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DO CROSS-BORDER
NETWORKS REALLY
ENHANCE ACCESS?
The Europeana and The European Library projects show that national
borders can be overcome relatively easily from a technical point of view.
Linguistic and legal barriers, on the other hand, continue to restrict the
accessibility and usability of what is on offer. What lessons can be learnt
from these experiences?
Answers by
DR. JILL COUSINS
As Jean Monnet said, if “Europe were to be reconstructed,
I would begin with culture rather than the economy”. The
New Renaissance report, which quoted Monnet, looked at
what is needed to make our heritage available to future gen-
erations. Written by Maurice Lévy, Elisabeth Niggemann and
Jacques De Dekker, the report put to the fore the issues fac-
ing the digitisation of and access to our common European
cultural heritage. As they pointed out: “The cultural heritage
of the old continent nourished the education, the forma-
tion, the spirit of the generations which preceded us and we
feel the responsibility to transmit this rich (indeed, one of
the richest in the world) heritage to future generations and
to make sure it will be preserved, enriched and shared.” This
means connecting cultural and scientifc objects across the
borders within Europe so that they are made available to a
wider world.
Over 10 years ago, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB)
was instrumental in the setting up of The European Library,
the brainchild of the Conference of European National Li-
brarians (CENL). It was to create cross-border access to the
holdings of Europe’s national libraries on the continent of
Europe as represented by the Council of Europe. Having
seen this network achieve cross-border access for national
library material, the European Commission asked CENL to
lead the way in the creation of what became Europeana. The
remit of Europeana was broader as it was to cover museums,
archives, audiovisual collections and eventually publishers,
as well as libraries. It also gives direct access to the digital
object.
The network that sits behind Europeana is considerable. At
the beginning of 2014, it has over 2,300 contributing orga-
nisations, represented by 173 aggregators, some of whom
also cross borders when they represent a sector, such as the
European Film Gateway for flm, EUscreen for television,
and Archives Portal Europe for archives. In addition, there is
a volunteer network of more than 900 people from both Eu-
ropean Union and EFTA countries, who form Task Forces to
solve the issues of standardisation and interoperability that
allow for cross-border access. At a top level, the networks be-
hind The European Library and Europeana have defnitively
created cross-border access but it is worth analysing whether
the desire to create such pan-European libraries really enhances
access for users.
The drivers that led to the creation of both Europeana and
The European Library can be categorised as political, social,
economic and user-based. They all enable access and have net-
work elements but do they have equal weight? If a service is
not used, is it really worth the efort? Users need to sit at the
centre of why a network works to create access, whether it is
cross-border or not.
Political: Europeana was certainly born out of political mo-
tivation when six heads of state wrote to President Barroso
lamenting the anglicisation of the web in the digitisation of
our heritage. But there were underlying social and accessibility
reasons too, including the desire to improve the balance and
representation of material refective of the cultural diversity of
Europe, and the wish to make sure that we could access mate-
rial in our own languages or virtually repatriate items that had
shifted “ownership” with fuid borders and wars in a changing
Europe. It also harks back to Robert Schuman, Founder of
the European Union, and his statement in 1951: “Much more
than an economic alliance, Europe has to become a cultural
union.” From culture comes a better understanding of the
background and motivations of others, their infuences and
deciding moments. If we can understand these, we are more
likely to achieve consensus. The idea that Europeana connects
Europe has gained in political currency as economic issues
have threatened break-up.
The #AllezCulture Twitter campaign was started by Europeana
to show the importance of culture to Europe and was very
infuential in winning political and member state support for
Europeana’s bid for funding as a Digital Service Infrastructure
under the Connecting Europe Facility. In itself, the new fund-
ing strand is proof of the belief that cross-border networks
enhance access. Culture is no longer perceived as “fufy” but
as a part of the infrastructure of Europe alongside broadband,
roads, transport and the like. Cross-border access is integral
to this concept.
Social: The most current exemplar of this is the Europeana
1914-1918.eu thematic site. The user-generated content
for this site was pioneered in Europe by the DNB, based
on community collections for the Great War Archive, de-
veloped by Oxford University. Not only has this project
used and expanded the European Network of cultural and
scientifc institutions, such as the DNB, which are the back-
bone of Europeana, it has created a feeling that our cultural
heritage belongs to us in a very personal way and that this
story, of the First World War and its consequences, is a truly
European one.
Europeana1914-1918.eu is also a case study of how a network
can enhance access. It exemplifes how libraries from across
Europe can work together on a subject, to digitise, to add
metadata, to create new access mechanisms alongside other
institutions collecting, digitising and describing the personal
stories. The result is a very rich store of authenticated, author-
itative material alongside person histories from World War I.
The inclusion of First World War material from the Digital Li-
brary of New Zealand, Australia’s Trove and the Digital Public
Library of America crosses continents to bring other views on
this part of our history.
This material is hugely enhanced simply by crossing borders.
By actively collecting the stories from all perspectives and by
sharing the data, new connections can be made between, for
example, trench life and the lives of the women and children
across borders and continents, because people can fnd all the
information in one archive. It has also highlighted some social-
ly buried histories in countries such as Denmark, which was
neutral but lost 6,000 men, who by virtue of geography fought
under the Germans. Borders, geographical or otherwise, are
fast becoming a pre-21st century concept. With the advent of
the web, we have efectively moved beyond physical territories.
Economic: This aspect should become more prominent as
cloud IT architectures evolve. A couple of European projects,
Lo-Cloud and Europeana Cloud, are looking at the economic
benefts of storing and delivering data via cloud architecture.
Economics are likely to demonstrate other perceived benefts
that are social and relate to access, such as sharing the costs
of storage and capitalising on the difering price levels to store
data and develop access mechanisms. This should in turn
make it easier to store data in ways that better facilitate access
for the user and therefore seriously enhance access. Access to a
cloud infrastructure will help the researcher wanting to manip-
ulate and mine data to be able to see and compare things like
how the consequences of the death of Franz Ferdinand were
reported across Europe and how quickly or not it escalated
into the population’s knowledge.
The technical development of digital libraries has already
beneftted from the Europeana Network. Thousands of per-
son-months have gone into the work on the Europeana Data
Model (http://pro.europeana.eu/edm-documentation) and the
Europeana Licensing Framework (http://pro.europeana.eu/
documents/858566/7f14c82a-f76c-4f4f-b8a7-600d2168a73d),
which form the backbone of decisions made at a national lev-
el towards the interoperability of systems and content. These
are good examples of the power of a network working towards
common goals.
User Benefts: The dream of Dan Matei, CIMEC, in dreams.
europeana.eu is that the man in a small village in Romania,
who also pays his taxes, has as much access to his culture,
g
With the advent of the web,
we have effectively moved
beyond physical territories.