| Aggregator | The cultural heritage institution or the project it is partner in, that assembles data from various organisations, converts to the correct format and delivers to Europeana |
| Content provider | The organisation that delivers content to the aggregator, mostly with an export from a local database |
| Europeana Foundation | The government body of Europeana, incorporated in Dutch law as "Stichting Europeana". The general director of the foundation is Harry Verwayen |
| Europeana Pro | The Europeana tech community, a community of experts, developers, and researchers from the R&D sector within the greater Europeana Network Association |
| Europeana Network Association (ENA) | A community of European experts working in the field of digital cultural heritage. Everyone is free to join the community |
| Europeana Members Council | Elected governing body of 36 representatives from various European cultural heritage organizations |
| Europeana Network Association Management Board | Consists of 6 members appointed by the Members Council. The board leads the development of the ENA's strategic vision. They also sit in the Europeana Foundation Management Board |
Europeana is a platform for digital cultural heritage content. Over 3000 organizations across Europe have contributed to make the platform one of the biggest resources for cultural content worldwide. Europeana currently displays over 58 million cultural and scientific artifacts, covering a wide range of disciplines, such as art, architecture and biology.
The history of Europeana starts with the desire to create a European digital library and ends with the structurally funded Digital Service Infrastructure. Below you can find a summary of Europeana's history.| 2005 | France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Hungary and Spain send a joint letter to the president of the European Union, José Manuel Barroso, to advocate the development of a virtual European Library to make European's cultural heritage more accessible |
| 2007 | The European Commission'sInformation Communication Technologies Policy Support Programme (ICT-PSP) launches the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) from 2007 until 2013, allowing many organizations to propose projects to deliver content to Europeana |
| 2008 | The project European Digital Library Network (EDL-net), including the creation of the Europeana prototype, kicked-of in 2008. It was funded by the eContentplus programme |
| 2009 | The successor of EDLnet (Europeana version 1.0) began life in February 2009. It ran for 2.5 years and, by 2010, the initial prototype had developed into a full service, providing access to over 10 million digital records of cultural objects |
| 2011 | In January 2011, the European Commission released its ‘New Renaissance’ report which endorsed Europeana as ‘the central reference report for Europe’s online cultural heritage’. A huge milestone followed in September 2012 when, in the first move of its kind, Europeana metadata was released under the terms of the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, making the metadata itself freely available for any kind of use, boosting opportunities for digital innovation and creativity. |
| 2014 | The Connecting Europe Facility programme launches the CEF Telecom Call for Proposals as of 2014 until 2020, supporting new projects with Europeana. |
| 2015 | In May 2015, Europeana became one of the European Commission’s Digital Service Infrastructures (DSI), all of which deliver networked cross-border services for citizens, businesses and public administrations. |
Belgium has been one of the earliest content providers in Europe, making it in the top ten list of
countries with the most content in Europeana (see statistics page).
Most Belgian content providers have delivered content through various European funded projects. Find a
list below.
Content delivered in projects
Content delivered by aggregators
| Aggregator | Organizations |
|---|---|
| Erfgoedplus | All associated institutions |
| Carare | erfgoedBrussels, PMR Maeyaert, Art & History Museum (Brussels) |
| Photoconsortium | KULeuven, Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (Brussels) |
| Vlaamse Kunstcollectie | Groeningemuseum (Brugge), Museum voor Schone Kunsten (Gent), Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (Antwerp) |
| Museu-hub | Art & History Museum, Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (Brussels) |