Links in page:
External links:
UX Insights slide deck (based off of these notes)
Segue from Usage Statistics Report subject - “as we work on building these usage reports, we’re also thinking of how best to make them available to people. We’d like to package them up in a way that is most useful, maybe combined with some other helpful offerings. I have a few questions about your experience as a data provider, to help us determine how we can better support you…”
How did you first hear about Europeana.eu, and that you could share your collections on our platform?
Why did you share your data with us?
What was the process like? Tell us the story.
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?
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?
e.g. Mint, etc.
Do you share your collections on other platforms, such as your museum website? Why/why not?
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
Org/role:
Curator for digital development; mostly working with making their collections accessible online and digitally; digital interactives in their exhibitions (new blg, experimental exhibitions and increasing the interactivity between the visitors and the collections, via digital interaction possibilities; their insta and website as well; digital collections and blog spaces/sites as well; human-centred vision and mission as a museum - we seek the human story within the object, rather than the object as an object, more so even than categories of objects) - and this is actually easier to do, with less friction, online.
Used to work with SOC (aggregator)
Tracking/analytics - they have a “web group” who are communications/collections people who are responsible for the website, instagram; mixed skills group with high responsibility; meet to review insta and the web; in Sweden specifically, the ministry of cultural analytics requires them to send their statistics as part of their public funding; therefore Swedish institutions in general need numbers [from us].
What they need to measure changes from year to year, depending on the focus of the year
digital numbers (visitors) starting during pandemic;
now includes what items of theirs are accessed through wikimedia commons and wikipedia - incl traffic, unique users, 10 most used social media channels in Sweden, digital collections website (museums own, SOC (where she used to work and do analytics for them, including liked items, which data providers really loved), “digitat” museum - norwegian dig collections museum, with its own collections website which is very popular in Scandinavia)
Would access our dashboard about 1x/year,2x/year to check for developments or trends;
Uses desktop; browser = Edge
First impression: dashboard is quite clear, easy to understand
No. of visits - is this unique or not? (make that more clear)
She easily found where you can change your date ranges - but why these dates? e.g. 18 dec, our collections have been there a lot longer (make that more clear)
Really wants to see the most accessed objects over time (specific page views), which Henning used to share. They compare this to their website, and how people access their collections through europeana differently than on their museum’s site, for example
It has the basics they need for their reporting
Wants to see - specific page views, and where does the traffic come from
Yes to liked items and pinned to galleries numbers
Yes to prefers to access it herself, rather than going through and aggregator
How did you first hear about http://Europeana.eu , and that you could share your collections on our platform?
She first heard about us at SOC
via word of mouth related to open data, hears about different aggregators, eventually shares their data with SOC, from there they hear that its also possible to share with Europeana as a “package deal”
But many CHI would start within sweden only and then share with Europeana later
Europeana as a brand/platform is not well known in Sweden, especially beyond data providers;
In Hamburg as well, her students are more familiar with the national aggregator than Europeana itself
Why did you share your data with us? What is the value?
Reporting as part of their public funding - saying that they also share their data with European platforms is a bonus;
the potential to get more reach for the collections,
but few work with Europeana in their day to day;
Also wants to work more with the APIs to make searching within their collections possible for visitors
SOC Swedish open cultural heritage is their aggregator; aka “K-Samsuk” [?]
What was the process like? Tell us the story.
From what you can remember, what worked/what were the positive or most rewarding moments?
To see their collections used beyond their own sphere - “if we don't do anything but it is still used”; passive user traffic;
Always nice to see their collections picked up in different on different platforms -
Likes to see them in the Europeana search, blog posts, galleries, and so on - they get to see their collections curated in different ways, for example connected to other collections
e.g. on wikipedia, one of their most trafficked items (woman working with textiles - FIND IT) is connected to cannabis use in Italy - “it’s nothing we would have thought of ourselves,” on that European level
That’s why she wanted to see what’s most accessed on Europeana, to compare to their own site. Tells them about users' interests on the different platforms, and how to curate their content on Europeana (e.g. blog posts more directed to that type of object or topic, would get in touch with our audience engagement to write a piece about that, to provide more context and content; tells them MORE about what people want to know
High numbers are nice, but its not the most interesting
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?
