REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL on the evaluation of Europeana and the way forward
Date: 2018-09-06
Institutions: Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, European Commission
Subjects: EU programme, Internet, cultural heritage, cultural transmission, digital archiving, digital technology, digitisation, heritage protection, virtual library

EN 

  EN 

   EUROPEAN COMMISSION  Brussels, 6.9.2018  COM(2018) 612 final  REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL on the evaluation of Europeana and the way forward {SWD(2018) 398 final}  
 
 
1. 

INTRODUCTION 

This report outlines the results of the independent evaluation of Europeana as a European 
cultural  and  digital  innovation  project  as  well  as  the  Commission’s  vision  on  the  way 
forward for the future development of Europeana.  

It  is  accompanied  by  the  Commission  Staff  Working  Document  SWD(2018)398 
providing details on the evaluation of Europeana. 

1.1.  Europeana 

Europeana  was  launched  in  2008  as  ‘The  European  Digital  Library,  to  make  Europe's 
cultural heritage accessible to all through a single access point. Its creation was initiated 
by a letter from six Heads of State and Government to the Commission in 2005. 

The  Commission’s  financial  and  political  support  has  continued  ever  since1,  for  the 
coordination and integration of EU Member States’ efforts to digitise and make cultural 
interoperability  and 
material  accessible  online.  These 
cooperation among cultural heritage institutions across Europe. Europeana contributes to 
the  implementation  of  a  number  of  intertwined  policies,  including  the  Digital  Single 
Market  and  the  Commission  Recommendation  (2011/711/EU)2  and  related  Council 
Conclusions3, calling on Member States to get more material online and ensure the long-
term preservation of digital material. 

include  standardisation, 

Today, Europeana is Europe’s digital platform for cultural heritage, funded as a well-
established Digital  Service Infrastructure under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF)4, 
to: 

-  bring Europe’s digitised cultural heritage material online and to promote its cross-

border visibility and use across Europe; 

-  offer solutions for the trans-European interoperability and accessibility of digital 

- 

resources of European heritage; 
further improve the conditions for re-use and facilitate take-up of digital cultural 
content  and  metadata  in  other  sectors,  e.g.  research,  education,  tourism  or  the 
creative industries; and 

1 The timeline of the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural heritage outlines all relevant initiatives 

and policy documents since 2005. 

2 Commission Recommendation of 27 October 2011 on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural 

material and digital preservation (2011/711/EU) (OJ L 283. 29.10.2011, p. 39). 

3Council Conclusions of 10 May 2012 on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and 

digital preservation (OJ C 169, 15.6.2012, p. 5). 

4Regulation  No  1316/2013  of  the  European  Parliament  and  of  the  Council  of  11 December  2013 
establishing  the  Connecting  Europe  Facility,  amending  Regulation  No  913/2010  and  repealing 
Regulations No 680/2007 and No 67/2010 (OJ L 348, 20.12.2013, p. 129-171). 

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-  provide  a  multilingual,  user-friendly  access  point  to  Europe’s  rich  and  diverse 

heritage. 

Europeana currently provides access to over 51 million items from the collections of over 
3 700 libraries, archives, museums, galleries and audio-visual collections across Europe, 
through  its  main  portal  ‘Europeana  Collections’  (europeana.eu)  and  through  the 
platform’s  application  programming  interfaces  (APIs).  Europeana  offers  services  to 
different user groups, such as: 

-  data  partners 
professionals; 

(contributing  cultural 

institutions)  and  cultural  heritage 

-  end-users (anyone with an interest in culture); and 
- 

re-users (education, research, education and creative sector professionals).  

The  Europeana  Network  Association,  with  over  1 700  cultural  heritage,  creative  and 
technology  professionals,  supports  the  values  and  work  of  Europeana,  exchanges  and 
promotes  best  practice  on  digitisation  and  metadata  standardisation  and  stimulates 
capacity building in the cultural heritage community. 

