Eleven European museums have completed a two-year project to provide online access to their instrument collections. The Musical Instruments Museums Online (MIMO) initiative cost more than €3m, with half of the funding coming from the EU. The project partners include the Cité de la Musique in Paris, the University of Leipzig Museum of Musical Instruments, the Museum of Musical Instruments in Brussels and the University of Edinburgh.

Between them, the museums have provided 45,000 instrument images, 1,800 digital audio files and 300 video clips. The collections will be made available on the Europeana website, a multilingual site featuring millions of digital items from Europe's cultural and scientific heritage. The MIMO website also offers a collections database which is fully searchable. Users can find images and information on 9,040 stringed instruments, including 1,427 violins.

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