The Agora Solution and the ECHO Network

The Agora Solution

Only if digital sources are made freely available on the Web, only if the same tools can be applied because they share compatible structures, only if diverse digital collections can be integrated to yield an interconnected whole, and only if it is possible to combine the power of computing with the power of the human mind in the analysis of sources, will a set of data turn into a meaningful representation of human knowledge.

The aim of the agora solution is to establish an open-source culture of the public and scholarly exploitation of cultural and scientific heritage on the Internet, comprising the promotion of content-driven technology in information management. The resulting infrastructure should allow every scientific institution, archive, library, museum, or educational institution to make their resources available online with little effort and in a way that guarantees their interoperability with other representations of human knowledge. In order to make participation in the agora attractive, every potential contributor should gain a surplus value when entering the agora by making contents or tools available on the Web. In particular, all possible meaningful links between a newly available corpus of materials and the already existing ones should be enabled; tools developed for particular aspects of culture or science should be transformed into modules of a universal working environment applicable to all pertinent domains of human knowledge.

The ECHO Network

The network of the ECHO knowledge weavers consists of more than 120 scientific and cultural institutions worldwide, that contribute cultural heritage content as well as scholarly metadata.

How to join

Research institutes, universities, libraries, museums, and archives,
who share the vision of ECHO are invited to join the initiative
and to bring in cultural heritage, research source material
and scholarly metadata related to the material.
Contact