Making cultural heritage data accessible is about more than technology. It’s about opening up collections, enabling research, supporting education and creating new experiences across sectors.

The process for creating, documenting and publishing cultural heritage data can feel complex. It requires specific skills and the mastery of concepts and tools. It is especially true for the creation and publication of 3D.

So where can professionals working in the cultural heritage sector start?

Creating a breadcrumb trail: what a learning pathway offers

Following a learning pathway is one approach which can support professionals to develop new skills. Rather than piecing together knowledge from scattered sources, a learning pathway helps you see the bigger picture. It connects the dots between skills, tools, standards and strategies to help you to move forward with confidence. Whether you’re just starting or looking to deepen your expertise, it shows you what to learn, why it matters, and where to go next. Where possible, learning pathways point you to existing training opportunities and documentation, so you can immediately start building your expertise.

In short, they help you make sense of complexity and turn it into action.

A learning pathway focuses on one key ambition: supporting individuals and organisations that want to develop the skills, knowledge and competencies needed. The goal isn’t just to inform but to enable.

Discover the framework for our new 3D learning pathway

Creating 3D models, documenting and publishing them requires a specific workflow that involves new skills, concepts and tools. There are an overwhelming number of potential topics and directions to choose from - and this is why a learning pathway on this topic is so valuable.

In collaboration with Europeana Foundation, the 3D-4CH project is developing a learning pathway focused on 3D, and we’re excited to already share the detailed framework that will underpin it. In time, the pathway will bring together knowledge, documentation and training opportunities in one place. It will introduce the topics you’ll need to consider, from digitisation workflows and metadata, to legal frameworks, publication standards and data quality, and forms the basis around which the curriculum will be developed. The training resources in the pathway are being developed by 3D-4CH and will be complemented by a large variety of sources, including Europeana Academy and other initiatives.

For cultural heritage professionals, the pathway will help clarify how to prepare collections for 3D digitisation and publication in the common European data space for cultural heritage. For policymakers, it will provide insight into the infrastructure and competencies needed to support digital transformation. For professionals in sectors like tourism, education or healthcare, it will open up new ways to reuse and engage with cultural data. And for educators and students, it will offer a structured way from which to explore a field that’s growing rapidly in relevance and impact.

Discover the framework for our new data sharing learning pathway

In addition to 3D, the data space offers access to large quantities of high-quality cultural heritage data and makes that data accessible and reusable through a variety of reuse scenarios. The workflow for making this data available encompasses several steps that require data providers to develop specific expertise.

The learning pathway for sharing data with Europeana.eu is designed to address this need and help data providers to understand how to contribute data to the data space, whether you are new to Europeana.eu or already familiar with existing aggregation workflows. It brings together the key concepts, steps and resources you need to navigate both the current and emerging approaches to data sharing.

It also reflects the ongoing evolution of the data space, including the expansion of item-level metadata provision to more diverse data offers, such as datasets, as well as new data exchange mechanisms and infrastructure. By highlighting both established practices and emerging developments, the pathway enables data providers to build the knowledge necessary for effective contribution, adaptation to new requirements and exploitation of evolving opportunities for data reuse across various domains and use cases, including research, education and AI.

As the pathway is still under development, some sections include placeholders that indicate where new content, tools, or guidance will be added over time.

A living, evolving resource

The landscape is changing quickly. New technologies, standards and policies are continuously reshaping how cultural heritage data is created, shared and reused. One important development already on the horizon is the emergence of different strategies for sharing data within a broader data space, approaches that will support the data vision of the European Commission.

As these developments unfold, the learning pathways will evolve with them, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, we invite you to explore and use the pathway framework on 3D and the pathway for sharing data .