Opening the sound archives of Europe: The Europeana sounds project

Abstract

Europeana Sounds is a project co-funded by the European Commission within the ICT Policy Support Programme as part of the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme. The project aimed to enhance the total amount of the sound contents available through Europeana. Currently, more than 600,000 audio items and more than 300,000 audio-related contents have been aggregated thanks to the activities carried out by Europeana Sounds. The project has achieved other important objectives such as the enrichment of the metadata related to the digital objects, the realisation of a set of Policy Recommendations, the launch of the fi rst thematic channel of Europeana entirely devoted to the music named Europeana Music and a Radio that makes 200,000 music tracks available online. Europeana Sounds will continue to pursuit its objectives through the Task force established within the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA).