Meet the Members Council: Sašo Zagoranski
Ever since I can remember, I have been fascinated by two things: history and gadgets. It started with playing Commodore64 games and tinkering with all sorts of computer equipment. In between games, I watched every single National Geographic documentary I could get my hands on. Fast-forward to 2007 and I got the chance to combine both of my passions by founding Semantika – an IT company specialising in cultural heritage.
Our first product was a standards-compliant Collection Management System, which is now used in a lot of museums in central Europe. After years of hard, but certainly rewarding work, Semantika is widely known as a reliable partner, thinking strategically and successfully. We mostly work in the field of cultural heritage, but have taken on some very interesting projects throughout the years. We broadened our horizons with online banking solutions and airline systems. Our clients are spread around the world.
Still, our focus and our passion remains cultural heritage in all of its forms. I am officially working as a research and development lead, which means that, amongst other things, I develop new products and services, manage our clients and projects, and grow our company.
Museums of the World homepage: http://museu.ms
I’m very proud of our online platform, which includes Museums of the World and the award-winning Museums.EU. Both are intended for the digital presentation and promotion of museums and galleries in Europe and across the world. Because of overwhelmingly positive feedback from museums and a steady increase in visitors, we’re now adding the ability for museums to get additional revenue and monetise their content by creating “Museums Services”, which range from collection management services, mobile apps and custom museum websites, to enabling visitors to buy art prints from museum collections.
Museums of the World museum listing
I got involved with Europeana because I strongly believe that it represents one of Europe’s key assets. Over the last four years, Semantika has been a partner in four Europeana projects, so we’ve been able to work with Europeana in different ways. From making publishing collections easier with Europeana Inside to creative re-use of content with Europeana Creative and Europeana Food & Drink.
Why is this important to me?
I’ve been working for and with the cultural heritage sector for more than 10 years, gaining extensive knowledge and understanding of the field. As a Councillor, I can share my insights on strategic and technical perspectives with the Network, helping Europeana to shift from being a huge content repository to a truly invaluable resource for everyone interested in cultural history.
Europe’s cultural heritage is priceless and I feel it’s our duty to preserve it, to make it easier for people to discover, explore and enjoy, to use and re-use. We have all the means necessary: great people and organisations; amazing technology; we can even find the money to do it. It seems we just need one last thing: to successfully join our forces and do something amazing.
I’m excited about Europeana’s move towards becoming a platform.
A lot has already been done, but there’s still so much to improve! I would like us to focus on:
- making publishing content to Europeana a painless, “one click” process
- increasing the quality of content in Europeana
- improving searching functionalities to enable people to find relevant content
- enabling and encouraging re-use of the cultural resources available in Europeana
- connecting with other institutions and networks
I look forward to working with all of you on the new successes of Europeana!