Europeana Sounds

Europeana Sounds is a project co-funded by the European Commission, within the CIP ICT-Policy Support Programme, launched in February 2014.
By 2017 the project will make available on the Europeana Portal more than 540.000 high-quality sound recordings, including a great mass of audio digital objects, from classical and folk music to environmental sounds from the natural world, as well as oral memories.

The activities to be carried out are the following ones:
  • aggregating more than 540,000 digital contents to make them available in Europeana
  • implementing of metadata through the semantic enrichment of metadata and developing of crowdsourcing infrastructures
  • analysing and issuing guidelines relating to licences and copyright concerning sound materials, in order to enhance the access to digital contents in the Web, thus enabling their creative re-use
  • implementing of specific access channels and features of data retrieval with annotation tools, multilingual Web surfing and federated searches in various platforms
  • developing a technological infrastructure in order to support new  functions
  • spreading of the project activities and outcomes through Web dissemination tools, as well as planning of events related to the project.
ICCU is partner of the project and, through the Internet Culturale Portal, acts as a content aggregator of 80,000 sound contents owned and digitized by the Central Institute for Sound and Audiovisual Heritage. It takes part in activities relating to data enrichment and developing of crowdsourcing features, in studying and issuing guidelines relating to licences and copyright concerning sound material, and finally it contributes to spreading and planning activities of events related to the project.

The project is coordinated by the British Library, it includes among its 24 partners: national libraries, sound institutions, research centers, universities and companies from 12 European countries.

Project partners:
  • The British Library – United Kingdom
  • Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision -  the Netherlands
  • Kennisland - the Netherlands
  • Europeana - the Netherlands
  • National Technical University of Athens – Greece
  • Bibliothèque nationale de France - France
  • Austrian Institute of Technology– Austria
  • Net7 Srl - Italy
  • We Are What We Do Community Interest Company – United Kingdom
  • Centre national de la Recherche scientifique - France
  • UAB DIZI - Lithuania
  • Deutsche Nationalbibliothek – Germany
  • Music Library of Greece of the Friends of Music Society - Greece
  • Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico delle biblioteche italiane -  Italy
  • Irish Traditional Music Archive – Ireland
  • The Language Archive at MPI-PL –  Germany
  • National Library of Latvia -Latvia
  • Österreichische Mediathek –  Austria
  • Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg - Germany
  • Sabhal Mòr Ostaig – United Kingdom
  • Statsbiblioteket –  Denmark
  • Österreichische Nationalbibliothek – Austria
  • Faculdade de Ciencias Sociais e Humanas da Universidade Nova de Lisboa – Portugal
  • Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann – Ireland