Concerned that some contextualising content is more hidden, and less connected to the items/data themselves; barrier to sharing certain collections with us - “everything that can be online, should be online” - publishing to SOC then goes to Europeana automatically; but they also work a lot on the ethics of what can be shared publicly vs. not, while still being as open as possible
e.g. certain collections require more care/context ethically, such as telling holocaust stories online
Europeana’s search is very frustrating to use; especially for a beginner/someone who’s less familiar with Europeana, gets frustrated, the results are too little to actually be relevant, they prefer to leave Europeana to interact with items
SOC/Europeana hasn't delivered what they originally promised as value to CHI’s in the beginning; for example 3D actually excludes a lot of CHI’s and they don't know if they can participate
User generated galleries - they want to use our datasets from user-generated galleries made by users to display (e.g. runestones in sormlands), but there seems to be a lot of barriers to doing this
Who to get in touch with if I see a problem in our collection in Europeana? I would want to have that direct connection to Europeana
as it is now, it takes a long time to go through SOC because it’s not updated regularly; this has caused barriers to curating and adding content
Disappointed that the search filters out low quality content by default, it blocks people from seeing the fullsome/relevant content - hides it; and they may want to know that it at least exists
e.g. digitisation project in Sweden in the 90s where the originals were lost, for example digitised photos of old houses; people want to access those low-quality images easily, so they can follow up with the CHI and find out how to access the high quality versions
Where did/do you go for help? Are there documents or people you turn to for support?
N/A - She didn’t have confusion, mostly blockers; she would like to contact us directly if she sees an issue rather than contact SOC because that takes a long time
From your perspective, how could the process of sharing your data on Euorpeana.eu be improved?
What other tools/platforms are you using? (connected to your work in sharing digitised collections)
e.g. Mint, etc.
Do you share your collections on other platforms, such as your museum website? Why/why not?
SOC
Are there any other comments or suggestions you have, that we haven’t covered yet?
Can we get in touch in the future?
YES - Interest in seeing Welcome Pack design and in testing search/advanced search
Maria - FINNA service (Finnish aggregator service)
She works with all the Finnish content providers, and with Europeana; she has colleagues (Mina?) that would use the dashboard directly, to report to the Ministries of Culture and Education, and Finance (which is interested in digitisation in various fields such as culture); but they don’t really report Europeana usage statistics right now.
Ismo - content provider, Finnish Heritage Agency, but also connected to FINNA service (Finnish aggregator service)
Finish Heritage Agency is the national org helping museums in their daily work; they are under Ministry of Education and Culture;
they need to report to their ministry, about FINNA (most important) - how many visitors are using their collections on FINNA; don't report this yet from Europeana but is really interested to see how their 300,000 objects are used on Europeana
Maria - its important that the CHI’s access the dashboard directly, it’s inconvenient for the aggregator to have to do that for all of them;
Maria is interested in the impact of the Finnish content in general (so they’d want a higher level view, a bigger dashboard with all their CHI’s)
Ismo - Wants to access the dashboard monthly and yearly, for measuring/tracking and reporting; automated monthly reports would be great - they want to see BOTH the reports (receive them via email periodically?) and the live dashboard
INTERESTING - Which reports (basically, snapshots in time) do they want to see? what does this give them that’s different than viewing the live dashboard at a certain point in time?
Maria - wants to access at least once per year
They use laptop mostly (mobile as last case scenario)
Any browser - mentioned Safari, Chrome, Firefox
Ismo - “the [dashboard in the] link I got looked really good”
He was confused about the dip in May (lost data)
No. of visits: He liked to see the pervious month and year; but got confused by the dropdown, “how can I just see March” - not super intuitive; Custom range at the bottom of the dropdown, didnt find it at first; can we put this at the top? seems most desirable for them
He wants it easier to see the total number of visits in the whole month, as a number rather than a chart
He reports on the number of visits per month; interested in total visits, unique visits, and page views - “how many of our objects have been looked at on Europeana per month and per year”
Page views - he wants to see how many individual objects from our collections people are viewing and using (of the 300,000 objects they’ve shared); FINNA offers them this, and they’d like it form europeana as well
Also what object was most viewed, because they can see it on FINNA and it’s nice to see - aka top 5 or top 10 pages ; starts to tell them “how much they are using our collections”
Yes to liked items, yes to pinned items - helps them gauge the impact of their collections
Avg time is good, because they get it from fino and its nice to compare (it’s a higher number on fino - how/why? 30 seconds is pretty good haha)
Where are the users coming from? Country/location specifically (FINNA shows them this - so they’d really like to compare; are there lots of users coming from finland on europeana, for example?)
Maria - wants to see all her content providers on hers; wants to compare them, such as Finnish Heritage Agency vs Helsinki museum etc, to see the whole picture
We have both the content provider and aggregator perspectives here…
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 perspectives
Ismo?
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)
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
DASHBOARD FEEDBACK
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
WELCOME PACK FEEDBACK
“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.
“We share all of this stuff to Europeana, what’s in it for us?”
“What will happen when it becomes the data space?” Will there by more direct interfaces (as we talked about above)? Or how about helping us with storage, instead of us needing all our own servers?
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.
Other value-adds to consider mentioning:
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.”
