Links in page:
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How did you first hear about europeana.eu, and that you could share your collections on our platform?
Ismo? 2009, FHA was active on Europeana almost since the beginning; they had their own platform even before that.
Maria? 2011, worked at a museum of photography at the time.
Ismo, why did you share your content on Europeana? What is the value?
We trying to get as much impact on our collections as possible; they want as many people as possible seeing and using their items, open access policy
Sharing on the European level is important;
Europeana is good quality and is well known;
Maria - Europeana is doing a great job with rights statement resources etc., helps member states so they don't have to figure this out themselves; she values asking the questions and sharing the answers together; important for the whole digital cultural field;
Ismo - many Finnish CHIs have content that is not just Finnish but also European content that wider Europeans want to see. This is why we publish in English as well, not just Finnish and Swedish.
The API’s will be very important when you think about the data space aspect; how will they work for both content providers and aggs; also tracking usage through api’s, how much their content is reused and uploaded on FINNA and Europeana, and API’s is the way to upload and use them
What was the process like? The good and the bad, any confusion, from both perspectivesIsmo?Maria?
Where did/do you go for help? Are there documents or people you turn to for support?
Maria - aggregators help the CHI’s mostly with communication and translation of resources
From your perspective, how could the process of sharing your data on Euorpeana.eu be improved?
Maria, how can we support the aggregation side better?
Help by giving CHI’s the stats tools like the dashboard, and tier reports on their data - giving CHI’s direct feedback on their own collections
the CHI’s are used to it because they track already through their own sites, and FINNA
Provide an introduction to providers, like a wiki for CHI’s: “this is how you use this tool and here is the link” etc.
Ismo - for content providers, “self service is the best way, automation is even better”
Is there anything you DON’T want to Europeana to help with, or get involved with?
They communicate with content providers in Finnish, they don't expect Europeana to do this
She has no concern about Europeana coming “in between”; they are happy to support with communication and language support, but the easier we can make the CHI-Aggregator relationship, the better
What other tools/platforms are you using to help you share data? to package it etc.?e.g. Mint, etc.
Do you share your collections on other platforms, such as your museum website? Why/why not?
FINNA (aggregator’s website)
Are there any other comments or suggestions you have, that we haven’t covered yet?Can we get in touch in the future?
Ismo = YES; and he has other members that are interested too (CHI perspective)
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How did you first hear about Europeana.eu, and that you could share your collections on our platform?
2006 or 7; when it was being built; having conversations with Jill directly over the phone
Why did you share your data with us?
Funding! First EU-sponsored digitisation projects at that time; so everyone was encouraged to share as much as possible quickly; CHI and universities who were developing the aggregation technology and processes
Athena and Athena plus - general collection projects
Them projects too like Europeana Fashion, Food and Drink, Photography; we all participated in these projects
No quality check, it was a big push for everyone to digitise as much as they could financed purely by quantity of objects submitted, so sometimes that meant lower quality
Also sharing culture and open access to data
Motivation now?
We are currently a bit disappointed; we did job interviews with archaeology and art historian students last week and no one had heard of Europeana; we would want to see Europeana be more well known
What is the process of sharing data currently like?
We don’t anymore! In the era of the big projects, you had the aggregators which were pretty well known. After the projects, there were a few aggregators left, but there is no activation there.
It’s really up to the institution to start uploading again, to find an aggregator, hope that the EDM hasn't changed, or any step in that complex process hasn't changed; and hope that you don't make a mistake, because once you upload your data to Europeana they are there and its very difficult to modify or fix; thats risky.
That process is so complex we barely have colleagues that can do this, they have to know the collection so well, need ICT skills and to be able to read XML; what’s in it for us now? We wouldn't get any funding, we get some exposure but how much? Europeana isnt very well known, and we have no way to track traffic to our site.
3D - uses Sketchfab; the ideal is that Europeana would provide the system
for our CHI’s the time to create digital records is very costly; and so you only want to do it once; and you want to be able to make corrections easily and quickly - “the closer you are to the final display, the better”
Example: “We have a great new photography exhibition, if there were a way to get this exhibition up right away on Europeana that would be great for both of us.”
He has noticed that the number of total objects (50+ million) isn't increasing on the website, “so we are not the only ones with this issue”.
From what you can remember, what worked/what were the positive or most rewarding moments?From what you can remember, what were the most challenging or confusing steps in the process?What are the challenges or confusion you still experience, as a providing institution with Europeana?
EDM data mapping, we are a big CMS (collections management system) provider, nobody has a proper EDM export model; we’d hope that the aggregator still has. Fitting connector for your metadata, and then its their responsibility to get it to Europeana
YES TO DASHA’S IDEA of mapping the metadata on the item page to what the CHI is putting in
Where did/do you go for help? Are there documents or people you turn to for support?From your perspective, how could the process of sharing your data on Euorpeana.eu be improved?
What other tools/platforms are you using?
michael cultur (french/italian), predecessor to europeana
CARARE (english/italian archaeology)
they both still provide agg services
Do you share your collections on other platforms, such as your museum website?
