Linked Heritage Glossary

In the context of Europeana, an aggregator is an organisation that gathers material from individual organisations, standardises formats and metadata, channeling them into Europeana according to Europeana guidelines and procedures. Aggregators also support content providers with administration, operations and training. Types of aggregators can be: country aggregators (e.g. the Italian national aggregator Cultura Italia), project aggregator (e.g. Linked Heritage Project Aggregator), independent organisations (with no Ministry or other mandate). Even individuals are invited to collaborate to the project providing historical documentation (e.g. citizens wishing to contribute to Europeana special collections, i.e. World War One Family History). Europeana encourages the contribution of aggregators that fit the needs of different countries, domains and users.

Explore further the Linked Heritage learning objects: MINT Services and Why and how to contribute to Europeana.

See also: Content provider, Linked Heritage aggregation, MINT

See: Application programming interface (API)

Application programming interface (API) is a set of rules and specifications, embedded in source code, which software programs can use to communicate with each other.

In the context of Europeana, Europeana API are application programming interfaces for the purpose of searching and retrieving the metadata offered by Europeana on Europeana.eu. The Europeana API allows to build applications, websites and mashups that include a customised view of Europeana content.

ATHENA: access to cultural heritage networks across Europe (2008-2011) - presented as a Best Practice Network within the eContentplus Programme - takes its origins from the existing MINERVA network.

The final aim of ATHENA is to bring together relevant stakeholders and content owners from all over Europe, evaluate and integrate standards and specific tools, based on a common agreed set of standards and guidelines, to create harmonised access to their content and for facilitating the inclusion of new digital content into Europeana, so conveying to the user the original and multifaceted experience of all the European cultural heritage.

ATHENA is a sister project of Linked Heritage (see also: APEnet, ARROW, AthenaPlus).

Explore further: Athenawiki.

See also: Best practice network (BPN)