Europeana contributes to preserving and fostering European culture in the digital age and 
involves  all  EU  Member  States.  It  supports  the  objectives  of  the  European  Year  of 
Cultural  Heritage  2018  to  encourage  the  sharing  and  appreciation  of  Europe’s  cultural 
heritage,  raise  awareness  of  common  history  and  values,  and  strengthen  a  sense  of 
belonging to a common European space. Europeana is the only digital cultural heritage 
partner of the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018. 

1.2.  A New European Agenda For Culture 

In  its  Communication  published  on  22 May  20185,  the  Commission  announced  ‘next 
steps for Europeana, Europe'’s  digital  platform  for  cultural  heritage by 2018’ aiming 
to  take  it  forward  as  a  pan-European  enabler  of  the  digital  transformation  of  cultural 
heritage  and  a  key  initiative  on  democratic  access  to  culture.  Together  with  other 
announced  initiatives  such  as  the  network  of  competence  centres  to  safeguard 
knowledge  about  endangered  heritage  monuments  through  large-scale  digitisation,  the 
upcoming  creation  of  an  online  directory  of  European  films  and  the  pan-European 
network  of  Digital  Creative  and  Innovation  Hubs,  Europeana  will  contribute  to  the 
further promotion, diffusion and accessibility of European culture and cultural heritage. 

This  report outlines  the  results  of  the  independent  evaluation  requested by  the  Council 
Conclusions  of  31  May  2016  on  the  role  of  Europeana  for  the  digital  access, 
visibility and use of European cultural heritage6 as well as the Commission’s vision 
on the way forward for Europeana. 

In response to the Council’s request, the Commission carried out: 

(a)  An  evaluation  of  Europeana  based  on  the  five  mandatory  criteria  (relevance, 
effectiveness,  efficiency,  coherence,  EU  added  value)  of  the  Better  Regulation 

5 A New European Agenda for Culture: COM(2018) 267 final, SWD(2018) 167 final. 

6  Council  conclusions  on  the  role  of  Europeana  for  the  digital  access,  visibility  and  use  of  European 

cultural heritage  (OJ C 212, 14.6.2016 p. 9.). 

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Guidelines of the Commission7. The scope of the evaluation covers both the underlying 
concept and value of Europeana as a European cultural and digital innovation project as 
well  as  an  in-depth  review  of  the  adequacy  and  viability  of  the  services  provided  by 
Europeana as a Digital Service Infrastructure under CEF. 

(b)  An  analysis  of  possible  options  for  the  mid-  and  long-term  development  of 
Europeana, based on the outcomes of the evaluation.  

A  panel  of  five  independent  experts,  from  different  fields  of  relevant  expertise,  were 
hired  to  assist  the  Commission  in  the  evaluation  and  the  orientations  for  the  future 
development  of  Europeana.  An  independent  study  was  carried  out  by  an  external 
consultancy,  to  refine  the  evaluation  questions  and  methodology,  gather  evidence  data 
(including  through  desk  research,  case  studies,  interviews,  benchmarking,  technical 
usability  evaluation  and  analysis  of  the  public  online  consultation),  and  assess  the 
evaluation questions with contribution from the experts. 

The Commission also carried out a 12-week online public consultation, in all EU official 
languages.  A  targeted  questionnaire,  with  more  technical  questions,  addressed  to 
professionals and organisations that had experience with Europeana’s infrastructure and 
professional  network  was  included  in  the  public  consultation.  The  public  consultation 
results (from 1 221 responses) have provided significant input to the evaluation. 

2.  MAIN FINDINGS OF THE EVALUATION 

The  main  findings  of  the  evaluation,  according  to  the  evaluation  criteria,  can  be 
summarised under the following headings. 

2.1.  Relevance 

Overall,  Europeana’s  relevance  is  high  in  terms  of  EU  policies  and  priorities  for  the 
online  accessibility  and  dissemination  of  European  cultural  heritage.  Europeana  is 
relevant  to  cultural  heritage  institutions  as  a  facilitator  of  professional  exchange  of 
cultural and technological expertise. 

