First million of digital objects from Poland in Europeana!

First million of digital objects from Poland in Europeana!
On February 8th 2012 another data synchronisation between Polish Digital Libraries Federation and Europeana has been finished. Europeana is a portal which aim is to give access to digitised cultural heritage coming from collections of European cultural heritage institutions. This portal is filled with data about cultural heritage objects via a network of so called metadata aggregators – services which are responsible for gathering data from cultural heritage institutions and passing it to Europeana (with some additional processing if necessary).

The Digital Libraries Federation is the only one Polish metadata aggregator and supports data transfer from 70 different services to Europeana. The data comes initially from several hundred cultural heritage institutions, including libraries, museums and archives.

During the data transfer finished on the 8 February, the Federation provided data describing 783 275 objects (previously it was around 550 thousands). Several Polish institutions provide data to Europeana independently from the Federation, cooperating with international metadata aggregators. These institutions provide metadata about another 313 950 objects. Therefore on the 8 February 2012 the total number of digital objects visible in Europeana, and provided by Polish cultural and scientific institutions crossed 1 million and now is exactly 1 097 225.

Currently Europeana gives access to data about 22 976 336 objects, and the group of Europena’s millionaires beside Poland (4,76% share in the total number of objects) includes the following seven countries:

France – 3 674 775 objects (15,99%)
Germany – 3 339 475 objects (14,53%)
Sweden – 2 359 314 objects (10,27%)
Italy- 2 086 224 objects (9,08%)
Spain – 1 873 783 objects (8,16%)
Norway – 1 557 820 objects (6,78%)
The Netherlands – 1 222 818 objects (5,32%)

Poznań Supercomputing and Netrworking Center, operator of the Digital Libraries Federation, besides cooperation related to the data transfer, is also country coordinator of Europeana PR activities. This duty is performed as a part of the Europeana Awareness project, in the cooperation with National Audiovisual Institute.