ECHOLOT will support the development of the European Collaborative Cloud for cultural heritage (ECCCH) by developing an interoperability hub which facilitates the exchange of cultural heritage data between systems. The hub will allow cultural heritage institutions to publish their data to multiple aggregators, for example, to the common European data space for cultural heritage and open knowledge platforms from the Wikimedia ecosystem. It will also enable the curation and enrichment of cultural heritage data through AI-enhanced workflows which combine automated processing with human input, while preserving the value and integrity of cultural heritage data sets by embedding metadata and provenance. The work of the project will enhance existing practices across the cultural heritage sector, and, ultimately, increase the availability of cultural heritage data for reuse and collaboration across institutions and sectors.
ECHOLOT’s solutions will be validated and tested in five case studies featuring a variety of cultural heritage institutions. The project will also develop innovative business models, training resources, interactive workshops and open source software best practices to support capacity building and long-term sustainability.
Project goals
- Build a software suite for the curation, enrichment and publication of cultural heritage data seamlessly integrated within the ECCCH.
- Facilitate interoperability of cultural heritage data across disciplinary and platform divides.
- Provide AI-enhanced modules for curation and enrichment of diverse cultural datasets.
- Support capturing and expression of detailed provenance and rights metadata.
- Simulate collaboration and business model innovation.
- Foster the sustainable adoption and further co-development of the new system by target communities.
- Validate the functional and collaborative potential of ECHOLOT through a diverse set of real-world case studies.
- Foster a community of practice around ECHOLOT and ECCCH through dedicated capacity building activities and training modules.
ECHOLOT bridges EU data infrastructures and Wikimedia platforms by developing innovative technical solutions and collaboration models for AI-powered data enrichment, reuse and dissemination of cultural heritage data. Europeana plays a crucial role as one of the project’s primary data publication outlets (alongside Wikimedia) enabling cross-platform enrichment between institutional and citizen science data.
Project partners
- Technische Informationsbibliothek (TIB)
- DARIAH-EU (DARIAH)
- Austrian Academy of Sciences (OEAW)
- Institute of Czech Literature, Czech Academy of Sciences (ICL CAS)
- Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences (IBL PAN)
- Europeana Foundation (EF)
- Instytut Chemii Bioorganicznej Polskiej Akademii Nauk PAN (PSNC)
- Jozef Stefan Institute (JSI)
- University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)
- Professional Wiki GmbH (PWIKI)
- Knowledge Management Associates GmbH (KMA)
- University of Helsinki (UH)
- meemoo (MM)
- Australo (AUS)
- takin.solutions (TAKIN)
Funding information
| Funding stream | Horizon Europe (opens in new window) |
| Contract number | Contract number - 101233096 |
| Funders | |
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Key project impact
| New service | 1 |
| Systems connected (the data space, ECCCH, Europeana, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons) | 5 |
| New business models for the cultural heritage sector | 4 |
| % of records processed by ECHOLOT improved | 50 |
| % of records processed by ECHOLOT which contain provenance and rights metadata | 80 |
| % of records processed by ECHOLOT contain correct rights information | 80 |
| Unique attendees at upskilling activities | 100 |
| Views of training materials | 600 |


