Discovering Early Europe in Australia: The Europa Inventa Resource Discovery Service

Abstract

The ARC Network for Early European Research (NEER) is funded under the Australian Research Council’s Research Networks programme. Its goal is to enhance the scale and focus of Australian research in this multidisciplinary field, and to build collaborative and innovative approaches to the way research is planned and managed. It has more than 350 individual participants, as well as eight industry partners, working across five major research theme areas and fourteen Research Clusters [1].

An integral part of NEER’s vision is the development of a digital environment which provides a focus for the work of this national research community. This environment includes a collaborative Web work space (Confluence) [2] and a repository of research outputs (PioNEER) which will be launched in late 2008. This paper looks at the third major component of the digital environment: Europa Inventa, which will provide a resource discovery service for Early European objects, artworks and manuscripts held in Australian cultural heritage institutions.