Neelie Kroes: “I fully support Europeana”
In a video published online over the summer, Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission and European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, speaks about the benefits that digitisation and openness can bring for culture, and stresses the importance of Europeana’s digitisation project.
The speech was originally given to the event ‘OpenCulture 2012 – The Greatest Collections Management Show on Earth’ at the launch of the cultural Olympiad in London on June 26th 2012.
Neelie Kroes called Europeana, Europe’s ‘flagship digitisation project’, and stated that it is ‘the most comprehensive and dynamic action of European cultural heritage anywhere online.’
Firmly backing open data, Kroes said that a legal proposal on public sector information would ‘unlock a gold mine’. She said that Europeana’s efforts to build common metadata standards have her full support and that Europeana’s use of open software is ‘pioneering’.
She concluded that the combined efforts of governments, the private sector and cultural institutions will ‘stimulate innovation’ and ‘help our cultural sector keep its proud place on the world stage.’