Europe needs to open up to the digital value of its cultural legacy | Public Sector | silicon.com

"Institutions such as libraries, museums and archives create large amounts of authoritative, descriptive data about their digitised books and works of art. This data can be used by developers to create innovative resources in, for example, tourism and education. Reusing data in new apps has the potential to generate new businesses and jobs, providing greater value from material held in public collections and giving consumers engaging new ways to access and interact with it. However, as the principal aggregator of data about Europe's digitised cultural assets, Europeana can currently only make its data set available for non-commercial purposes....Instead of measuring their success by the amount of commercial revenue institutions are able to secure from the market, new metrics should be developed that measure the amount of business being developed based on data made openly available to the creative industries. This measure will take the onus off cultural heritage organisations to increase their revenue streams in the short term, and instead recognise the long-term and wider benefits that can accrue when cultural public sector Information is made accessible to the developers and entrepreneurs who are driving digital innovation...."