Harry Verwayen
Executive Director
Tel: +31 (0)70 3140952
Email:
[email protected]
Mr. Indrek Reimand
Ministry of Culture of Estonia
Adviser on Libraries
Ms. Mirjam Rääbis
National Heritage Board of Estonia
Director of Museums
11 July 2019
Subject: Fund contribution to Europeana Foundation in 2019
Dear Mr. Reimand and Ms. Rääbis,
Over a decade into the Europeana initiative, Estonia has played an important role in
making Europeana what it is today: a vibrant platform for digital transformation of
the cultural heritage sector. Europeana Foundation is proud to have led the
progress of cultural participation and collaboration across the EU together with the
European Commission and the Member States. We continue to count on your
support and engagement in the new chapter of this journey.
While the Core Service of Europeana is now funded by the European Commission,
an important part of our innovation capacity comes from participation in the
partially funded Generic Services. Europeana Foundation has submitted proposals
for: Europeana Sport, Art of Reading in The Middle Ages and Europeana XX - Century of
Change, all of which require 25% co-funding, and for which I ask for your financial
contribution. For more information on these projects please see the annex to this
letter. I also invite you to take some time and read the Europeana Foundation
Annual Report 2018: Ten highlights and the full report and accounts and the
Europeana Foundation Business plan 2019.
By contributing to generic services projects, you enable the participation of
Europeana Foundation and a consortium of EU cultural heritage institutions in
these projects. This contribution will thus enable the Estonian and European
institutions at large to benefit from an improved Europeana service.
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Many Estonian institutions have collaborated with Europeana in different EU-
funded projects over the years. Currently the Consortium of Estonian Libraries
Network collaborates with Europeana Foundation in Common Culture.
I would like to thank you again for your ongoing support, and will be grateful for
your contribution to co-fund these mutually beneficial projects.
For further information, please contact Shadi Ardalan.
Yours sincerely,
Harry Verwayen
Executive Director
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Annex:
Generic Services projects, Horizon 2020 and other programmes
Generic Services projects
Europeana Foundation is currently participating in four Generic Services projects:
EnrichEuropeana, Europeana Media, CrowdHeritage and Europeana Common Culture.
EnrichEuropeana aims at developing a crowdsourcing platform that will
enable citizens to transcribe and enrich cultural heritage material from
Europeana Collections and national aggregator portals.
Through Europeana Media, we develop an Enhanced Unified Playout Service
(EUPS), offering heritage institutions a media playout with market-
competitive quality, user friendly design, and cross-border content
reusability. The player will be integrated in the Europeana Core Services.
CrowdHeritage improves the quality of Europeana’s digital content by
developing a standalone online platform for enriching metadata of selected
cultural items, focusing on user engagement and public participation.
And Europeana Common Culture, with Europeana Foundation as the project
coordinator, develops a harmonised and coordinated environment for
Europeana’s national aggregators, to collaborate, share resources and
technical means, and agree on common recommendations and standards.
Not least, the project will improve the quality of content and metadata to
increase user satisfaction.
New Generic Services proposals
Europeana Foundation will focus on three Europeana DSI - Generic Services
proposals in response to the European Commission’s ‘CEF Telecom Call for
proposals 2019’: Europeana Sport, Art of Reading in The Middle Ages and Europeana XX
- Century of Change, which require 25% co-funding. Europeana Foundation has been
instrumental in bringing a consortia together; however, we will not be acting as the
coordinator of the proposals. Europeana Sport is coordinated by ICCU; Art of Reading
will be led by NUK Slovenia and Europeana XX is under the lead of Sound and Vision.
Horizon 2020 and other programmes
We are also taking part in H2020 projects: V4Design (2018 - 2020) and GIFT (2017 -
2019) and under CEF Telecom Public Open Data: Saint George on a bike (starting
around September 2019).
Europeana Foundation will also take part in Time Machine CSA.
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