EuropeanaConnect (May 2009 - October 2011) is a Best Practice Network funded by the European Commission within the area of Digital Libraries of the eContentplus Programme. The project developed essential components to enable Europeana to become a truly interoperable, multilingual and user-friendly service. Users can access millions of images, books, maps, video, historic writings and audio files representing Europe's cultural diversity. All publicly available reports produced by the project and presentations relating to its work can be found at EuropeanaConnect: Results and resources.

EuropeanaConnect delivered technical key components such as: the Europeana Semantic Layer; Multilinguality; Front end components - User-friendly interfaces; Europeana Licensing Framework; Audio Aggregation;

The project was coordinated by the Austrian National Library. It started on 1 May 2009 and will run for 30 months until October 2011.

GLAM is the sector related to Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums.

A glossary is an alphabetical list of terms of a specific domain where each term has a definition or an explanation. The glossary, despite some common features, is not a dictionary or a lexicon. It often concerns a very specific or technical domain and is generally dedicated to non-experts for giving definition of very technical terms in a simplified way. A glossary could be multilingual (See: Athenawiki - Definitions).

See also: Controlled vocabulary, Terminology

The process by which software can collect metadata packages from remote locations. By metadata harvesting it is meant the harvest of metadata records from data provider to gather metadata for query results or index creation. In the context of the Open Archive Initiative (OAI), the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) defines a mechanism for harvesting XML-formatted metadata from repositories - where repositories function as data providers that support the OAI-PMH as a means of exposing metadata, while service providers use metadata harvested via the OAI-PMH as a basis for building value-added services.

OAI-PMH is Europeana's preferred method of capturing metadata from data providers or metadata aggregators.

Explore further the Linked Heritage learning object: MINT Services.

See also: Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH)

By harvesting schema it is meant an XML schema intended to transfer data from providers collections databases to data aggregation or portals of aggregated resources such as Europeana, as well as exposing, sharing and connecting data on the web. LIDO is an XML harvesting schema.

Explore further the Linked Heritage learning object: MINT Services.

See: LIDO, MINT

Information retrieval is the activity of obtaining information using information retrieval systems. These systems can be collection databases, library indexing files, web browsers etc. Searches can be based on metadata or on full-text (or other content-based) indexing. Studies on information retrieval focus mainly on the effectiveness of applications specifically developed for information management and retrieval, such as controlled vocabularies in databases.

A process by which a digital object or metadata dataset is absorbed by a different system that the one that produced it.

In the context of the Linked Heritage Aggregation, the technological platform MINT Services functions as ingestor. Linked Heritage content providers can upload their datasets in XML or CSV serialization, from personal computers or using the HTTP, FTP and OAI-PMH protocols.

Explore further the Linked Heritage learning object: MINT Services.

See: Aggregator

The term "Intellectual Property Rights" (IPR) refers to the legal rights granted with the aim to protect the creations of the intellect. These rights include Industrial Property Rights (e.g. patents, industrial design rights and trademarks) and Copyright (right of the author or creator) and Related Rights (rights of the performers, producers and broadcasting organisations) (See: The European IPR Helpdesk).

See also: Data Exchange Agreement (DEA)

Interoperability is the ability of the systems, procedures and culture of an organisation to be managed in such a way as to maximise opportunities for exchange and re-use of information, whether internally or externally. When organizations use the same set of rules for a certain activity, they can inter-operate or work together more efficiently (e.g. for creating mutual information systems such as online catalogues).

Paul Miller further divides interoperability into 6 types:

1: Technical interoperability – Facilitated by using common technical standards (e.g. file types, metadata, etc.).

2: Semantic interoperability – Facilitated by using common vocabularies for the terminologies used in data (e.g. thesauri).

3: Political/Human interoperability – Facilitated by understanding and overcoming the barrierscaused by the different experiences and agendas of users and information providers

4: Inter-community interoperability – Facilitated by recognising differences between discipline communities and overcoming them by working together (e.g. Museums, archives and libraries)

5: Legal interoperability – Facilitated by following the legal restraints imposed on informationproviders (e.g. Freedom of Information and Data Protection legislation)

6: International Interoperability – Facilitated by recognising and overcoming the barriers caused by cultural and linguistic differences.

Source: Helen Ashby – Gordon McKenna – Matthew Stiff. SPECTRUM Knowledge. London: MDA, 2001, p. 63 in ATHENA WP3 (2011), Digitisation: standards landscape for european museums, archives, libraries, p. 13.

See also: ISO, ISO norm, Standard