The Europeana Foundation

Europeana is a catalyst for change in the world of cultural heritage.

Our mission: The Europeana Foundation and its Network create new ways for people to engage with their cultural history, whether it’s for work, learning or pleasure.

Our vision: We believe in making cultural heritage openly accessible in a digital way, to promote the exchange of ideas and information. This helps us all to understand our cultural diversity better and contributes to a thriving knowledge economy.

The objectives of the Europeana Foundation are set out in the Articles of Association (English) (Dutch). In summary, these are:

•    to make Europe's cultural and scientific heritage available through a cross-domain portal (Europeana.eu)
•    to work with museums, archives, audiovisual archives and libraries to deliver the portal and make it sustainable
•    to bring items that have already been digitised into the portal
•    to encourage and support the digitisation of more of Europe's cultural and scientific heritage

The Foundation is known under Dutch law as ‘Stichting Europeana’ and has its offices within the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands in The Hague. The Foundation’s responsibilities include providing a legal framework for the governance of Europeana, employing staff, bidding for funding and making sure the Europeana service is sustainable.

To be a member of the Foundation, you must represent an international or national association of a cultural and scientific heritage organisation, and your association should be a legal entity. If you belong to a national or European branch that is not a legal entity itself, then your international organisation must be.

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