Earlier this year Chris Batt attended the International Conference on the EDL project in Frankfurt-am-Main and wrote detailed session reports, an excerpt from which was featured in the March 2008 SCA newsletter. Read on for a reminder of his concluding thoughts on the meeting, and to download the full report.
One More Step Towards the European Digital Library was the first public event to report the full range of activity associated with Europeana (the new name for the European Digital Library project - EDLnet) and provide information on progress. In total there were around 200 delegates at the conference and a wide range of speakers, some addressing some of the broad issues associated with the creation of digital cultural collections and most directly working on various aspects of the project.
The conference covered a very wide canvas and while each presentation on its own was stimulating and full of useful examples, none of it really unfied to show how Europeana would itself reflect all of the ideas. While it was undoubtedly a valuable experience for the participants, the ‘taster’ nature of the packed programme probably left the experts in any field wanting for more information and the generalists probably furiously surfing for more information to build a more complete picture.
I am certain that the SCA should watch closely what EDLnet will be doing with Europeana since the aggregation strategy has many similarities with what the SCA partners might wish to achieve. On the other hand some of that observation might be on strategies to follow only with great caution. In particular, I found the very generic and traditional nature of design lacked any good understanding of the user groups identified, but I like many others only had a chance for a quick look at a maquette so any definitive judgements are impossible at this stage.
I do suggest that around the time of the prototype SCA could well consider a bilateral meeting with the EDL team to explore more fully the strengths and weaknesses that they have uncovered in their efforts to get institutions to share their content in innovative ways.
Download Chris Batt’s full report:
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