local content in a Europeana cloud

1. local content in a Europeana cloud Rob Davies, MDR Partners, Project Manager

3. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain Editot5807:Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

4. Main goals of LoCloud • Build on success of Europeana Local and CARARE Best Practice Networks (30% of content in Europeana). • 4 million + new items. • Make it easier for small/medium institutions to make good quality metadata and content available to Europeana; • Bring together local history and heritage resources which are currently unevenly represented in the Europeana ‘ecosystem’, • More coherent views of content relating to a given locality;

5. Consortium etc • Scientific coordinator (National Archive, Norway) and a project manager (MDR) • Strong group of technical partners, already important contributors to development of Europeana, including AIT, Athena RC, AVINET, IPCHS, NTUA and PSNC. • National and regional aggregation services or content providers who will act as pilot implementers of the cloud services; coordinate and disseminate at national level. • Partners with specific expertise in key aspects such as vocabularies. • EU Member States represented (excluding Finland, Luxembourg and Malta) plus Iceland, Norway, Serbia and Turkey. • Start date: 1 March 2013

6. Digital Agenda: cloud computing strategy, 2012 • Drive European business and government productivity via cloud computing • Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe  European Commission Communication, September 2012 • “Cloud computing is a game-changer for our economy. Without EU action, we will stay stuck in national fortresses and miss out on billions in economic gains. We must achieve critical mass and a single set of rules across Europe. We must tackle the perceived risks of cloud computing head-on.” Vice-President Neelie Kroes

7.  Benefits claimed for cloud computing • Agility • API • Reduced cost • Device and location independence • Virtualisation • Reliability • Scalability and elasticity • Performance • Security • Maintenance

8. LoCloud: IaaS • Explore and test the potential of cloud computing for aggregation, enrichment and re-use, with a special focus on geographic location. • ‘Default’ aggregation infrastructure in the cloud for smaller content holders • Build on MINT-MORE combination used in CARARE (EDM) • Lightweight digital library • Experiment with alternative ingestion methods • Hospitable to new content providers • House museums, ‘private content holders’ • Establish guidance, training and support facilities, built around the LoCloud aggregation service.

9. Enhanced aggregator services • Metadata editing (possibly collection-wide) • Preservation services • Rights management • Enrichment services • Spatial • Thematic • … • Digital resources management (creation, cataloguing, etc.)

10. LoCloud: SaaS • Provide cloud-based software services to enable more discoverable and interoperable content; • geolocation enrichment tools • metadata enrichment (NLP – English + Spanish) • multilingual vocabularies for local history • historic place-names ‘gazetteer’ • Wikimedia and crowdsourcing • Cloud-based testlab: content provider involvement

12. Workpackage structure WP 2 WP 1 Design and implementation of aggregation infrastructure Planning, preparation and requirements Briefing, action planning in each country; state of the art in relevant cloud infrastructures; content and metadata analysis; requirements analysis Specify, modify, test, implement core infrastructure components: MINT, MoRe, Lightweight digital library – all build on existing work

13. Workpackages WP 3 WP 4 Micro services for small and medium institutions Enabling and supporting small and medium institutions Collaborative cloud-based testlab, involving partners and users; develop and implement a suite of SaaS: geolocation enrichment; metadata enrichment; multilingual vocabularies; historic place-names; Wikimedia and crowdsourcing Regional training workshops, video, online course; documentation and help desk; support portal – centre of expertise; service sustainability planning with Europeana

14. Workpackages WP 7 WP 6 WP 5 Management and coordination Evaluation and impact assessment Dissemination and exploitation Website and social media; national and international conferences and events; competition among Europe’s regions; sustainability planning; work with aggregators Group of inter-related evaluation activities: infrastructure, metadata and content; impact on institutions and end users; Recommendations Coordination with Europeana Cloud developments D5.4 Analysis andrecommendations Provincie Limburg willdeveloppractice-orientedrecommendations on futuredevelopment of cloud services for small and medium sizedinstitutions in varyingregionalandnationalcircumstances.

15. Future directions • Move to cloud based architecture • Scalability, high availability etc • API through which to access the underlying metadata & data • Build services • Allow content providers to create and catalogue their digital resources on the aggregator • A step toward distributed digital curation?

16. Thank yourob.davies@mdrpartners.com