Evolving Europeana ’s Metadata : from ESE to EDM

The evolution of metadata standards used for building the Semantic Web makes possible single, integrated access to regional digital libraries. The ambition of Europeana project is focused at realisation of such an integrated, secured multilingual access to digital collections of European cultural heritage artifacts distributed at various European countries. The present paper represents in brief both the goals and evolution of Europeana and its technical implementation steps. It discusses possible ways of contributing to this effort by submitting descriptive metadata according two specific notations – the flat propertyvalue format of Europeana Semantic Elements (ESE) and the Europeana Data Model (EDM) specifying how resources as networked.