EN    EN EN 
EN    EN  COMMISSION OF THE E UROPEAN COMMUNITIES 
Brussels, 28.8.2009 
SEC(2009) ) 1124 final 
  
COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT 
 
accompanying the  
COMMUNICATION FROM THE CO MMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN 
PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL 
COMMITTEE AND THE COMMI TTEE OF THE REGIONS 
 
on Europeana - next steps 
 
Part I: Questions for the public consultation 
Part II: Overview of the current content contribution to Europeana by country 
{COM(2009) 440 final} 
EN 2   EN PART I  
The present document complements the Com mission Communication on ‘Europeana - next 
steps’ with a series of questions  for consultation. Interested pa rties are invited to submit their 
comments on all or some of the questions by 15 November 2009  to: 
European Commission,  
Directorate General for Info rmation Society and Media 
Unit 'access to information', EUFO 2281 
Rue Alcide de Gasperi 
L-2920 Luxembourg 
or by e-mail to: INFSO  DIGITAL-LIBRARIES@ec.europa.eu  
Contributions will be published on the digita l libraries website of the Commission, unless 
requested otherwise by the organisation/person submitting them. 
The questions of this consulta tion all have a direct impact on the future development of 
Europeana. Some of the questi ons - in particular questions 7-10 - also have more general 
policy implications for the digitisation, acces sibility and use of content from cultural 
institutions. The replies to thes e questions will feed into the further policy development in 
areas such as the re-use of public sector info rmation and copyright related questions for the 
digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material. In the latter area the questions 
complement the work undertaken by the Comm ission in the context of the Green Paper on 
copyright in the knowledge economy and the follow-up Communication. Where relevant, the 
results of the consultation will be taken up an d further discussed in stakeholder groups and 
working groups with Member  States' representatives. 
Questions for consultation 
General 
Question 1 
Which orientations would you suggest for the future develo pment of Europeana as a common 
access point to Europe's cultural heri tage in the digital environment? 
Question 2 
Which features should be given priority in the further development of the site? 
Question 3 
Has Europeana struck the right balance between ma king Europe's digitised cultural heritage 
searchable through a common entry point and at the same time giving visibility to the 
institutions that contribute the material, or should the mate rial accessible through Europeana 
be presented in a more unified way? 
EN 3   EN Question 4 
How should Europeana further develop its own autonomous identity? 
Question 5 
Should there be minimum requirements for th e content brought into Europeana by the 
contributing organisations (e.g. minimum viewi ng or use options)? If so, who should be 
responsible for defining and impos ing these minimum requirements?  
Content for European 
Question 6 
Which categories of content ar e so important for the users that Member States and their 
cultural institutions should be encouraged to  make them available through Europeana? What 
measures can be taken to ensure the av ailability of these works through Europeana? 
Question 7 
What is the best way to encourage cultural in stitutions and rightholders to take into account 
cross-border access - including through Europe ana - in their agreements on digitisation and 
dissemination of in-copyright ma terial? Which legal or practical  barriers to this cross-border 
access need to be addressed? 
Question 8 
How can the difference in the level playing field for digitising and making accessible older 
works between the US and Europe (in particula r the 1923 cut-off date in the US, that places 
all material from before 1923 in the public domain) be addressed in  a pragmatic way (e.g. 
better databases of orphan and out-of-print work s, a cut-off point that imposes lower 
requirements for diligent search in relation to orphan works)? 
Question 9 
What policies should be adopted to avoid that the process of digitisation itself creates new 
types of sui generis copyright that, in turn, could create ba rriers to the dissemination of 
digitised public domain material? 
Question 10 
What measures can be taken to ensure that cultural institutions make their digitised public 
domain material  accessible and usable in the widest  possible way on the Internet? Should 
there be minimum requirements for the way in which digitised pub lic domain content  is made 
available through Europeana?  
Financing and governance 
Question 11 
EN 4   EN Which financing model would refl ect a fair distribution between  Community funding, Member 
States' funding and private funding, taking into a ccount that the aim of Europeana is to give 
the widest possible access to Europe's cultural heritage at pan-European level? Could 
Europeana be financed solely by national cu ltural institutions or by private funding? 
Question 12 
Is sustained European Union funding for the basic operations of Europeana necessary and 
justified for the period after 2013? What type of European fundi ng instrument could best be 
used? 
Question 13 
Which governance structure for Europeana would best fit the preferred financing model (as 
indicated under question 11)? Should there be a role in the governance structure for 
organisations other than content providers? 
Question 14 
How can private involvement in Europeana best  take shape (e.g. through  sponsoring, through 
technological partnerships, thr ough links from Europeana to th e sites of publishers and other 
rightholders where the user can buy in-copyr ight content, or through another type of 
partnership)? 
Question 15 
How can private sponsorship of Europe ana best be stimulated? Are commercial 
communications on the Europeana site acceptabl e, and, if so, what type of commercial 
communications (e.g. logos of sponsors,  promotion of specific products)? 
Question 16 
Should there be a contribution  (financial or other) in exchange for the links from Europeana 
to sites with content for which the user has to  pay? Can a model such as that of Gallica 2, 
providing links from the site of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France to the content on the 
sites of French publishers, be transposed to Europeana? 
EN 5   EN PART II  
Overview of the contribution of Member States  to Europeana in % of the total number of 
objects (situation end July 2009). 
EU countries  
France 47% 
Germany 15.4% 
Netherlands 8% 
United Kingdom 7.9% 
Sweden 5.2% 
Finland 4% 
Greece 1.6% 
Italy 1.2% 
Belgium 1.1% 
Slovenia 0.7% 
Spain 0.6% 
Estonia 0.4% 
Luxembourg 0.4% 
Poland 0.3% 
Romania 0.3% 
Austria 0.2% 
Portugal 0.2% 
Hungary 0.1% 
Latvia <0.1% 
Cyprus <0.1% 
Bulgaria <0.1% 
Czech Republic <0.1% 
EN 6   EN Denmark <0.1% 
Ireland <0.1% 
Lithuania <0.1% 
Malta <0.1% 
Slovakia <0.1% 
 
Non EU countries  
Norway 4.3% 
Switzerland 0.4%