An Introduction to CARARE Aggregation Services: A step by step guide to sharing your data

At CARARE we work with state heritage authorities, museums, libraries, research teams, digital archives, companies and individuals to share the digital archaeological and architectural heritage internationally for education, research and enjoyment.

CARARE collaborates with Europeana, the cultural heritage platform, and with ARIADNE Plus the archaeology research infrastructure.

STEP 1: BENEFITS

• Increase the visibility of your digital collections by sharing data with Europeana and ARIADNE plus
• Enable use of your digital content by new audiences for education, research and others
• Receive advice and support from experts in digital data in archaeology and the architectural heritage

CARARE is a membership association and if you would like to find out more about joining us, please see: https://www.carare.eu/join-us/

STEP 2: PREPARATION

The main requirements for sharing your data are:

• Your collection is digital and the content (images, documents, 3D models, sound, video, etc.) is published online
• Metadata descriptions of the content items in your collection are available
• The scope of your collection is archaeology and the architectural heritage in its broadest sense

We will ask you to sign cooperation agreements with us to enable us to share your data with Europeana and/or ARIADNE Plus.

STEP 3: TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS

The technical aspects of sharing your data include:

1. Making the metadata descriptions for your collection available for harvesting
2. Aligning your metadata with the standard formats specified for Europeana (EDM) or for ARIADNE (ACDM).
3. Licensing your content with a clear rights statement
4. Publishing your content (images, text documents, 3D and other media types) online in a way which is interoperable with other platforms
5. Using Linked Open Data resources and labelling languages to increase visibility in international platforms

The technical criteria for sharing data with Europeana include:

• Aligning your content with one of the four content tiers outlined in Europeana Publishing Framework
• Choosing a Europeana Rights statement to authorize how people can use your content

CARARE offers advice and support on all the technical aspects of data sharing.

STEP 4: SHARE

CARARE is metadata aggregator. We provide services to gather metadata and help you to get your data published in Europeana and other international platforms.

MINT is a mapping and ingestion service. You can use this service to:

• Harvest or upload your native metadata and perform a mapping to a standard schema (CARARE, EDM and LIDO are all supported);
• Transform your native metadata to the standard format; and
• Export the results to Repox.

REPOX is a repository management software which implements the OAI-PMH web service protocol. You can use this service to:

• Harvest metadata in standard formats (CARARE, EDM and DC are supported)
• Transform your metadata into EDM format
• Validate and enrich your metadata
• Publish your metadata ready for harvesting by Europeana
• Manage updates

Share3D dashboard is a service which allows Sketchfab users to share 3D models with Europeana. You can use this service to:

• Import metadata for your 3D models on Sketchfab to the dashboard
• Enrich your metadata
• Transform your metadata into EDM format
• Publish your metadata ready for harvesting by Europeana
• Add new models and update your records as needed.

CARARE is an accredited Europeana aggregator, we work with Europeana’s data ingestion team who harvest our metadata repository and publish it on Europeana.

All metadata provided to Europeana metadata is transformed to the Europeana Data Model (EDM) format for ingestion by Europeana.

Contact us to get started