10 highlights from 2018 in Europeana Foundation Annual Report

2018 - a big year for us here at the Europeana Foundation. We celebrated ten years since the first Europeana website went live. We said goodbye to our founding executive director, Jill Cousins. We renewed our relationship with the European Commission and the Member States. And we made strides in improving our processes and products. To me, it feels a little like Europeana has come of age.

I’ve been supported in my new role as executive director by an ever-dedicated and committed team at the Europeana Foundation - and I must here welcome our new technical director, Andy Neale - as well as a Governing Board that has incredible vision, drive and expertise, an innovative Aggregators’ Forum and a Network Association that never stops moving forward. My heartfelt thanks goes to each and every person whose hard work and commitment has played its part in our achievements this year.

2018 was, of course, the European Year of Cultural Heritage, a year-long operation by the European Commission to get more people interested in and involved with cultural heritage. We happily joined them in this mission, running an ambitious campaign on the theme of cultural heritage and migration. The Bulgarian and Austrian presidencies of the Council of the EU gave us opportunities to support EYCH and to have an input into its legacy, whilst positioning Europeana at the centre of digital cultural heritage for the next decade.

Under our new service contract with the European Commission, the Europeana Foundation leads a consortium to operate the Europeana Core Service Platform. Following the direction outlined in the Evaluation of Europeana, we are shifting our focus to supporting cultural heritage institutions in their digital transformation. This year we’ve worked on improving systems and infrastructure behind the scenes, making it easier and more rewarding for our data partners to share collections with us. And we’ve improved how those collections are displayed and linked online, making finding and working with them a much more inviting and productive endeavour.

From creating educational resources to entertaining GIFs, and from sharing personal migration stories to developing professional expertise at EuropeanaTech, it is always a thrill to see how Europe’s digital cultural heritage is increasingly being integrated into and transforming lives on a day-to-day basis.

Discover ten of my highlights from this significant year, or download the full report and accounts.