CARARE aggregates content for the archaeology and architectural heritage

CARARE - Making archaeology and architectural heritage content available through Europeana

CARARE is designed to involve and support Europe's network of heritage agencies and organisations, archaeological museums and research institutions and specialist digital archives in:

• making the digital content for the archaeology and architectural heritage that they hold available through Europeana,
• aggregating content and delivering services, and
• enabling access to 3D and Virtual Reality content through Europeana.

CARARE will play an important role in ensuring that digital content for Europe’s unique archaeological monuments, architecturally important buildings, historic town centres and industrial monuments of World, European and National heritage importance is interoperable with Europeana and accessible alongside contents from national libraries, archives, museums and other content providers. CARARE aims to enable 2D and 3D content for heritage places to be brought together in Europeana and new services for users.

CARARE, which runs from 1 February 2010 until January 2013, is funded under the European Commission's ICT Policy Support Programme and co-ordinated by Kulturarvsstyrelsen (Denmark) with MDR Partners (UK). The project consortium consists of 29 partners from 20 countries across Europe.

CARARE and Europeana

The Europeana service offers access to millions of digital items provided by Europe's museums, galleries, archives, libraries and audio-visual organisations. Some of these are world famous, others are as yet hidden treasures. Europeana will deliver access to over 10 million digital objects by 2010.

By working closely with Europeana, through the involvement of the EDL Foundation as a key partner in the project, CARARE will establish an aggregation service and a framework for cooperation which will benefit heritage agencies and organisations in every Member State.

CARARE will add substantial value to Europeana and it's users by:

• Promoting and enabling participation in Europeana by heritage agencies and organisations, archaeological museums and research institutions and specialist digital archives, and raises awareness of Europeana in the domain.
• Establishing an aggregation services which contributes on a practical level to enabling interoperability, promoting best practices and standards to heritage organisations, taking account of the particular needs of content for archaeology and architecture
• Implementing Europeana compatible infrastructures, standards and tools so as to make available millions of digital items for heritage places across Europe, thus contributing to the growth of Europeana
• Contributes expertise on geographic information
• Acts as a test bed for Europeana’s APIs which are intended to make contents available for other service providers to use, for example in the areas of tourism, education and humanities research.
• Establishes the methodology for 3D and virtual reality content to be made accessible to Europeana' s users

Contacts

Technical Coordinator, Kate Fernie, (kfernie@tiscali.co.uk) or Rob Davies (rob.davies@mdrpartners.com) of MDR Partners or
Project Coordinator, Henrik Jarl Hansen, Kulturarvsstyrelsen, hjarlh@kulturarv.dk.

Partners

The CARARE consortium includes content providers, aggregators/country coordinators and suppliers of technical or other specialist expertise from 20 countries.

CARARE project facts

• CARARE starts in February 2010 and runs to January 2013
• It’s co-ordinated by the Danish Heritage Agency and MDR Partners
• The 29 CARARE partners represent 20 countries