Thursday, July 21, 2011

Europeana


Are you a treasure hunter? Historian? Have time on or hands or just plain curious? If so take a month and have a peek at Europeana, and then bookmark it for later.

The EU has ruled that all member country, public domain masterpieces must be accessible on line through Europeana by 2016. Their definition of masterpiece is BROAD. Newspapers, photos, diaries, books and pamphlets, works of art, radio clips, maps, music and public submissions. Thus far about 15 million items have been cataloged.

I've been comparing the stories of WW1 British and German soldiers while in the trenches. They tell 2 completely different tales. The photo above is a German military triage tag. Notice the red stripe? 2 stripes indicated you were soon a dead man. One stripe meant you were safe to move. No stripes indicated the walking wounded.

What I find most fascinating are the eastern European archives. They are like finding buried treasure. Just don't blame me if you aren't heard from for days.

Toad

3 comments:

James said...

Toad!
This is like being a kid in a candy shop. I can't decide what to read next. The certificate proudly proving that the WW1 German solider had been deloused is one of my favorites so far. Thank you for sharing this.

Anonymous said...

This is beyond great, thank so much for posting this.

Jane Kilpatrick Schott said...

Sounds like a good adventure...from a comfortable chair. Great post T.