Europeana has exceeded its objectives in terms of quantity of items, but there is a need 
to improve the relevance and the quality of its content and metadata. 

Europeana  has  one  of  the  largest  digital  collections  in  the  world  and  is  the  only  pan-
European  platform  of  its  kind  to  provide  access  to  image,  text,  sound,  video  and  3D 
material  from  the  collections  of  over  3 700  European  libraries,  archives,  museums, 
galleries and audio-visual institutions. Europeana further stands out by offering material 
in a large number of languages (37 languages). Europeana’s relevance to EU policies and 
priorities was rated high.  

At  least  two-thirds  of  the  respondents  to  the  public  consultation  that  provided  data  to 
Europeana indicated that Europeana generated value for their organisation by means of 

7 Evaluation Roadmap: http://ec.europa.eu/smart-

regulation/roadmaps/docs/plan_2016_55_europeana_evaluation_en.pdf  

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audience  reach  and  added  value  to  content,  and  by  facilitating  partnerships  with  other 
cultural  institutions.  Two-thirds  of  respondents  indicated  that  Europeana  was  important 
for finding and exploring European cultural heritage. Its collections are perceived to be 
advancing cultural knowledge and learning and offering trustworthy content sources. 

While Europeana has exceeded its objectives in terms of quantity of items, the relevance 
and quality of its  content and metadata is  an issue. Although a number of actions have 
been  launched  to  improve  data  quality,  further  open  the  data  and  create  value  for  its 
partners,  the  key  issues  are  related  to  the  content  (e.g.  in  terms  of  geographical  and 
thematic  coverage,  representation  of  institutions,  and  the  relevance  and  cultural 
interest/value of the content) and the metadata (such as the lack of translation, the quality 
and level of detail, and inconsistencies or broken links). 

Issues  pertaining  to  metadata  have  had  a  negative  impact  on  the  service’s  overall 
popularity and have affected the findability of material on Europeana as well as its use. A 
number of negative responses in the public consultation concerned the lack of relevance 
of  search  results.  Achieving  high-level  quality  data  is  therefore  a  key  parameter  for 
Europeana,  and  cultural  heritage  institutions  play  a  central  role  in  this  field,  being 
ultimately responsible for the quality of the provided content and metadata. Europeana’s 
current strategy is focused on strengthening the quality of data and making the existing 
(and incoming) content on Europeana more interesting and valuable to end-users and re-
users. 

2.2.  Effectiveness 

Europeana fares well in some aspects but there is significant potential for improvement 
in others.  

The provision of common standards, best practices and promotion of open cultural data 
are  considered  among  its  key  achievements.  Europeana’s  common  solutions  and 
publishing frameworks have been taken up by cultural heritage institutions.  

However,  the  many  user  groups  involved  pointed  out  weaknesses  in  the  technical 
infrastructure  (including 
the  platform’s 
functionality in terms of multilingualism, search and filtering facilities in the portal and 
the APIs and the quality of the data. 

infrastructure)  and 

the  aggregation 

in 

Europeana  targets  a  wide  range  of  audiences  such  as  cultural  heritage  institutions  and 
professionals,  researchers,  education,  creative  industries  professionals  as  well  as  the 
general public. The diversity of users and their different interests in Europeana poses a 
challenge in satisfying every user group’s needs with the appropriate focus. 

While the curated content on the platform is able to target one or more user groups, the 
search functionalities, particularly the lack of sophisticated filtering for refining a search 
and the lack of relevance of the search results, do not meet its target users’ expectations. 
Another  issue  is  the  level  of  multilingualism  of  the  portal:  the  lack  of  translation  of 
metadata and inconsistencies in search results when searching in different languages. 

