THE HAGUE.- ‘Europeana Open Culture’ introduces the public to hand-picked and beautiful collections from 17 of Europe’s top institutions, and allows people to explore, share, download and comment on them. The app is now available for all Apple and Android tablet devices.

Developed by Glimworm, the app provides an easy introduction to the breadth of Europe’s treasures through carefully curated themes: Maps and Plans, Treasures of Art, Treasures of Nature, and Images of the Past. The new version includes over 350,000 images.

Europeana Open Culture presents stunning visual collections from Europeana 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. What’s more, customers can download any item and use it for their own purposes – perhaps as a screensaver, for school work or their own creative activities. They can also link the items to other online resources like Wikipedia for more context and richer information.

Jill Cousins, Europeana Executive Director says: ‘The response to Europeana Open Culture has been great. The app was downloaded thousands of times and was one of the top free educational apps. We’ve listened to the feedback from our first customers and added new content, new functionality and of course, made the app available for all Android and all Apple tablets.’

The 350,000 images available through the app come from collections as diverse as the Estonian Museum of Geology, the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, UK.

Once the app has been downloaded, users can start exploring by entering a keyword or selecting one of the themes. Tapping a thumbnail brings the image up in full resolution with the options to add and read comments, download images and connect the image to other relevant pages on the web. Users can also add the image to their favourites to create a personal museum, as well as share them on Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest.

All images included are either in the public domain or are openly licensed which means they can be used for any purpose, such as a school project, a student thesis, a presentation to a local history society, or on blogs, Wikipedia, or even commercially. What’s more, the code behind the app is open source so developers can get hold of it, use it and experiment with it.

Download the app from iTunes: http://bit.ly/140onjg
Download the app from Google Play: http://bit.ly/LMr6YR