This week, the European Commission's Research Directorate-General relaunched AthenaWeb, a video portal of sorts where science communicators, organizations, and institutions can upload and share videos with the public.
According to a statement released this week, AthenaWeb already hosts 750 or so videos and has a subscriber base of 8,000 people across Europe. A quick scan of the library reveals mostly video news releases and videos produced by regional European Commission offices.
"We've tried to envisage the different ways our users...could benefit from better access to science audiovisuals and smarter ways of communicating their activities," AthenaWeb's manager Kathleen Van Damme said this week at an international conference on documentary films. "We came up with a new 'pro-zone' (for science broadcasters and film producers) with its marketplace and intelligent web workstation for managing projects, as well as a host of new tools (blogs, syndicated links) for educators and scientists in need of a place to profile their research and develop their communication skills."
The site was originally created in 2005. The rapid proliferation of video-hosting sites such as YouTube led to the rethinking and redesigning of AthenaWeb. The developers have dubbed it "Athena Web - Take 2."
