The scientists, particularly those associated with natural history museums and botanical gardens collectively hold large number of multimedia data like pictures, sounds, movies about specimens in his collections. This multimedia content is held in different kinds of databases and therefore is only currently available to those few people who can gain direct access to the databases. The attractive multimedia is thus effectively withheld from use for a wide range of scientific applications, which includes research, education, taxonomic study, biodiversity conservation, protected area management, and maintenance of diverse ecosystem services. Therefore a project which would provide this multimedia content with specific biological and multilingual functionality to a wide European cultural audience through EUROPEANA was proposed. The inclusion of culturally-significant multimedia content from European natural history collections (i.e., more than 1 million pictures, artwork, movies, and audio files) will enhance the scientific dimension of EUROPEANA by adding substantial information about the natural world complementing the digital biodiversity literature, and in addition to the existing material primarily from the arts and humanities. A consortium leading by Freie Universitaet Berlin was established to work together on the proposed aims under the EU project OpenUp!. The members of consortium are 23 scientific institutions from 12 different European countries. ... [Information of the supplier, modified]
