Digital heritage infrastructures as cultural policy instruments: Europeana and the enactment of European citizenship

Carlotta Capurro*, Gertjan Plets, Jaap Verheul

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Europeana is a digital infrastructure aggregating the most extensive collection of cultural heritage data in Europe. Launched in 2008, it has enjoyed the political and financial support of the European Union and its member states, becoming the most ambitious and financed digital cultural project to date. For this reason, Europeana is an outstanding example of how the European Commission has used digital heritage platforms to pursue its cultural agenda. Nevertheless, the social and cultural implications of this digital infrastructure are still understudied. Following Europeana’s evolution, this article explores Europeana’s role in transforming the cultural sector and defining a European digital cultural policy. Analysing how the goals of the EU cultural policy have been implemented in the development of Europeana, this article reveals how Europeana has been instrumental in steering the digitisation of the European cultural sector through the development of standards and best practices. Furthermore, through digital heritage curation, Europeana plays a critical role in producing the narrative of a European past, promoting the construction of European citizenship.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)304-324
JournalInternational Journal of Cultural Policy
Volume30
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Funding

Europeana is the most ambitious digital cultural project financed by the European Commission (EC). Launched in 2008, it was the response to the call by six heads of state to create a unified European online collection ‘to preserve and share Europe’s cultural and linguistic identities and give them a more prominent place on the Internet’ (Chirac et al. ). Since then, the europeana.eu platform has become the largest aggregator of cultural heritage data in Europe, counting over 60 million digital objects provided by over 4,000 cultural heritage institutions, including libraries, archives, museums, and audio-visual collections (Europeana ). But Europeana’s tasks include the support of European cultural heritage institutions’ digital transformation (EC ). Between 2006 and 2020, the EC invested about €62 million to develop and run the service.

FundersFunder number
European Commission

    Keywords

    • European digital cultural policy
    • Europeana
    • cultural politics
    • digital heritage
    • digital infrastructures

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