Europeana's huge cultural dataset opens for re-use

Opportunities for apps developers, designers and other digital innovators will be boosted as the digital portal Europeana opens up its dataset of over 20 million cultural objects for free re-use.

The massive dataset is the descriptive information about Europe's digitised treasures. For the first time, the metadata is released under the Creative Commons CC0 Public Domain Dedication, meaning that anyone can use the data for any purpose - creative, educational, commercial - with no restrictions.

This release, which is by far the largest one-time dedication of cultural data to the public domain using CC0, offers a new boost to the digital economy, providing electronic entrepreneurs with opportunities to create innovative apps and games for tablets and smartphones and to create new web services and portals.

Europeana's move to CC0 is a step change in open data access. Releasing data from across the memory organisations of every EU country sets an important new international precedent, a decisive move away from the world of closed and controlled data.

Applying the CC0 waiver also means that Europeana's metadata can now be used in Linked Open Data developments. This holds the potential to bring together data from Europe's great libraries, museums and archives with data from other sectors such as tourism and broadcasting. The result could be a powerful knowledge generating engine for the 21st century.

http://www.europeana.eu  

http://pro.europeana.eu/linked-open-data  

Source: Europeana