Press: “Opening up Europe’s cultural treasures to the online world”

Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda, recently gave a short speech in Brussels about digitization efforts in Europe. She began her speech with the following address:

“Our shared culture is a unique asset within Europe. With the Recommendation on Digitisation, we can both improve access to culture for everyone, and turn our cultural heritage into a lasting asset for the economy.

“The recent report of the ‘Comité des Sages’ is clear on this point: making all culture digital is investing in the future. We need to respond to that and take up this opportunity.

“Fortunately, we have already started to respond to this challenge, with the creation of Europeana, our European digital library. Europeana is already a global source of inspiration. The United States plans to build a Digital Public Library of America to be launched in 2013. The two digital libraries will collaborate in order to ensure interoperability and to make their content available to the widest possible public.”

Read the rest of the Neelie Kroes’ November 2011 speech, Opening up Europe’s cultural treasures to the online world (Word document).