EUscreen, the European Network for audiovisual heritage, launches its renewed website offering free online access to thousands of items of audiovisual archives.
The EUscreen Network announced the launch of its renewed EUscreen website www.euscreen.eu during the International Conference From Audience to User: Engaging with Audiovisual Heritage Online, in Rome, Italy on October 30th.
The EUscreen portal offers free online access to thousands of items of audiovisual heritage. It brings together videos, stills, text and audio that provide an insight into the social, cultural, political and economic events that have shaped the 20th and 21st centuries.
The re-developed EUscreen portal offers a brand new experience. The platform is user-friendly and dynamic, inviting visitors to play the videos and discover new content. It gives users a chance to explore the crème de la crème of Europe’s rich broadcast history on the homepage where a selection of specially chosen content is displayed. These video highlights showcase a range of material from across Europe and have been specifically chosen by the contributing archives. Users can explore videos dealing with current affairs and topical issues from the early 1900s until today. They can also watch series and collections ranging from broadcast series to collections of amateur films. The new version of the portal is optimised to be accessible on mobile devices and allows content to be easily shared.
In order to make the content accessible internationally, the portal will increasingly provide English subtitles for a range of videos. Finally, an exhibition builder (available soon) will allow users to create virtual exhibitions and facilitate the use of videos, photos and audio material. Over the next few weeks, the website will continually be updated, in response to user’s feedback.
The launch of the revamped portal is part of the work within the EUscreenXL project co-funded in 2013 under the CIP ICT-PSP Programme. It aggregates a comprehensive body of professional audiovisual content and makes it accessible through Europeana and the EUscreen portal. The project consortium consists of 20 leading audiovisual archives, excellent media scholars, skilled technical service providers and networks such as FIAT/IFTA and the European Broadcasting Union. ATiT together with Royal Holloway University London and the Swedish Royal Library, is responsible within EUscreenXL for the end user and pilot evaluation. For that purpose ATiT attended the EUscreenXL project meeting at Cinecitta London.
