Presentation by Richard Ranft, Project Coordinator, at the British and Irish Sound Archives’ 2014 Conference in Dublin (Ireland), 16 May 2014.

1. Linking Europe's digital sound archives
Richard Ranft, The British Library
British & Irish Sound Archives conference
16 May 2014, Fiontar, Dublin City University

2. Current scope of Europeana
a single, direct, access point in 31
languages to European cultural heritage
an aggregator of metadata records
contributed by 2,300 cultural heritage
institutions from all over Europe
links to 30 million objects (books, paintings,
sound recordings, videos, etc)

4. Europeana content
From galleries, libraries, archives, museums, AV
collections
From all 28 EU member states, plus 7 other countries
18m images
11m texts
0.5m sounds
234,000 videos
15,000 3-D objects
• Note: video, sound = 2.5% of total, but x10 accesses

5. New! Europeana Sounds:
Will represent the fifth
aggregation domain,
alongside EFG,
EUscreen, APEX, TEL.
Will close the content
gap for access to
Europe’s digital culture
Europeana Sounds project
Many high-quality sounds
in Europe's memory
institutions
- but access is fragmented
and constrained

6. 6
Project outline
 36 months: Feb 2014 – Jan 2017
 gateway to Europe’s rich sound
and music collections via
Europeana channels
 add 0.5m audio + 0.2m associated
items (scores etc)
 1m audio tracks on Europeana;
enrich and link metadata
 €6.1m total budget, 80% EC funded (€4.9m EC contribution)
 funded by European Union’s ICT Policy Support Programme as part of
the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme

7. Specific objectives
 Double the number of audio items on Europeana, to >1m;
additional 0.2m related items: scores, texts, images, videos
 Use innovative methods to improve discovery and use by
enriching and cross-linking metadata for 2m audio and
related items
 work with rights holders to unlock access to Europe’s audio
heritage
 create Europeana channels for audio and other content
 improve Europeana’s technical infrastructure for
aggregating time-based content
 Disseminate the work of the network among end-users and
other content providers
 build a sustainable network of content providers (with IASA)

8. Project partners and wider network
 24 funded partners from 12 member states
 National libraries, specialist sound archives, Europeana, tech partners,
non-profits
 18 are data providers
• work also with Internet Archive, SoundCloud, Spotify, Historypin
• Develop European section of IASA to ensure long-term sustainability

10. Data aggregation
 Aggregate via MINT (Metadata Interoperability
Services )
 540,000 high-quality audio tracks;
potential access to more ‘locked’ content
 Full-length recordings
 225,000 related items
 Classical, contemporary, traditional music
 Oral memories, languages, dialects
 Natural sounds of Europe
 12% for re-use

11. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFFntJrbVIY
Example of audio re-use

12. Uniting cultural items
BWV 870 JS Bach Well-
Tempered Clavier -
Prelude and Fugue in C
major
Manuscript score (Source:
The British Library.
Add.MS 35021
Audio recording (Source:
recorded example from Europeana
Helsinki City Library).

13. Playable,
taggable,
shareable,
embeddable
audio
User playlists
Semantically
similar objects

14. Image: David
Haskiya,
Europeana

15. Project sustainability
Establish Europeana task force within International Association of Sound
and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) to ensure longer-term sustainability
in 7 key areas:
• Acquisition and exchange
• Documentation, metadata
• Resource discovery and access
• Copyright and ethics
• Preservation and conservation
• Research, dissemination, and publication
• Expertise in digitisation of media content

16. Get involved
https://www.facebook.com/soundseuropeana
@eu_sounds

17. New website (from 2 June)

18. More information
http://pro.europeana.eu/web/europeana-sounds
Press releases in English, Irish, French, German,
Latvia, Danish, Italian...

19. Stay tuned!Stay tuned!

20. and thanks for listening!
richard.ranft@bl.uk
@soundarchive
@eu_sounds