The members of consortium are 23 scientific institutions from 12 different European countries. A consortium leading by Freie Universitaet Berlin was established to work together on the proposed aims under the EU project OpenUp!.

Mise

The result of this project and the procedures set in place to make natural history data accessible can serve as proof of concept of the networking and distributed access mechanisms used for EUROPEANA content provision. This experience can be extended to other content provider communities with a similar high degree of distribution.

Popis

A project which would provide multimedia content with specific biological and multilingual functionality to a wide European cultural audience through EUROPEANA. The inclusion of culturally-significant multimedia content from European natural history collections (i.e., more than 1 million pictures, artwork, movies, and audio files) will enhance the scientific dimension of EUROPEANA by adding substantial information about the natural world complementing the digital biodiversity literature, and in addition to the existing material primarily from the arts and humanities.

The users of EUROPEANA will have direct online access to famous examples of natural and cultural heritage information that is kept in far-flung institutions preserving Europe’s natural history and that would be arduous to visit in person.

Accordingly, this project addresses end-users worldwide and will make them familiar with EUROPEANA and its objectives. Different user communities, including those in research for example from the fields of biology in general and specifically biodiversity conservation and sustainable land management (agriculture, fish-farming, forestry, horticulture, disease control) as well as potential users in, e.g., education, taxonomic study, eco-tourism, or from pharmaceutical and drug companies will have access to information via EUROPEANA and this will greatly facilitate their work in their respective field of expertise. The presented information also has an overall educational role and makes the general users of EUROPEANA aware of important challenges like climate change or loss of biodiversity.

The second objective of the OpenUp! project is to present to general public the role and the work carried out in natural history institutions beyond what is exposed in exhibition rooms.