___________________________________________________________________________________________
About him: He’s the Aggregator for Europeana Sounds; mostly provided thru europeana sounds project; also aggregates content from elsewhere in the British Library that is not alway audio related, the BL is not audio focused it’s a provider of its own.
DISCUSSION ON WELCOME PACK AND DASHBOARD
Questions:
How often / what time of year do you need to do your reporting on traffic?
He has been looking at web traffic recently and comparing British Library and Europeana content; comparing specifically the BL online catalogues with the collections on Europeana.
Usage statistics from Europeana have been difficult to get ahold of
Additional feature requests:
**Would like to see number of downloads, number of clicks through to provider website, seeing where visitors are from (breakdown of country) etc.
Yes to agg-level dashboards eventually, showing all of their CHI’s together.
seeing popular items by page visits, downloads, and adding to galleries, and likes.
“how did somebody end up looking at your page” - search terms that people used to get here, so we can utilise them throughout our metadata to make us more findable.
COMMS FLOW - how to reduce bounce rate [on a catalogue page].
would be interested to look at the IIIF angle as well - if IIIF items have longer time spent on them.
some descriptive text describing the difference between no. of visits vs page views
Wants to see a flow chart of user traffic - “where do they go next” “
I want to say this is all part of a big merry-go-round - people go to europeana, then to library resources, or they could go off to the BnF or another aggregator, to Wikipedia or social media - they are all connected, we are part of this big data network, we are contributing to public access/public good; so I’m interested to see where we sit in that network.”
Value adds
He needs to report to managers in the BL, showing the benefits of sharing on Europeana, going to the work of maintaining and adding more data: “it’s raising the profile, it’s showing related data alongside other data from other providers”.
I’m trying to demonstrate at the BL that by investing in putting items on Europeana, it’s worth it to us; but also, a click back is not always necessary from a user’s perspective, it being accessed period has value, even if it’s on Europeana.
The dashboards are a value-add when talking to potential new providers as an aggregator
Sharing the usage statistics with the community:
he thinks it should be very openly shared;
some CHI’s might be happy to share with their peers; they could compare to the average, or to europeana as a whole (have a europeana dashboard that everyone can see)
he’s interested in comparing for example bl.uk and compare with britishmuseum.org
create an opportunity for providers to share (e.g. a checkbox that they opt in to to post up their results on a board somewhere that they can all check and see
audio, text, image? whats the stuff they’re looking at most (e.g. match to our search filters, or item metadata fields, for example - what KINDS of content is doing well;
shows that what you’re doing has an impact, and allows you to make some better/creative decisions from there; if you’re creating great content and sharing high quality metadata then it proves it’s worth it
SERVICE BLUEPRINT/planned communications flow, useful information to include in the info guide
europeana-level popular search terms and high-performing data; “encouraging and nurturing that 2-way relationship” USE CASE - provider published to europeana years ago, this reminds them that people are using their content and interested in it, here’s how to imporve (popular search terms, tips for what NOT to put (e.g. crytpic titles); he’s been putting in wikidata for describing gothic/proto-gothic script in the metadata - people would want to know if the search terms “gothic” would have been used, so they would remember to put that in the script
cyclical process where people are looking at their data and adding more, and people can see that it’s helping more
as an aggregator, he has no problem with europeana contacting chi’s directly when it makes sense; “i think that would be good;” as an agg it would be useful to have that same information as well - for example receiving a folder of report for all the different chi’s, the europeana-level performance
it can be difficult for aggs to access chi’s who’ve shared data a long time ago , that staff member has left, that connection has grown cold;
Who else would be interested in data provider usage statistics?
the ENA are the stakeholders, and theres a lot of those members, who would be interested (rob davis, Sophie Taes as an agg has seen it)
Among the steering group for the EAF would be very interested in looking at in their workshops - let Henning know that ongoing discussion about this
question - can multiple staff email register to get into the email flow?
Minna - Agg
Ismo - CHI
Finna dashboard and statistics has a way set up already for providers to log in and use it
Minna - it’s important to us that the data providers can see the statistics themselves so we don't need to be in the middle
Ismo knows Photoconsortium as well but not providing content through them
Going through aggregators is cumbersome, getting a direct link is ideal
Ismo usability test - if I was using it for the first time, this type of basic information would be useful to me
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)
Providing institutions block: permanent 4 or 5 institutions isn’t a great idea, rotating through them, give more of an impression of the scale and diversity of the group; having the logos be links would be expected
He would expect they go to the Europeana page for that institution (Organisation)
The form: what else should we ask
“Sector” is not clear - Which GLAM sector? Which sub-sector? these delineations are not always clear, it’s not easy for them to define or identify - if we want to know, maybe we should show some options from which they can choose from
Email address entry field is missing!
What happens if multiple people sign up through the form?
It’s actually a good thing - many people are interested to see it, and to be in touch with us