EuropeanaTravel

EuropeanaTravel is a EU-funded project that will channel digital content from European national and university libraries into Europeana.eu, the portal providing access to Europe’s digital cultural heritage. The project started on 1 May 2009 and will run for two years.

Introduction and objectives

EuropeanaTravel is one of a series of projects funded by the European Commission’s eContentplus Programme, that are digitising material from cultural heritage institutions to feed into Europeana.
The project will digitise over a million resources, including maps, manuscripts, photos, films, books and postcards on the themes of travel, tourism, trade routes and exploration.
The selected materials will come from many well known national and research libraries in Austria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Poland, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Sweden and the UK.
The project will also deliver an „aggregation service“, a tool which will enable LIBER (The Association of European Research Libraries) member institutions to aggregate their materials in order to be included in Europeana.eu. The service will be developed in a way to enable any research library to use it.

Expected results

• Over a million resources from European national and university libraries made available via Europeana.eu.
• Added value to users in bringing together material on travel and tourism from different countries, enabling comparison of different national perspectives.
• Researchers, students, teachers, families, etc. are offered a new dimension for education, business, social networking or holidays.
• An ad-hoc scalable aggregation service will enable any research library willing to contribute to Europeana, to easily aggregate their resources and make them available.