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Europeana has not been very effective in reaching out to citizens who in general are not 
aware  of  its  existence  despite  successful  activities  such  as  the  World  War  I  collection 
days    

Despite  these  shortcomings,  one  of  Europeana’s  key  achievements  is  that  it  provides 
common  standards  and  solutions,  in  particular,  the  Europeana  Data  Model8,  the 
International Rights Statements9 and the Europeana Publishing Framework10. These have 
been  taken  up  widely  in  the  cultural  heritage  sector  in  Europe  and  internationally,  for 
example in the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). 

2.3.  Efficiency 

Overall, Europeana shows potential for improving its efficiency. 

While  the  initiative  has  been  successful  in  building  a  wide  ecosystem  of  aggregators 
and  cultural  heritage  institutions,  the  biggest  challenge  lies  in  the  efficiency  of  the 
complex aggregation process. 

The current aggregation structure is based on domain and national aggregators which 
bring in  data from 3 700 institutions. Specifically, contributing institutions partner with 
aggregators that harmonise their data and submit it to Europeana. However, this involves 
a  complex  workflow  where,  in  many  cases,  the  publication  and  update  of  data  are 
affected by delays or by communication issues between the parties concerned. The lack 
of tools for updating the metadata results in increased overall efforts needed to provide 
quality data. There are also cases where institutions that contributed through EU-funded 
projects which have now finished have limited means of updating their data, especially in 
countries where there are no national aggregators. 

The funding scheme has also faced challenges in terms of efficiency. Despite the efforts 
of  the  Commission,  the  Member  States  and  the  Europeana  Foundation  (operator  of  the 
core  service  platform),  the  funding  model  based  on  grants  (which  required  co-funding) 
proved  to  be  unsuitable  for  sustaining  the  core  services.  In  the  2016  Council 
Conclusions,  Member  States  were  invited  to  continue  their  financial  contributions  to 
Europeana until the Commission progressively converted its support scheme from a grant 
model into a procurement model that could cover all core service costs. This shift took 
place in September 2017. 

Despite  the  above-mentioned  limitations,  Europeana  notably  managed  to  build  a  wide 
ecosystem  or  network  of  domain  and  national  aggregators  and  cultural  heritage 
institutions  that  have  played  a  key  role  in  fostering  access  to  Europe’s  digital  cultural 
heritage. 

8 https://pro.europeana.eu/resources/standardisation-tools/edm-documentation 

9 http://rightsstatements.org/en/ 

10 https://pro.europeana.eu/post/publishing-framework 

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2.4.  Coherence 

Europeana is coherent and well aligned with wider EU policy and priorities while being 
at the same time coherent with the national strategies of EU Member States. 

The evaluation confirms the coherence of Europeana as regards EU policy, in line with 
the  Gothenburg  communication  of  November  201711.  The  European  Year  of  Cultural 
Heritage 2018 is designated as the occasion to show how digital tools can broaden access 
to  cultural  material  and  opportunities,  and  shed  light  on  initiatives  such  as  Europeana, 
which  fosters  digital  access  to  cultural  heritage  material  held  by  libraries,  archives  and 
museums.  It  is  also  coherent  with  the  national  strategies  for  the  digitisation  and  online 
accessibility of cultural heritage material of EU Member States. Europeana, to a certain 
extent,  addresses  challenges  that  the  EU  Member  States  face  in  digitising  cultural 
heritage  and  in  transforming  access  to  culture.  Europeana’s  work,  for  instance,  on 
standards, tools and open access is seen as useful across all sectors influenced by digital 
transformations, even if not all stakeholders agree to the specific solutions promoted. 

2.5.  EU added value: 

Europeana  has  brought  added  value  by  playing  a  significant  role  in  the  digital 
development  of  the  cultural  heritage  sector  in  Europe.  In  addition,  Europeana  has 
contributed to underpinning a sense of shared history and identity among Europeans. 

