EuropeanaLocal is a Best Practice Network project, funded under the eContentplus programme of the European Commission, which started on 1 June 2008.It is designed to involve and help local and regional libraries, museums, archives and audio-visual archives:

• make the enormous amount of content that they hold available through Europeana (the European Digital Library)

• and deliver new services.

Europeana is developing a common multilingual access point which will make it possible to search Europe’s distributed digital cultural heritage online. It will give users direct access to some 2 million digital objects, including film material, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books, newspapers and archival papers. The first prototype was launched to the public in November 2008 by Viviane Reding, European Commissioner for Information Society and Media.

EuropeanaLocal is one of a suite of additional projects, funded by the European Commission to help further develop Europeana. EuropeanaLocal will play an important role in ensuring that the enormous amount of digital content provided by Europe’s cultural institutions at local and regional level is represented in Europeana, alongside that held at national level. Such involvement will not only bring together a rich diversity of content of all types, cultures and languages but also people, making it possible to establish integrated services with great richness and added value for communities and individual users.