Happy 10th anniversary to the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek!

The Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (German Digital Library) recently celebrated its 10th anniversary and the launch of its new user-oriented portal. The Europeana Initiative was there to commemorate the occasion. Read on to discover the event, find out about a decade of partnership between the two institutions and explore what’s planned for the years to come.

On the occasion of its 10th anniversary, on 8 May 2023 the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek presented the results of the project User-oriented Restructuring of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek at a ceremony in the James-Simon-Galerie in Berlin. Harry Verwayen, General Director of the Europeana Foundation delivered a keynote address on this special occasion. 

Other contributors to the ceremony included the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media Claudia Roth and imminent figures from key German cultural institutions including the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz, the Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum and the Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, to name but a few. Here’s a glimpse of what happened.

Looking back at a decade of partnership

Germany has been a key Europeana supporter of the Europeana Initiative  since its establishment 15 years ago. In 2005, together with five other EU Member States, Germany urged the European Commission to create a publicly-funded counterpart to the then-new Google Library project, giving birth to the Europeana Initiative.  Germany has steadily supported our work ever since, consistently featuring among the top contributors to Europeana’s infrastructure both in terms of quantity and quality, with over 6 million objects from more than 200 institutions available through the Europeana website. We are grateful for the contribution and commitment of the more than 250 members of the Europeana Network Association based in Germany.

As our main partner in Germany and as an Europeana accredited national aggregator since 2012, the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek has played a leading role in this process. 10 years ago, the Europeana Initiative accompanied the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek in the launch of the first public beta version of its portal. This paved the way for bringing all of Germany’s cultural and scientific institutions and their digitised inventories closer together, and for their integration into Europeana.

In his keynote address, our General Director Harry Verwayen, highlighted, ‘Opening-up their local, regional and national collections to Europe enabled German cultural institutions to make a significant and concrete contribution to the European project: one with our shared culture at its heart. One decade later, we are proud to celebrate the relaunch of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek  portal, centred even more on people, fostering more participation, and designed with the principles of open access right at its core.’

What’s planned for the years to come?

The relaunch of the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek coincides with a major evolution of our own, as the Europeana Initiative began 2023 as the steward of the common European data space for cultural heritage. In this new context, and as our sector faces transformative challenges - from a climate emergency to the uptake of new technologies like AI - working together and supporting each other takes on a new significance.

The success of the common European data space for cultural heritage will rely largely on the continued contribution of the Member States of the European Union. In its 2021 Recommendation on a common European data space for cultural heritage, the European Commission encourages Member States to step-up their digitisation efforts and make more content available in the data space in order to fully reap its benefits. This includes expanding the 3D digitisation of all monuments and sites at risk as well as the most physically visited by 2030. 

Building on our long-standing cooperation with the Ministry of State for Culture and Media and the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek as our key partner in Germany, the Europeana Initiative looks forward to continuing empowering the German digital heritage sector to live up to these ambitions. 

Find out more

You can read more about the event on the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek website, and learn about the Europeana Initiative in Germany in our dedicated Country Report.

This piece was originally published on Europeana Pro. 'Happy 10th anniversary to the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek!', Lorena Aldana, 15/05/23 (CC-BY-SA), https://pro.europeana.eu/post/happy-10th-anniversary-to-the-deutsche-digitale-bibliothek