The Europeana initiative has been key in strengthening cooperation and standardisation 
activities across borders with the overarching goal of increasing the use of standards in 
digitising  and  sharing  digitised  cultural  material  throughout  Europe.  National  level 
initiatives  related  to  standardisation  of  metadata  or  the  creation  of  national  portals  in  a 
number  of  Member  States  would  not  have  happened  without  Europeana.  Europeana’s 
involvement  has  also  been  vital  for  promoting  open  cultural  data.  In  the  replies  to  the 
public consultation, Europeana’s involvement to  push forward  open culture/metadata is 
considered  to  be  the  activity  that  has  contributed  the  most  (82 %)  to  advancing  and 
facilitating the work of the cultural heritage institutions.  

Europeana has also contributed to diffusing a sense of shared history and identity through 
its thematic collections and participatory campaigns, such as the World War 1 campaign, 
linking  together  individual  stories  in  a  larger  European  context,  and  more  recently  the 
Migration campaign. 

3.  ORIENTATIONS FOR THE FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF EUROPEANA 

Taking into account the results of the evaluation study and the analysis of future options 
by  the  panel  of  experts  in  relation  to  Europeana’s  future  value  proposition12,  the 

11 Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic 
and  Social  Committee  and  the  Committee  of  the  Regions  Strengthening  European  Identity  through 
Education  and  Culture  The  European  Commission’s  contribution  to  the  Leaders’  meeting  in 
Gothenburg, 17 November 2017 (COM/2017/0673 final). 

12  EU  Bookshop:  Study  on  the  ‘Evaluation  of  Europeana  and  orientations  for  its  future  development, 
following  adoption  of  Council  Conclusions  by  EYCS  Council  on  31/05/2016’  (SMART  no. 
2016/0100). 

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European  Commission  will  endeavour  to  transform  Europeana  into  a  key  player  in  the 
pan-European  network  of  Digital  Creative  and  Innovation  Hubs  for  the  digital 
transformation of cultural heritage institutions. 

The Commission’s analysis builds on the key strengths shown by Europeana as well as 
the need to fix its shortcomings that were highlighted in the evaluation, while taking into 
account the emerging trends and developments in the digital cultural heritage sector. 

3.1. 

Scope 

The  future  scope  of  Europeana  will  be  mainly  focused  on  the  needs  of  primary 
stakeholders  in  the  cultural  heritage  sector,  in  particular  the  cultural  heritage 
institutions,  which  the  initiative  should  support  and  steer  in  their  efforts  towards 
achieving  digital  transformation.  Europeana  will  strengthen  its  ties  with  the  cultural 
heritage institutions by creating value out of the following areas of activity. 

i) A strengthening of the technical core platform of the initiative, providing a powerful 
and reliable basis to support cultural heritage institutions, in particular: 

-  a  technical  infrastructure  and  cutting  edge  tools  allowing  cultural  institutions  to 
easily  make  content  and  metadata  of  high  quality  accessible  to  Europeana 
(aggregation infrastructure and services); 
significantly improving the findability of digital cultural materials; 
strengthening multilingual aspects for users to  explore, enjoy and re-use content 
regardless of the original language of the cultural materials; 
retaining responsibility for the quality of the offered data and services. 

- 
- 

- 

ii)  Furthermore,  the  Commission  considers  that  the  Europeana  initiative  should  be 
established  around  the  empowerment  of  cultural  heritage  communities  in  Member 
States.  Europeana  should  provide  substantial  support  to  data  providers  and  aggregators 
for an efficient data ingestion and update. The Commission considers the aggregators — 
local,  national  and  domain-related  —  to  be  essential  to  the  Europeana  initiative  and 
considers, that their role as intermediaries between cultural institutions should be actively 
supported by Member States and the initiative. 

iii) The Commission  considers that the initiative should showcase  the potential of such 
content through curated and multilingual collections, exhibitions and virtual galleries 
based on high quality data, enabling an array of themes to be created strengthening the 
European narrative and dimension. 

