Europe, now in convenient digital format

October 4, 2010 9:03 AM

Europeana, a portal that brings together digitized items from scores of museums and libraries from across the continent, has launched its first online exhibition, Art Nouveau. (Click on the object, then "View object in Europeana" for high-res images.) And be sure to check out the massive new exhibition Reading Europe at sister site The European Library.
posted by Horace Rumpole (7 comments total)

Beautiful!
posted by Mister_A at 9:25 AM on October 4, 2010

That was stunning.

I'll refrain from grumbling about contentDM and other limiting methods of displaying digitized works, but I will note that I think their website is fairly excellent.

Art Nouveau is a huge favorite of mine, and I have such fun memories of wandering around Barcelona agape at the works of Gaudi and admiring the beautiful entrance to the Paris Metro in Montmarte and enjoying the beautiful posters and advertisements of the time. To find a website that incoporates all of this into a nice, neatly digitized present with a bow on top? Bliss, thank you!
posted by librarylis at 10:57 AM on October 4, 2010

It's good, but it's still far from complete. There are digitized and pdf texts out there in member libraries that do not answer to the search engine.

Better than not having it at all, but not the final word. Yet.

(By the way, the ever efficient Germans allow those willing to pay and anxious for a particular piece of digitization from some of their libraries to move to the head of the line and get full credit.)
posted by IndigoJones at 11:13 AM on October 4, 2010

Oh and by the way - German pictures of old books put google to absolute shame. I have yet to see a missing or half-turned page. Ever. Picked at random. (Notice the plastic tabs instead of intrusive thumbs.)
posted by IndigoJones at 11:42 AM on October 4, 2010

Oh my god, exquisite! Thanks.
posted by scody at 12:05 PM on October 4, 2010

The mystery mest navigation kind of sucks, and the images can hardly be called high resolution (unless one just awakened from a cryosleep session initiated in 1993) but it's a start.
posted by Sukiari at 12:53 PM on October 4, 2010

Double, but who cares, it's beautiful
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:28 AM on October 8, 2010