‘More translations, unique historical content and rich media – The European Library launches renewed website’

[Press Release]

 

February 17th 2009, The Hague (The Netherlands) – The European Library today announced a new site release of www.TheEuropeanLibrary.org, a free resource to discover the extensive learning and research materials, covering all subjects, from 38 national libraries across Europe.  Originally developed as a central point of access to Europe’s library material, the website now combines multilingual search functionalities with several online exhibitions and web2.0 tools.

 

The new portal incorporates many of the recommended enhancements from user feedback studies.  Top of the list was more multilingual facilities.  As a result, users can now navigate and scan over 330 collections in their native language.  Support materials, including FAQs and a first-time user guide, are available in 22 European languages.

 

Users also enjoy the portal’s rich media offerings.  The portal specialises in online exhibitions that showcase the collections of Europe’s national libraries.  A new, exciting exhibition on the Napoleonic Wars has been launched to coincide with the two-hundredth anniversary of the campaigns.  More than 200 rarities were collected from the national libraries of Spain, Portugal, France, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Serbia.  The exhibition shows unique material such as French constitutional chart (1814), sketches of Francisco de Goya (1810) and military maps showing how Napoleon planned his attacks.

Exhibition Space

 

 

Notes for Editors:

 

www.TheEuropeanLibrary.org is a service of the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL) offering free, item level, access to the combined resources, books, magazines, journals, manuscripts, sound and video archives, both digital and non-digital, from 38 of the 47 national libraries of Europe. Europeana.eu builds on the project management and technical expertise developed by The European Library.

 

Exhibition Foyer: http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/exhibition/

Collections: http://search.theeuropeanlibrary.org/portal/en/collections_all.html

 

Contact: Fleur Stigter, The European Library, Tel: + 31 (0) 70. 31.40. 182, Fleur.Stigter@KB.nl

 

Questions following Europeana Launch?

Fleur writes: Following the launch of Europeana, many are finding their way to the office in The Hague and ask us all kinds of questions. Maybe this post helps a bit in finding the answers….But before I do, may I please remind you that Europeana and The European Library are two different services…? (please note “view of a bird” for further info)

Europeana.eu went live last Thursday 20 November. As an unprecedented number of people immediately visited Europeana, the site came to a standstill. Technical developers, among others colleagues Sjoerd and Eric, are working long hours to create a more robust version. Mid December the site will be reopened. If you now enter http://www.europeana.eu you are redirected to the project development site. Here you can find all kinds of information and also a video that gives a preview of what’s on the real Europeana site.

One of the resources you can find on the project website is a link to the European Commission press briefing which was held November 21. During this briefing, Martin Selmayr, Spokesperson of European Commission, Information Society and Media gave an update on Europeana and also answered all kinds of questions, such as…

1. Why do you need a couple of weeks to come back?

2. Are you going to inform the registered users of Europeana when the site is back up?

You can watch the press briefing via http://ec.europa.eu/streamebs/cgi/ebs.pl?p=74197&s=131659&key=D6FD54F7F2356D2AAD211284F5348E4045B80466

Further, if you are wondering what kind of film footage is available for TV companies, please follow this link. It mainly shows how digitization takes place.

Welcome Europeana!

 

Press Coverage – Some Links

The Progress Report of the European Commission has generated interesting press coverage from all over the world. Some examples:

Opening soon: a digital library for Europe
7thSpace Interactive (press release) – New York,NY,USA

Daily Digest 11 August
ElectricNews.net – Dublin,Ireland

EC funds more digitization for OA, calls on member states to do …
By Peter Suber

L’Europe aura sa bibliothèque numérique
by Thomas Ferenczi
Le Monde 13.08.08

Interview Hans Geleijnse (”één van de drie Nederlanders in het achtkoppige bestuur”)
BNR Radio

La Ue mette la cultura on line torna il mito della Biblioteca
La Repubblica

Europas digitale Bibliothek startet im Herbst
die Welt

Did you see / hear an item that’s not listed here? Would love to know about it….!

 

EDL Gets Local and Regional Dimensions

EDLocal – The Start of A New Project

From next week onwards also local and regional cultural institutions from across Europe will work with EDL Foundation. Together they will find ways through which the institutions can easily make their content available to Europeana. Or to use the official terminology – the projects aims to improve the interoperability of the digital content held by these institutions and to make it accessible through the Europeana service of the European Digital Library and to other services.

Okay let’s think about this…All these different institutions hold an enormeous amount of digital resources. In fact, they give access to an amazing amount of material of all types, cultures and languages. And now with EDLocal access will also given via Europeana. Let me give you a figure: EDLocal will make over 20 million items available to Europeana.

A few more details

EDLocal is a so-called ‘Best Practice Network’, an eContentplus project that falls under the digital libraries inititiative. The project will run for three years. It builds on existing multiplier networks of local institutions to bring together a consortium that represents 27 countries with broad ranging experience of the cultural sector, digital libraries, standards and aggregation services.

The expected results include the establishment of a network of regional repositories that are highly interoperable with Europeana, an integrated Europeana-EDLocal prototype service and the development of thematic areas for Europeana services which integrate content from both the national and the local/regional level.

The element of “improving interoperability” entails the use of Europeana’s infrastructures, tools and standards (OAI-PMH repositories and Europeana Metadata Application Profiles initially, but moving forward to semantic web technologies later).

