Designed by Glimworm IT, the app provides an easy introduction to Europe’s glorious art treasury through five specially curated themes: Maps and Plans, Treasures of Art, Treasures of the Past, Treasures of Nature and Images of the Past.
Europeana Open Culture presents stunning visual collections from Europeana.eu with large images – great for those smaller details – and a ‘comment’ option that opens up the possibility for dialogue between many people exploring the same images.
The 350,000 images available through the app come from collections as diverse as:
Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh, UK
Rijksmuseum, The Netherlands
National Library of Poland
The Archaeological Museum, Portugal
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Digital Library of the Spanish Ministry of Defence
Once you’ve downloaded the free app, start exploring by entering a keyword in the search field or by selecting one of the five themes. Tap a thumbnail to view the image in full resolution, read other users’ comments, post your own impressions and connect the image to other relevant pages on the web (for instance, Wikipedia). You can also add the image to your favourites and create your own personal museum.
All images included are either in the public domain or are openly licensed which means they can be used for any purpose, for example in a school project or a thesis, in a presentation to your local history society, on blogs, Wikipedia, or even commercially. What’s more, Glimworm IT have released the open source code behind the app, meaning that developers can get hold of it, use it and experiment with it.
Download the app from iTunes: itunes.apple.com/nl/app/europeana/id646414251