Connecting ARchaeology and ARchitecture in Europeana

CARARE is a proposal to establish over 3 years a Best Practice Network and aggregation service and improve the interoperability with Europeana of the digital content available from the archaeology and architectural heritage domain. It will involve heritage organisations, archaeological museums and specialist archives to expand Europeana’s network of content providers and make available the rich diversity of content for unique archaeological monuments, historic buildings and town centres. Distributed 2D and 3D content for heritage places will be brought together and linked up in Europeana with this critical mass of geographically referenced content creating the potential for new map-based commercial and public services for tourism, education and research to be set up. CARARE will work with the EDL Foundation to establish efficient processes to aggregate contents from heritage organisations, addressing practical issues relating to the harvesting of 3D/VR formats, the rich semantics of archaeology and architecture content and the handling of geographic information. The network will implement the protocols, standards and schemas recommended for Europeana contributing expertise on 3D/VR, GI, time and space to the development of the Europeana object model and semantic tools. CARARE brings together a consortium representing 20 countries and organizations with broad ranging experience of the heritage sector, digital libraries, standards and aggregation services. It will make around 2 million items available.