Why/why not?Our own site, and Europeana, a bit on Sketchfab,
Are there any other comments or suggestions you have, that we haven’t covered yet?Can we get in touch in the future?
e.g. When we have a proposed design to show you - YES
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YES to this, cited the need for it before I even told him about it (it came up in his team recently)
They want to see item pages/ individual page views so they can directly leverage the popular items into their communications and marketing
They want to see where their visitors are coming from (regions/countries)
They are interested in our user segments information too! They would report on this
Specifically professional/research institutions, tourists, students, researchers
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Key takeaway number one - it’s already useful as-is (3/3 people confirmed)
Make it more clear that No. of visits is TOTAL, not unique
Add a number showing total number of visits (the way we show Bounce Rate, for example), not just a line chart
Make it more clear why we have the date range options that we do (“Why Dec 18?”)
Maybe some type of instructions for how to select a specific month, or other common selection they’d want to see
If possible, show the most accessed items (e.g. top 5 or top 10)
Many reasons for this - impacts curation, marketing, etc.
If possible, show how many different items have been viewed, out of the total number of items they’ve shared
If possible, show where the traffic comes from (search engines, also countries)
Show liked and pinned items
Allow CHI’s to access these reports themselves, rather than going through aggregator
“Self service is the best way, automation is even better.”
Offer periodical automated reports as well (how often?) in addition to the live dashboard
Offer dashboards to aggregators which compile all of their CHI’s, and allow them to compare them (to see who needs more support, etc)
They are interested in our user segments information too! They would report on this. Specifically professional/research institutions, tourists, students, researchers.
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The Welcome pack itself
Concept: “A wiki for CHI’s; for example, showing this is how you use this tool and here is the link.” - Finnish Aggregator
Potentially a LOT of value in the European-level curation aspect
Seeing their collections and items next to others' from across Europe, either in collections/experiences/stories curated themselves or by us
Their collections get a larger and different audience at the European-level
Different items may perform better at the European level
e.g. The Finnish Heritage Agency has not only Finnish items. A large part of their collections are items from elsewhere in Europe/the world, and the are interested in making those items in particular available on Europeana, and measuring how large and what kind of audience accesses them (e.g. from which countries)
Do we offer support for CHI’s to publish in English as well, or other languages that are important at the European-level? If so, this is a valuable resource to mention (see point above).
Statistics dashboards
CHI’s feel that they want to get their stats directly from us, and at least some Aggregators agree
“Self-service is the best way, automation is even better.” - CHI
“The easier Europeana can make the CHI-Aggregator relationship, the better” - Aggregator
They are interested in usage statistics AND tier reports (frontend and backend, basically)
High numbers are good, but the “what” (e.g. what items) is more helpful to know, from a CHI perspective, because it levels-up their own curation and comparisons on their side
If we can figure out how to do this in the dashboard, then we should definitely advertise it on the Welcome Pack page
Dashboards for Aggregators was a popular idea, which show all of their CHI’s
They are interested in our user segments information too! They would report on this. Specifically professional/research institutions, tourists, students, researchers.
API’s
That they can use our APIs (search specifically) for their own sites/digital exhibitions
Also interested in API’s which measure items uploads (?) - see FHA interview, point 2.f.
Training/other resources
YES TO DASHA’S IDEA of mapping the metadata on the item page to what the CHI is putting in
Other
Advertise that they can use our user-generated content (e.g. galleries) for their own in-house exhibitions - is this true, technically speaking?
“Submit a blog” sounds like extra work. “Share your [existing] exhibition [from your own site]”, if we helped them do this, is better - it already exists, they are proud of it and want to share it.
The process of sharing data feels onerous in general - “It’s really up to the institution to start uploading again, to find an aggregator, hope that the EDM hasn't changed, or any step in that complex process hasn't changed; and hope that you don't make a mistake, because once you upload your data to Europeana they are there and its very difficult to modify or fix; thats risky.”
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Video is annoying/distracting; suggests an image that’s more related, not moving
He expected to be able to click a button below usage statistics, since that’s what the page is about
The other sections, he knows where to go directly on Europeana Pro (he utilises the direct links he’s getting in his emails from them, or he goes to Europeana Pro landing page to find what else is new) so he doesn't need links to them right now; but some new people might want to go and see them.
But other people may remember that they’ve seen this page and expect those links to lead them to Support or Exposure-related resources on Pro (e.g. to expect this page to act as a landing page)
Minna has 40 Europeana bookmarks including EDM page (Julie to follow-up for a screenshot of these, to understand what her priority pages are to better inform our Merge Project).
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Promoting collections block - galleries (Pokori (?) project) - some Europeana galleries were made using their collections around 2 years ago; last March there was a blog about their collections.
What is the value of it? Ismo says that through the statistics, they want to directly see what kind of impact the galleries blog etc really have had on their europeana traffic
Minna: agg runs workshops for existing and potential new providers, they tell them about the possibilities; “how big is the visibility, how will it actually affect us positively?” - it makes it easier for aggs to promote us and convince provders that it’s worth it;
Ismo - language is one key to promote your collections; one of their major collections has metadata that has been translated into english and it’s probably used the most (was recently in a europeana post about mining)
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