Blowing Bubbles, 1700-1722, Pieter van der Werff, Rijksmuseum (public domain)

In May, Europeana has launched its Business Plan 2015. This is the first year of the Europeana Strategy 2015-2020, which outlines how the company will transition into a multi-sided platform: a truly networked organisation working together to create the largest repository of trusted, accessible and re-usable digital heritage in the world. The Europeana Business Plan 2015 reflects this change in perspective.

Europeana’s main aim will be to make sure its core infrastructure, processes and products are fit for enabling people – Europeana members, collaborators and all audiences, from the casual browser to the professional user – can do more and more with the data. In this sense, the most visible change of this year will be the improved user experience and engagement on the Europeana portal, where thematic channels will be introduced, making it easier to find great content.
To this end, the Network will run a country based campaign to bring in the best art pieces of each country; the new pieces collected will be used for the launch of the thematic channel on Art History in the autumn.
In 2015, Europeana we will take the first steps towards a new aggregation model for Europe, making data-sharing easier and more attractive, and will give partners more direct feedback on the results through a Statistics Dashboard. Finally, Europeana will work on improving its entrepreneurial capacity and on developing more creative tools that allow use of the content made available by the network partners.

This year, Europeana starts working on making the beautiful thing.

Balthasar Wigand Josephsplatz 1835, Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Download the Europeana Business Plan 2015