Frequently Asked Questions about content aggregation
WHAT KIND OF CONTENT DOES EUROPEANA ACCEPT?
You can supply to Europeana metadata about digital content which has one of the following formats: text, image, sound, video, and 3D. Europeana doesn’t accept records without links to digital objects
WHAT KIND OF FORMAT DO I GIVE TO EUROPEANA?
Whatever kind of format; you should map it to LIDO using the MINT ingestion tool. However if your metadata are in LIDO or EDM you only need to upload them without mapping (see below).
IS THERE ANY LIMITATION ON THE SIZE OF FILE THAT CAN BE UPLOADED TO THE MINT TOOL?
The size of the uploaded file strongly depends on the format. It is recommended to not upload XML, CSV or ZIP files greater than 50 MB. Gzipped Tar Files containing XML files are also supported and the size of these files can be up to 300MB.
CAN I UPLOAD LIDO or EDM metadata in MINT?
Yes. You can select the "This import conforms" option in MINT and then choose LIDO Plain or EDM in the menu; the imported records don”t have to be mapped and transformed and can be published directly. If you don”t select the "This import conforms" option, the import is treated as a normal one and therefore will need a mapping and transformation procedure. Note that there are two different LIDO schema LIDO v1.0 and LIDO plain. The first version has been specifically customized for the AthenaPlus and Museu MINTinstance i.e some values are pre-filled and others are controlled by vocabularies while the LIDO Plain version is a version without any project specif customizations and it has been included mainly for partner that can directly export in LIDO from their content management systems.
WHAT DOES THE RED CROSS ON THE IMPORTED FILE MEAN?
The red cross on your imported file () indicates that your upload failed. This means the data is not uploaded to MINT, and of course is not available for mapping. Clicking on the red cross will show an error message that will help you finding out the problem with your file.
MY MAPPING IS LOCKED AND I CAN’T WORK MY RECORDS: WHAT SHOULD I DO?
Go to the MINT homepage and click on the menu “Locks” in the left column; chose the mapping to be unlocked and then click on it.
WHAT ARE THE EUROPEANA MANDATORY ELEMENTS?
The minimum requirement of Europeana are 9 unique meaningful elements in EDM (unless UGC). Those elements are highlighted in MINT to guide the content providers that are mapping their records. Cf. “Core Elements for the Delivery of Metadata to Europeana v1-2013-10-04: Athena Plus mandatory and recommended elements”.
HOW CAN I PREVIEW MY ITEMS AS THEY WILL APPEAR IN EUROPEANA AFTER THEIR PUBLICATION?
For the visualization of the previews it is necessary to include the label Europeana in the preview options tab and then click on 'Remember selected views'. It is also necessary to check if the mapping in use is the correct one from the window scroll menu of the mapping (‘Select a mapping’).
DOES LIDO GIVE ME THE POSSIBILITY TO ASSIGN DIFFERENT RIGHTS, ONE FOR THE ORIGINAL OBJECT, AND ONE FOR THE IMAGE?
Yes, you can distinguish rights information as follows:
- Rights Record: this information is ignored by Europeana since it's mandatory to be CC0
- Rights Resource: this relates to the digital representation of your objects, is controlled according to the Europeana Rights Statements and results in the icon under the image
- Rights Work: this is the rights information about the original object. The LIDO sub-element creditLine in this section is mapped to EDM dc:rights for the CHO, so if you include that into your mapping…
THE THUMBNAILS OF MY RECORDS ARE NOT VISIBLE IN EUROPEANA
This question can have a double explanation:
1. The provider side
Check the way you mapped your metadata fields into LIDO:
isShownAt | An unambiguous URL reference to the digital object on the content provider's website in its full information context. If this cannot be given then you must provide data for isShownBy. | Must be a valid URI (e.g. URL) |
object | For image thumbnails, if you can give a URL to a thumbnail on your website then give that URL here. However these thumbnails smaller than 110 pixels high then it will be scaled up to that size by Europeana. If you do not have a thumbnail then you may give the same data as in isShownby element. | Must be a valid URL |
Partners should supply a link to a thumbnail preview which is preferably the same width or slightly larger than the requirements of Europeana (currently 200 pixel wide). Partners should not supply a link to a very large image (i.e. much wider than 200 pixels). If the thumbnail is larger than the requirements, Europeana will reduce it. If smaller, Europeana will not resize it (it is recommended that content providers look into possibilities to supply bigger size source images for image caching if possible).
Partners should not supply a link to a “dummy” thumbnail that indicates that there is no image or that no image can be displayed for IPR reasons.
Europeana will not accept records without showing a digital object (image, etc.) on the partner's site.
2. The Europeana side
Europeana may need a lot of time to cache the thumbnails; they will appear in the portal after some time. Europeana caches links to thumbnails (objects/preview) in Thumbler. This software solved the issues with thumbnails caching, but Europeana suggests that thumbnails:
- need to be in edm:object or europeana:object
- are generated via files e.g. .jpg, .tiff, .png, .gif, etc.
- cannot be embedded
- video material needs a separate thumbnail
…this will result in a separate rights information as in the example here:
IS IT POSSIBLE TO DOWNLOAD MY MAPPING FILES IN MINT?
Yes. Go to My workspace > dataset > mappings > all mappings > download XSL.
HOW TO MANAGE DIACRITICAL MARKS IN MINT (e.g. of eastern Europe languages)?
The provider should use CSV or XML files UTF-8 encoded.
ARE THE Europeana RIGHTS STATEMENTS MANDATORY?
Yes. If they are not included, the datasets will be discharged.
WHY MY THUMBNAILS ARE NOT YET VISIBLE IN Europeana?
The Europeana caching tool needs time to process large quantities of images. However it works faster if direct links to the digital object are provided in the edm:IsShownBy field. For further information see the Europeana Image Policy.
HAVE .pdf OBJECTS THUMBNAILS IN Europeana?
In principle Europeana may generate them from the cover page of the DO but technically it never succeeds. The provider may link to the .pdf file and add a thumbnail as Europeana object.
