Following the Council Conclusions of 31 May 2016 on the role of Europeana for the digital access, visibility and use of European cultural heritage, the European Commission launched an independent evaluation of Europeana.
Europeana currently provides access to over 51 million items (including image, text, sound, video and 3D material) from the collections of over 3,700 libraries, archives, museums, galleries and audio-visual collections across Europe. The platform offers services for different audiences: data partners & culture professionals (contributing cultural institutions; cultural heritage, creative and technology professionals); citizens (anyone with an interest in culture); and for re-use of the material (such as in the education, research or creative sectors).
The consultation results will feed into the evaluation of Europeana and will help direct its future development.
The results of the complete analysis of the contributions to the public consultation will provide more insights, however the following trends can be observed.
Of the raw dataset with 1,226 responses, 5 duplicates were deleted during the clean-up process. The resulting dataset consists of 1,221 responses. As most of the questions beyond the respondent profiling questions were optional, or conditional on the respondent's answer to preceding questions, the response rate per question varies across the survey.
72% indicated that they took part as individuals, and 28% that they responded on behalf of an organisation of the 1,221 respondents that took part in the consultation.
Respondents from all 28 EU Member States participated in the public consultation. Germany was the most represented, followed by Italy, Portugal, Greece, and Spain in the top five most highly represented countries.
78 respondents (6%) identified their country of origin as Other, of which 11 represented an organisation operating internationally.
Respondents replying both on behalf of an organisation and as individuals were asked to indicate, optionally, the sector in which they worked. The three most represented sectors, both for those replying on behalf of an organisation and for individuals, were Culture, Research, and Education.
Respondents replying as individuals were further asked to indicate their main interest in Europeana. This question was mandatory. 66% of the 883 respondents indicated interest for personal use and 61% indicated interest for professional use.
The following targeted sections of the questionnaire were only shown to respondents if they answered yes to specific profiling questions regarding their experience with Europeana’s services.
310 respondents who indicated that they or their organisation have collaborated with Europeana as a data partner took part in the targeted questions in this section, about the data provision process, activities and satisfaction (14 questions).
89 respondents replying on behalf of an organisation and 534 replying as individuals who indicated that they had, at least once or twice, re-used material from Europeana, took part in this targeted section about ways they have successfully re-used the material and their engagement in Europeana’s activities to encourage re-use (8 questions).
222 respondents (replying on behalf of an organisation or as individuals) who indicated that they are or have been member of the Europeana Network Association (ENA) took part in the targeted section regarding engagement with the activities of ENA (6 questions).
In the last section of the public consultation questionnaire, two open questions prompted respondents to elaborate:
The Commission, supported by the consultancy company Ramboll, is carrying out an in-depth analysis of the replies to the public consultation.
The results of the consultation, together with other consultation activities, will feed into the independent evaluation of Europeana.
The Commission will publish all contributions to the public consultation, in anonymous form where required. The in-depth synopsis report will be publish in June 2018.