CARARE - D1.6: Annual Report 2011-12 (Final)

CARARE brings together a network of heritage agencies and organisations, archaeological museums and research institutions and specialist digital archives from all over Europe to establish an aggregation service for Europeana. The project’s main objectives are to:

• make digital content for Europe's unique archaeological monuments and historic sites available to Europeana’s users;
• establish tools and services to support and enable its network of partners to make their digital content interoperable with Europeana, and to share best practices;
• enable access to 3D and Virtual Reality content through Europeana; and
• establish the business model for sustainability.

Summary of Activities

The focus of activities during the second year of the project has been on commencing the supply of contents to Europeana. For CARARE’s content partners this has meant working to prepare their content and has involved a range of activities from setting up systems, enhancing metadata and taking part in training workshops to securing permissions. CARARE’s technical partners have been working to complete the testing of the systems which make up the aggregation service and going live. CARARE is one of the first aggregation services to provide content to Europeana in its new EDM format and our content has been helping Europeana to test its ingestion services against the new format. The first CARARE contents, from the Swedish National Heritage Board, were published in Europeana in early February. The Heritage Board is one of eighteen CARARE content partners who have signed the new Europeana Data Exchange Agreement and its data forms part of Europeana’s Linked Open Data Pilot. Work has also been underway to enable 3D collections in Europeana, with CARARE’s content partners preparing their content as 3D PDFs with the necessary
metadata and Europeana implementing changes a new search facet for 3D in its user interface.

During the course of the year the project partners have taken part in a range of activities and events, presenting the activities of the CARARE project widely to members of the archaeological and architectural heritage community. The network continues to expand to include new stakeholders with an interest in Europeana and in aggregation services.