MADRID – Agencia EFE, Spain’s international news agency, has teamed up with nine other European agencies to create EuroPhoto, the world’s first Web portal for historic photojournalism.

The site includes links to the European Commission’s digital library of cultural content, Europeana.

The goal of the project is to make Europe’s legacy accessible through the most representative images of the last 100 years, commission spokesperson Miguel Puente-Pattison told EFE.

Agencia EFE will contribute more than 100,000 photographs of 20th-century events and personalities.

Joining EFE in the project are Germany’s DPA, Portuguese news agency Lusa and Italy’s ANSA, among other news services.

The participating agencies began work in 2010 to digitize their historic photos and make them accessible via the Web site – http://www.europhoto.eu.com – for educational purposes.

The partners have committed to creating an archive of more than 1 million images documenting the history of Europe from the end of the 19th century to the advent of the digital era.

The Web site, which can process searches in English, Spanish, Italian, German, French, Portuguese, Polish, Hungarian, Danish and Dutch, will be updated continuously.

Visitors to Euro-Photo have the option of connecting to Europeana, a trove of 19 million items that all citizens of the European Union can view free of charge. EFE