These roadshows were developed as part of Europeana Awareness WP2, which Beeld en Geluid leads. It provides members of the public the opportunity to have their historical memorabilia, stories and documents digitised and made available on the new Europeana 1914-1918 platform, which was the reason for the Unlocking Sources conference.
So I, feeding off the energy in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin like an endothermic animal asked myself, 'What else is part of the physics of Europeana?' It has many of the necessary variables, work, energy, time, speed, friction, even mass if we consider cultural content or number of partners as mass.
Putting on my physicist’s cap, I started to analyse the Europeana 1914-1918 roadshow and the conference themes in a new way. How can the rules and theorems of physics describe or help us understand Europeana?
Potential Energy: PE=mgh
'Potential' was a common word at the Unlocking Sources conference; the potential of the portal, of Europeana, of everyone involved. Potential energy can be calculated in many ways but in physics it helps best to visualise something. So visualise a snowball sitting at the bottom of a snowy hill. It has to be pushed up, so work has to be done to it, but for work to be done we need energy. This energy comes from awareness.
Sönke stressed how the centennial of World War 1 was a catalyst for governments and the media to become aware and start thinking of ways to mark the beginning of the war. This awareness caused energy and money to be contributed for research initiatives, outreach/awareness, and aggregation projects like
The Great War Archive, European Film Gateway, and Europeana 1914-1918. So the snowball was pushed up the hill, growing bigger (more content, more partners) and going higher (larger outreach, greater awareness) than before.
Since potential energy is measured by mass x gravitational force x height, the higher Europeana is pushed and the larger it grows, the more potential energy it will have at the top.
Kinetic Energy: KE=1/2mv^2
Now that all this work and energy has been applied to getting the Europeana snowball to the top of the hill, let’s give it a push, or in other words, launch it. As it sets off, the potential energy is released in the form of kinetic energy and Europeana and partners speed along. It is no longer a static network but an interactive, energetic being that engages communities, gathers user-generated content, and interacts with the
media and universities - all of which were visible in Berlin.
Sir Isaac Newton. Line engraving by A. M. Monsaldi after E. Seeman, 1726 Provider: The Wellcome Library, data provider: The European Library: CC-BY-NC
Friction
But if the snowball is to roll faster, then friction has to be decreased. This is another point that Sönke, along with a group of students from Humboldt University Berlin, addressed. Broken links, poor metadata, and badly organised content slows down end-user use and re-use. However, once this friction is diminished, then even with no hills or inclines we can assume, using Newton’s First Law that Europeana will keep rolling.
Newton’s First Law: An object in motion stays in motion.
Sustainability is incredibly important for Europeana and its partners. We strive to make sure that everything we have worked on will continue to grow and be used in the future. We want that snowball to keep on rolling, but is this possible for such a time-bound project like Europeana 1914-1918?
According to project partner Kate Lindsay from RunCoco and Oxford University, it is. If we raise public awareness and engage people - as these roadshows already do - in addition to providing an online platform, not just a portal, for users to engage and interact with - like Europeana plans to do - then the ball should, according to Newton, keep rolling.
Kate’s example came from The Great War Archive which was a qualitative success, and remained active on Flickr even after the project had ended; communities and users continued to engage one another, sharing information, stories, and images freely.
Newton’s Third Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
If something is 'exothermic', it releases heat, which is a transfer of energy. By co-organising these roadshows and actively engaging communities, Europeana acts like the sun, a constant centre that all Network members, researchers, and governments can revolve around and feed off. But while the sun pulls on the orbiting planets, the orbiting planets also pull on the sun. There is a mutually interactive connectedness. Awareness and communication are these tugs and pushes that keep Europeana, the Network, and the public from growing too far apart and keep the channels for energy exchange open.
The physics of Europeana is simple and obvious. Energy goes in, work goes in, energy comes out, work comes out. The more force that is put behind it, the more momentum it will carry; the more streamlined it is, the less friction it will incur. The more we interact with the public, the more reactive they will be and the more we work with one another, the more open our network flows will be. Share information, communicate, and engage; spread more awareness and ensure Europeana continues to roll on.
