EuropeanaTravel is a EU-funded project that will channel digital content from Europe’s national and university libraries into Europeana.eu. Started on 1 May 2009, and running for two years, EuropeanaTravel will digitise over a million resources, including maps, manuscripts, photos, films, books and postcards on the themes of travel and tourism.

Introduction and objectives

EuropeanaTravel is one in 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 European Library, Museum and Archive.

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 member institutions to aggregate their materials in order to be included into Europeana.eu. The service will be developed in a scalable way to enable any research library to use it.

Partners

National Library of Estonia - Coordinator
Austrian National Library
EDL Foundation
Eremo srl
Goettingen State and University Library
Lund University Library
Moravian Library in Brno
National Library of Finland
National Library of Latvia
National Library of Poland
National and University Library of Slovenia
National Library of The Netherlands
National Library of Wales
Trinity College Library
Slovak National Library
University College London
University of Innsbruck
University Library of Regensburg
University and National Library of Debrecen.

Expected results
Over a million resources from key 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.
A ad-hoc scaleable aggregation service will enable any research library willing to contribute to Europeana, to easily aggregate their resources and make them available through it.

Useful information
eContentPlus http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/econtentplus/index_en.htm The European Commission’s eContentplus programme was a 4-year programme (2005–2008) aimed at improving accessibility and usability of European digital resources in a multilingual environment. The programme has been followed-up by the current Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) Policy Support Programme ("ICT PSP").
Europeana.eu is a portal that links to nearly 5 million digital resources from the museums, archives, libraries and audiovisual collections of Europe. It was launched in November 2008 by the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, and attracted millions of hits.
LIBER http://www.libereurope.eu/
The Association of European Research Libraries includes almost 400 research libraries in more than 40 European countries.

Contacts

EuropeanaTravel is coordinated by the National Library of Estonia.
For further information please contact:
Toomas Schvak, National Library of Estonia
+ 372 630 7437
toomas. schvak@gmail.com