EUscreen: access to distributed television archives

Major audiovisual archives in Europe have joined forces to offer unified access to the history of television in Europe. Thousands of video’s and images are available for free online consultation, and additional content is added on a daily basis.  The EUscreen portal has been accessible in beta testing mode since early 2011, but received an entirely new layout. It has been extensively tested and accounts for the needs of the various user groups EUscreen focuses on in the fields of education, research, and for the general public. EUscreen is a three-year project and started in October 2009. With the support of FIAT/IFTA, the European Broadcasting Union and the Europeana Foundation, the EUscreen Best Practice Network aims at achieving a highly interoperable digitised collection of television material. The project brings together 28 partners  from 19 countries. The project is supported by the European Commission as part of the e-Contentplus Programme. Content will also become available through Europeana, the gateway to Europe’s vast heritage collections that currently provides access to over 20 million objects from libraries, museums, archives and audiovisual archives.

The portal provides a wide variety of functionalities to search and browse the collection, which can be used in different contexts such as curricula and research programmes, for remix, and for leisurely dives into popular history. Additional tools for curated exhibitions and an academic e-journal which researches significant trends in over 60 years of European television with the help of original programme sources will become available in March 2012.