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ACTIVITIES :: ICT PSP Digital Content:: eContentplus

The eContentplus programme

eContentplus - A multiannual Community programme to make digital content in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable.

The eContentplus programme expired on 31 December 2008. Funding measures to make digital content in Europe more accessible, usable and exploitable, formerly funded under the eContentplus programme are continued under the Information and Communications Technologies Policy Support Programme ("ICT PSP"), one of three specific programmes implemented through Decision No. 1639/2006/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 2006 establishing a Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (2007-2013) ("CIP"), OJ L310, 9.11.2006, p. 15.

The 4-year programme (2005–08), proposed by the European Commission, had a budget of € 149 million to tackle organisational barriers and promote take up of leading-edge technical solutions to improve accessibility and usability of digital material in a multilingual environment.

The Programme addressed specific market areas where development has been slow: geographic content (as a key constituent of public sector content), educational content, cultural, scientific and scholarly content. The Programme also supported EU-wide co-ordination of collections in libraries, museums and archives and the preservation of digital collections so as to ensure availability of cultural, scholarly and scientific assets for future use.

The programme aimed at facilitating access to digital content, its use and exploitation, enhancing quality of content with well-defined metadata, and reinforcing cooperation between digital content stakeholders. It tackled multilingual and multicultural barriers.

Programme Decision No 456/2005/EC Download ( pdf PDF 80 KB [en]):

Three main areas

In the area of Geographic Information, eContentplus stimulated the aggregation of existing national datasets into cross border datasets, which serves to underpin new information services and products, in particular with a view to reducing barriers related to one or more of the specific themes mentioned in annexes I-III of the INSPIRE Directive (www.ec-gis.org/inspire/).

In the area of Educational Content, the programme supportd the emergence of adequate information infrastructure, and encouraged the use of open standards to stimulate the deployment of effective pan-European learning services.

In the area of Digital Libraries, eContentplus supported the creation of the European Digital Library as well as the maximisation of the impact of European research results.

The European Digital Library (www.europeana.eu) is a common multilingual access point to Europe's distributed digital cultural heritage, hospitable to all types of cultural material (texts, audiovisual, museum objects, archival records, etc.), targeted at delivering rapidly a critical mass of resources to users.