Europeana 1914-1918

Background

Europeana 1914-1918 was based on an initiative at the University of Oxford where people across Britain were asked to bring family letters, photographs and keepsakes from the War to be digitised. The success of the idea – which became the Great War Archive – had encouraged Europeana, Europe's digital archive, library and museum, to bring other national institutions across Europe into an alliance with Oxford University. The collaboration brought European stories online alongside their British, German, Slovenian, Luxembourgian, Irish, etc. counterparts in a World War One stories collection.

Project partners

• University of Oxford (http://www.ox.ac.uk)
• Provinzialbibliothek Amberg Staatliche Bibliothek (http://www.provinzialbibliothek-amberg.de/)
• German National Library – die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (http://www.d-nb.de)
• National Library of Luxembourg – Biblitothèque du Luxembourg (http://www.bnl.public.lu/fr/bibliotheque/index.html)
• National Library of Ireland (http://www.nli.ie)
• National Library of Slovenia – Narodna in univerzitetna knjižnica (http://www.nuk.uni-lj.si/nukeng.asp)
• Museum of Jutland, Sønderborg Castle Denmark - Museum Sønderjylland, Sønderborg Slot (http://www.museum-sonderjylland.dk)
• Ministry of Culture Denmark (http://www.kum.dk/)
• Military Museum of the Slovenian Armed Forces (http://www.vojaskimuzej.si/main.aspx )
• Celje Public Library (http://www.ce.sik.si/)
• Europeana (http://www.europeana.eu/portal/aboutus.html)

A partnership of European cultural heritage associations that have joined forces to bring together the digitised content of Europe's galleries, libraries, museums, archives and audiovisual archives. Currently Europeana gives integrated access to 15 million books, films, paintings, museum objects and archival documents from some 1500 content providers. The content is drawn from every European member state and the interface is in 27 European languages. Europeana receives its main funding from the European Commission.

In 2011 in Germany, Europeana 1914-1918 cooperated with local partners 

Support was offered by our local partners, in particular in relation to the roadshows

• Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz http://staatsbibliothek-berlin.de
• Bayerische Staatsbibliothek http://www.bsb-muenchen.de
• Württembergische Landesbibliothek / Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte http://www.wlb-stuttgart.de/sammlungen/bibliothek-fuer-zeitgeschichte
• Facts and Files http://www.factsandfiles.com/

Funding

The project was funded by the Europeana Foundation and by Europeana Awareness.

Acknowledgements

The project extension in Germany - Europeana 1914-1918 - Erster Weltkrieg in Alltagsdokumenten - would like to express gratitude to everyone who allowed their images to be used on our website and in our publications:

The images of artefacts relating to Bernard Darley and Otto Arndt (the film story) are from The Great War Archive, University of Oxford; © Merilyn Jones

Other images are from: Stephen Bull, miliary historian and author available under a CC licence; Frank Drauschke Facts & Files Historical Research Institute, Berlin; Drake Goodman available under a CC licence; from Geert Schneider available under a CC licence; Wikimedia Commons; as well as from The Great War Archive and the First World War Poetry Digital Archive, © University of Oxford.

Acknowledgements to the project's funders, local partners, and all other supporters will be added here soon.

What we were doing

The project was collecting memorabilia and stories from the period of the Great War (1914-1918). This phase of the project focused on European items: letters, postcards, photographs and stories from Germany, Luxembourg, Ireland, Slovenia and the UK. Contributions were made in two ways:

1. Europeana 1914-1918 website - add a picture of the item or type in the story online.
2. At Family History Roadshows - bring the item(s) to the event where project staff will photograph the items and record the stories that go with them

Europeana 1914-1918 Family History Roadshows

At the Family History Roadshows, members of the public were invited to bring their documents, artefacts and stories from the First World War to be recorded by the project staff. The stories and scanned or photographed images of the objects were then added to the archive.

Our Family History Roadshows began in Germany in 2011, and since then we have visited many more countries.

Online story collection

The online story collection opened in March 2011. At the website, anyone could add their objects to the collection together with their stories. The objects that were submitted were checked by the project team and then made available through Europeana.