Europeana has released a short animation that explains the concept and value of Linked Open Data to 'memory organisations' and their audiences.
Europeana has published data for 2.4 million objects under an open metadata licence (CC0 the Creative Commons' Public Domain Dedication).
Europeana is encouraging institutions to provide open licensing models for its data, using appropriate links, URIs and RDF. Providing data openly to public and private sector organisations, will enable users to link knowledge in new and imaginative ways as well as encouraging the development of new apps and web services.
For the organisations themselves, inbound links to data will improve a range of performance indicators including improved search engine results and increased web traffic.
More information from Europeana.