“Popularity brings site down”
As indicated on the Europeana homepage (http://dev.europeana.eu/ ), 10 million hits per hour halted this site on the opening day of its prototype. Europeana is a digital collection of European culture and heritage produced by the efforts of many European Archives, Research Institutions, and National Representatives. Offering 6 million digital sounds, photos, paintings, maps, manuscripts, books, film material, newspapers and archival papers, Europeana began in July 2007 and is expected to provide full access by 2010. The demo displays screenshots from this site and provides a taste of what to expect. (The demo can be found on the home page address listed above.) While the demo is only offering in English, when completed the portal will be accessible in all the languages of Europe.
Some representatives from European Cultural institutions considered the portal’s capability handling 5 million hits an hour excessive, even doubting the public’s interest in a digital cultural collection. However, the traffic for this prototype has overwhelmingly demonstrated a need for this European digital cultural collection. The prototype is expected to attempt to launch again toward the end of December 2008.
