by the European Commission. It is based in the National Library of the Netherlands, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. Europeana enables people to explore the digital resources of Europe's museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections. It promotes discovery and networking opportunities in a multilingual space where users can engage, share in and be inspired by the rich diversity of Europe's cultural and scientific heritage. Jill Cousins, Europeana Executive Director, is a member of the Historiana Advisory Group
Europeana, the digital library museum and archive of Europe, held its Annual Network Meeting in Rotterdam at 6 December in the World Trade Center. Europeana gives access to over 20 million objects from more than 1500 institutions from 32 countries. During the meeting the new business plan of Europeana was presented, European projects related to Europeana were presented and 5 workgroups, including the one on Users Engagement (in which EUROCLIO participated) were presented and discussed. All presentations are made available online. 
