With the launch of Europeana, the
new European digital library which serves as a portal to the rich
diversity of European cultural heritage (from archival materials to
books, movies, photographs and much more), the ideal of the universal
library seems to be gaining ground again (not withstanding the fact
that Europeana immediately crashed after its launch because of popular demand).

 

The ideal of the universal library or of a library which contains all existing information or knowledge of the world (which is seen as an unrealizable ideal, or as a myth), is already visible in the ancient library of Alexandria,
founded in the third century, which was supposed to house all the
scrolls of the world in one building (although that was of course not
the case). The library was unfortunately destructed on a later date,
and with that the idea of the possibility to store the world’s
knowledge in one place died too.

Using Europeana

Welcome to Europeana. Here is a brief introduction to some of the things that you can do while you are here:

https://www.europeana.eu/portal/using-europeana.html

Searching in Europeana

Within Europeana you can search through millions of digital items
provided by Europe's museums and galleries, archives, libraries and
audio-visual organsiations.
Searching in Europeana is simple. Just ask yourself who, what, where or when you are interested in and type these words into Europeana's search box. If you are stuck for ideas try:

• Who: Names of actors,
  authors, architects, artists, choreographers, composers, conductors,
  dancers, film directors, musicians or photographers.


• What: Words from titles of books, poems, newspapers, paintings, photographs, films or television programmes.


• Where: Names of towns, cities or countries within Europe or around the world.


• When: Dates (e.g. 1945) such as the year you were born in or a famous date in history or a period (e.g. Roman or Medieval).

Using the advanced search you can search specifically for words in titles, for names of creators (e.g. authors, artists, musicians etc.) or dates (e.g. 1945). Alternatively you can combine your search terms (e.g. title: hamlet and date: 1983).

Results in Europeana

The results from your search in European are grouped by type of digital item: text, images, video and sound:

• Text includes: books, letters, archival papers, dissertations, poems,
  newspapers, articles, facsimiles, manuscripts and music scores.


• Images includes: paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, pictures of museum
  objects, maps, graphic designs, plans and musical notation.


• Video includes: films, news broadcasts and television programmes.


• Sound includes: music and spoken word from cylinders, tapes, discs and radio broadcasts.

You can choose to display your results as a list or
as a table .
To see further details about an item click on the item in the results list.
If you get too many results, you can refine your search by language, country, date, provider or type using the menu on the left of the results screen.
To read the text, view the image, watch the video or listen to the sound item click on the item image on the item details page. You can also click on the link to view the item in original context. This link takes you to the website of the organisation which has provided the item to Europeana.
On the left of the item display page Europeana shows content related to your chosen item.

My Europeana

You do not need to register to use Europeana. However, registered users can do more! Registered Europeana users can:

• Save this search: To keep up to date on a particular specific topic in Europeana.


• Add a tag: To add your own tags to your favourite items in Europeana.


• Save to My Europeana: To save your favourite items for viewing later.


• Share with a friend: To share interesting items with your friends.

To save a search, add a tag, save an item or share an item with a friend, login to My Europeana and click on the relevant action from the menu on the left of the screen.
To view your saved items, saved searches and saved tags, simply login and click on My Europeana.

Communities

The Europeana communities pages are where you will be able to share, discuss, reuse or blog about Europeana content. The Europeana team will build these pages in collaboration with Europeana users. We have created a demo showcasing some of our thoughts. We are looking forward to hearing your ideas and suggestions.

Partners

On the partners page you can find information about
our partner museums and galleries, archives, libraries and audio-visual
organisations who have provided their content for Europeana.

Timeline: Browsing through time

An alternative way of exploring the digital items in Europeana is via the Timeline.
By sliding the button along the timeline you can browse through the
items using the carousel display. Click on any of the items in the
carousel to see the full details. Under the Timeline is a date cloud.
The larger the date, the more items Europeana offers for that year.
Click on the date to display the items from that year in the carousel.

Thought Lab: latest technologies

Interested in the latest web technologies? So are the Europeana team! In the Thought Lab you can see how our developers are experimenting with innovative ways of displaying Europeana's items.