iv) To this effect, Europeana should re-think the infrastructure needed for developing and 
handling  smart  content  to  improve  its  digital  offering  by  making  use  of  various 
artificial  intelligence-based  approaches,  natural  language  processing  and  big  data  to 
automate to the extent possible the creation, management and presentation of content and 
metadata.  Europeana  should  actively  follow  and  implement  the  development  of 
standards, tools and services to further enrich, refine, and automate digital content. This 
will enable smart content to be created that can be re-used in other sectors such as the 
education, research or the creative sectors.  

v)  Europeana  should  also  continue  driving  standardisation,  common  solutions  and 
best  practices  in  the  digital  cultural  heritage  sector  and  operate  as  a  catalyst  and 
innovator for the digital transformation of the cultural heritage institutions. 

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It is vital in such a context that Europeana and its network of aggregators, institutions and 
professionals together shape the digital transformation of the cultural heritage sector, by 
pushing  forward  institutional  and  professional  collaboration,  which  will  support  the 
development of related expertise and skills. This will contribute to the capacity building 
of  cultural  heritage  institutions,  ensuring  that  even  the  smallest  institutions  have  the 
opportunity to embrace digital transformation. 

3.2. 

Funding 

Europeana will continue to be funded under the CEF programme through a mix of grants 
and procurements until the end of the current multiannual financial framework. While the 
core services will be funded through procurements in order to assure the stability of the 
service  provided,  the  financial  instruments  of  grants  will  be  used  to  support  cultural 
institutions in order to contribute to Europeana. 

Under  the  next  Multiannual  Financial  Framework  (COM(2018)  321  final),  the 
Commission  has  proposed  to  fund  Europeana  under  the  Digital  Europe  programme 
which  will  aim  to  strengthen  the  capacity  building  of  various  sectors  and  the  flagship 
projects in these sectors making use of this capacity building.  

The work carried out under the this programme will be complemented through research 
and  innovation  activities  in  Horizon  Europe  on  digitisation  of  cultural  heritage 
monuments  and  sites,  automatic  interpretation  of  cultural  heritage  as  well  as  virtual 
museums. 

3.3.  Governance 

The governance mechanism will be under the auspices of the Commission Expert Group 
on  ‘Digital  Cultural  Heritage  and  Europeana’  (DCHE).  The  members  of  this  group 
represent  the  Member  States  and  cooperate  with  the  Commission  in  the  areas  of 
digitisation, online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation. 

The input of the DCHE to the Europeana strategy will ensure a stronger  engagment and 
an  increasingly  more  active  participation  of  the  Member  States  as  well  as  of  cultural 
institutions. 

In addition, the DCHE will be assisted by a sub-group of experts to be selected based on 
a  call  for  an  expression  of  interest.  They  will  have  the  task  of  providing  viable, 
innovative and forward-looking advice and solutions, ensuring that the different needs of 
Europeana audiences and stakeholders are taken into account.  

4.  CONCLUSIONS 

The evaluation has highlighted an overall appreciation of the European added-value 
of  Europeana  by  cultural  heritage  institutions  across  the  EU.  The  evaluation  also 
revealed that based on the mixed but passionate feedback of respondents, Europeana is 
a relevant initiative not just for the institutions but also for the European citizens. It 
has brought together the European cultural institutions, enabling them to collaborate and 
share  their  material.  This  has  not  only  led  to  the  sharing  of  best  practices  on  common 
standards but also helped nurture a European network of data partners, aggregators and 

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of professionals in various fields who have stimulated capacity building and exchange of 
expertise. 

The  evaluation  represents  a  turning  point,  10  years  into  Europeana’s  existence,  with  a 
number of achievements as well as shortcomings as described above. Europeana needs 
to renew its added value to the cultural heritage sector, for instance through capacity 
building, tools for high quality content and metadata supply and enrichment, an efficient 
infrastructure for data delivery and continuous support. To this end, the Commission will 
continue  to  support  Europeana  and  its  network  of  aggregators,  institutions  and 
professionals in their efforts to the digital transformation of the cultural heritage sector. 

9