Abstract
The Memory of the Netherlands programme was created by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (the National Library of the Netherlands) in cooperation with the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science to present a major national database of images of cultural heritage objects on the Internet. The article describes the background to the project, the collections that it contains, and the partnerships with other institutions that have been forged. Particular issues highlighted by the programme have been open access and copyright, contextualizing the content of the database, and the challenges of evolving Information Technology and the standardization of metadata. Memory of the Netherlands has been successful in creating a freely accessible database of more than 400,000 digital objects from 70 different cultural heritage institutions. However, the Dutch government, which financed the programme for its first ten years, has decided to end its funding and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek now has to consider how best to ensure the continued existence and accessibility of the project.
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