The heritage of the People's Europe Project: an aggregative data infrastructure for cultural heritage

HOPE (Heritage of the People's Europe) is a "Best Practice Network" for archives, libraries, museums and institutions operating in the fields of social and union history. The project provides unified access to materials about the European social and labour history from the 18th to 21st centuries. HOPE proposes guidelines and tools for the management, aggregation, harmonisation, curation and provision of digital Cultural Heritage (CH) metadata and digital objects. Moreover, it offers to institutions joining the HOPE network an operational Aggregative Data Infrastructure (ADI) for the collection, aggregation and access of metadata records from CH content providers. The HOPE ADI is realized using and extending the D-NET Software Toolkit, an enabling framework for data infrastructures.