Europeana.eu - European Culture On The WWW

A site that has been arousing quite a bit of interest as of late, Europeana stands as a portal to all things Europe. The site is a collaboration between universities and research institutes spanning the whole continent, and these are backed by different service providers. Although it is still being put into place, you can already have a good sampler for yourself of the features it hopes to eventually have, and the search tool is already fully functional.

Whenever you carry out a search, you are presented with a wealth of tabbed contents including texts, images, videos and sounds. Of course, searches can be refined as you see fit, and it is possible to choose the language and the country along with the data provider.

You can also learn about upcoming features in the section under the “Thought Lab” banner. An expanded and more comprehensive semantic search engine is on the works, and one immediate concern is supporting as many languages as possible (so far, only English, French and Dutch are taken into consideration).

It will be interesting to see the way this portal shapes up, and the transcendence it might acquire. For the time being, you can visit the existing prototype at the provided address and have a taster for yourself.

“Europeana.eu is about ideas and inspiration. It links you to 2 million digital items.”

It provides everybody with a superb window into the European culture and way of life.

When will the site be officially launched?