Month: December 2021

jesuits in china, part 2

In the 16th century, the first Jesuits arrived in China settling in the port-city of Macao in South China, at that time owned by Portugal. From this base, the Jesuits entered the Chinese hinterland and began their work of conversion, also initiating a long term collaboratioon with the Chinese, producing marvelous works of art and achieving important breakthroughs in science.

During their stay in China, the cultural exchange between Jesuits and Chinese would result in advances in astronomy and mathematics, beautiful works of art, and shining beacons of architecture.

Discover the stories and history of Jesuits in China in the second part of a blog authored by Julien Ménabréaz on Europeana website >>

image:  Imperial decree in which Emperor Kangxi inquires after four Jesuits he sent to Rome between 1706 and 1708, at the time of the Chinese Rites Controversy, 1716, CC-BY Leiden University Libraries via Europeana.

PAGODE – Europeana China is co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility Programme of the European Union, under GA n. INEA/CEF/ICT/A2019/1931839

jesuits in china, part 1

The Society of Jesus, better known as the order of Jesuits, was a society founded in 1539 by Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) with the aim to convert the world to Catholicism. In the 16th century, the first Jesuits arrived in China settling in the port-city of Macao in South China, at that time owned by Portugal. From this base, the Jesuits entered the Chinese hinterland and began their work of conversion. While establishing churches at different locations, they even started fostering the dream of converting the Chinese emperor himself.

During their stay in China, the cultural exchange between Jesuits and Chinese would result in advances in astronomy and mathematics, beautiful works of art, and shining beacons of architecture. But there was also intrigue, spying, and political and religious opposition to Jesuits.

Discover the stories and history of Jesuits in China in a two-part blog authored by Julien Ménabréaz on Europeana website >>

image:  Church in Beijing , c. 1860-1900, United Archives / WHA, CC-BY-SA via Europeana.

PAGODE – Europeana China is co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility Programme of the European Union, under GA n. INEA/CEF/ICT/A2019/1931839

pagode validation meeting

On the 2nd December 2021, the validation meeting of project PAGODE – Europeana China took place with participation of HaDEA Project Officer Ms. Kyriaki Tragouda and representatives of European Commission DG CNECT Ms. Katerina Moutogianni and Mr. Fulgencio Sanmartín.

The validation meeting has the scope to assess the correct and complete achievement of the project’s objectives. All project partners were invited in the meeting, together with a number of colleagues from Europeana’s various areas, to present to the reviewers all the work done across the project’s activities to improve, enrich and enhance user experience with Europeana content.

After the welcomes, the validation meeting started with a extensive presentation by the Technical Coordinator Antonella Fresa, who described on behalf of the various activity and task leaders the work done in the content selection and annotation, semantic curation and digitization, content quality and enrichment, Europeana editorials and all the promotional effort.

A particular attention was dedicated to highlight the very good outcomes in the interaction and collaboration established between Europeana Aggregators, that enabled collections coming from different sources and providers come together via different aggregation routes for being published on Europeana portal. An additional layer in the interaction with colleague Europeana Aggregators is the collection and sharing of good practice and guidelines that sprang from PAGODE experience, also illustrated in a nice workshop on building an aggregation value chain presented during the Europeana Aggregators fair 2021.

Another topic of extensive discussion was that of metadata enrichments, and PAGODE partners together with Europeana team described the process of creation, validation and publication of both crowdsourced and automatic enrichments. This activity took place with various actions across the project’s timeframe, and eventually delivered to Europeana collections ca. 27.000 additional metadata of both highly specialized and more general information, thus enriching existing collections with more keywords sourced from the community.

A well deserved spot in the validation meeting was reserved to the Europeana editorials and particularly to the creation of a thematic Feature Page, of the virtual exhibition China in Perspective, and of course to the concluding dissemination items of the project: the PAGODE Digital Festival, the Final Conference and the PAGODE book.

image: PAGODE project

PAGODE – Europeana China is co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility Programme of the European Union, under GA n. INEA/CEF/ICT/A2019/1931839