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What's new in EFG?

With entering the second project year in September 2009, the focus in EFG shifted from the basic groundwork carried out in the first project year to actual development and implementation tasks in the second and third project year. Today, after one and a half years of EFG, both, the contributions of partner archives and the development of the front-end of the web portal are in full swing. All activities aim at making film archival material available via a single access point on the internet.

Enriching EFG
With the stable version of the EFG database model, data from currently 15 contributing European film archives and cinémathèques can be harmonised by mapping the diverse local data formats to the common EFG metadata schema. To date, data of nine archives has been integrated in the EFG database. All 15 archives are expected to have a first set of data ingested into the EFG database by the end of August 2010. Archives will keep on updating their contributions regularly until the official end of the project in August 2011. 

Making EFG visible
Since January 2010, the Berlin-based company ]init[ is working on building and designing the front-end of the EFG web portal. ]init[ was chosen by the project co-ordination from a number of companies that had applied to take over this task. While the developing work for the portal is expected to be finished already in June 2010, this early version will then undergo thorough testing by the project partners, before the EFG web portal will go publicly online in autumn 2010.

Sharing EFG
Already now, data collected in the EFG database is delivered to the Europeana portal. In monthly intervals, EFG data is harvested by Europeana in order to ensure that all updates carried out in EFG will be displayed timely in Europeana as well. Until Europeana’s Rhine release in summer 2010, EFG is expected to contribute data and links to some 130,000 digital objects. As the data collected in EFG is more comprehensive as what can be displayed in Europeana, only selected information will be passed on to the Europeana portal.

Promoting EFG
The EFG project and relevant news are regularly presented in the framework of national and international conferences. All given presentations can be found on the EFG project website under “Outcomes”. Beginning of May 2010, EFG will give a presentation at the FIAF congress in Oslo. In collaboration with ACE and Europeana, EFG is currently planning to deliver input to events under the Belgian council presidency of the EU in 2010.

Sustaining EFG
An EFG Executive Group consisting of eight EFG project partners was set up. Aim of the group is to discuss and recommend to the EFG Plenary Board agreeable sustainability models for managing the EFG portal. Several suggestions are on the table and currently being evaluated. The EFG Executive Group met for the first time in Vilnius in October 2009 and a second time during the Berlinale in February 2010. At least one further meeting will be necessary to come to a final decision on how to make EFG sustainable.

Joining EFG
With the start of the second project year, the National Audiovisual Archive Finland joined the consortium as a new partner. In addition, the project co-ordination is in contact with several other potential content contributors, which declared their interest to contribute to EFG.

Det Danske Filminstitut/Stills & Posters Archive