Quarter of a million of Polish digital objects in the Europeana!

Quarter of a million of Polish digital objects in the Europeana!

From 11 December 2009, in the European Digital Library – Europeana, there are avaialble resources of dozens of Polish digital libraries congregated around the PIONIER Network Digital Libraries Federation. These resources include over 250 000 digital objects made available by the hundreds of cultural and scientific institutions from different parts of Poland. Among them are both treasures of our national heritage, as well as interesting regional materials or modern scientific and educational publications. The vast majority of publications is available to all Internet users without any restrictions.

Europeana, one of the flagship initiatives of the European Commission, is a web portal which is point of access to digital versions of cultural and scientific heritage. The portal is available from November 2008. In the official launch day it allowed to reach some of 2 million digital objects scattered throughout the Europe. In December 2009, after the data ingestion from the Polish digital libraries, the number of objects in the Europeana exceeded 5 million, of which ca. 5.5% comes from the Polish digital libraries. According to current development plans, Europeana is projected to reach 10 million objects in July 2010. Portal performs a critical role in providing and promoting the cultural heritage of European countries and it is important for Poland to be adequately represented in Europeana.

Polish digital content aggregator for Europeana is Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, the operator of the PIONIER Network Digital Libraries Federation and the PIONIER Network operator.

The PIONIER Network Digital Libraries Federation (PIONIER DLF) integrates network of Polish digital libraries, which have been systematically created since 2002. PIONIER DLF was launched in June 2007 by the Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center. PIONIER DLF currently provides search within descriptions of over 315 000 digital objects. Moreover, it maintaines an extensive database about Polish digital libraries, as well as it is a key element in digitization coordination in the Polish digital libraries. It is worth mentioning that about 10 000 new objects each month is made available by digital libraries connected to the PIONIER DLF . By PIONIER DLFs connection with Europeana, these objects will be more visible and promoted worldwide.