Rob Davies (MDR Partners) is Scientific Coordinator of the EDLocal Best Practice Network. (NB: The photo of mister Davies has been copied from this page)

About “Best Practice Networks“

The EU explains on one of her websites that these networks “should combine a consensus building and awareness raising function with implementation in a real-life context of the solutions discussed. Their main objective is to promote the adoption of standards and specifications for making digital content in Europe more accessible and usable.” Continue reading at the FAQ 2008 page of eContentplus projects

 

Information about Cultural Heritage developments in The Netherlands

A short overview of sources of information. Yes, I admit it… it has become a somewhat strange mixture but who knows – maybe it helps a bit in finding your way:

“Digitaal Erfgoed Nederland (DEN) – or Digital Heritage Netherlands – is the national clearing house for ICT and cultural heritage. Commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Cultural Affairs and Science, DEN collects and distributes knowledge about ICT standards and other quality instruments. This way, the cultural heritage field will be able to build a national Digital Heritage Collection, in a professional, future-proof, and public-oriented manner.” Languages: Dutch and English

WordPress blog ‘Erfgoed 2.0‘ is an initiative of Theo Meereboer and some students of the institute ‘Media en Informatie Management’ (Hogeschool van Amsterdam) and the Reinwardt Academy (Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten). They aim to explore what eCulture means and how it can contribute to the cultural heritage sector at large. Students, teachers and professionals are invited to share their thoughts – something they do very successfully. Language: Dutch

The National Library of The Netherlands (KB) publishes interesting information both in Dutch and in English. For instance check out the ‘Management Summary of the National Library of The Netherlands’ and keep up to date via their news archive.

You can also find information via The Nationaal Archief (National Archives). This page may form a nice start: http://www.en.nationaalarchief.nl/archiefbeheer/introductie/

Last but not least, check out this overview of projects (in English) that run via computer science research programme CATCH, Continuous Access to Cultural Heritage. This NWO-funded program “aims
to provide new solutions for the problems of accessing and using digital
collections.” NWO stands for ‘The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research’.

PS:

The RijksMuseum has developed a very nice widget entitled ‘Rijkswidget’. It shows a different work from the collection every day. Very easy to install, especially on iGoogle and Netvibes. You can get it via http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/widget?lang=en

Please leave a comment if you think an important source of information is missing here…

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: culturalheritage, Holland, overview, DEN, KB, CATCH

 

Welcome, New Members!

This week a “Welcome, New Members!” meeting for the national libraries of the FUMAGABA project is held in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague. You probably do not remember but some months ago I already announced the start of this project. To help you remember…

Fumagaba is a project of The European Library. The project aims at integrating the collections of the national libraries of Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Ukraine, Moldova, Albania, Georgia, Armenia, Bosnia Herzegovina and Azerbaijan. FUMAGABA partners are members of CENL and are becoming Full Participants with the financial support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.

Following welcome speeches by Wim van Drimmelen (Director National Library of The Netherlands) and Geneviève Clavel-Merin (on behalf of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation), Jill Cousins spoke about all the different pieces of the jigsaw and how Fumagab-project fits in this context. Cousins is the program director The European Library / Europeana.

Today Louise Edwards, general manager, presented the strategic overview of The European Library. Other presentations informed the new partners about the technical, editorial and marketing aspects. Sally Chambers gave an excellent presentation on collections and metadata.

“The European Library is proud to be expanding eastwards and to welcome new Full Participants into The European Library through FUMAGABA and several other initiatives.” says Georgia Angelaki, Project Coordinator and Central Contact for FUMAGABA.

For more information about Fumagaba go to: http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/portal/organisation/cooperation/fumagaba/

 

Users get their say in the development of The European Library

When the topic is ‘how to improve the user experience of The European Library’ the input of national library representatives is very much appreciated. There is one kind of advice however that is even more important. Taken that users are king in online (public) services, nothing beats the voice of actual users. This as a prelude to the following….

March 17^th 2008, The Hague (The Netherlands) – The European Library is pleased to announce the formation of its Users Advisory Board. The members of the Board are drawn from across the international library and academic community. Trying to meet user demands better, their advice will help shape the development and strategy of The European Library portal.The Board will provide input and advice on matters of usability in two ways. It will influence the web-design and functionalities of the portal. The Board will also keep The European Library network informed about the ways in which user needs are evolving at the different research levels.

“It is significant that so many leading librarians, academics and web2.0 experts have accepted our invitation to join the Advisory Board”, said Lynne Brindley, Chair of the Executive Group of The European Library. “Its formation symbolizes an important step in the development of The European Library. In a very practical way, the Board will give a voice to the user. We need to pay careful attention to the users points of view as we continue to develop services for the researcher and information-seeker.”

This text has been taken out of a press release which was sent out this morning. If you want to read more click here (opens a pdf file)

 

More good news – This time from The European Library

Wauw, I love 2008. The good news just keeps coming in!

The European Library website broke all records this month: never before The European Library was visited by so many! The number of visitors has increased by 60% in just four months. Interestingly, the portal becomes more and more popular in Spain.

Several improvements on the portal have definitely contributed to this record. Aubéry Escande, editorial manager of The European Library, for instance gradually revamped the Libraries pages and introduced a whole new service: http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/exhibition/ He did a great job. It really looks cool. Furthermore – let’s face it, where else can you find 300 pictures of library buildings from across Europe?!

In this context another fact worth mentioning is the Mini Library. Since last week you can design your Mini Library widget for specific themes. A map provider website for example can now install a widget that solely focuses on maps’ related collections of The European Library. The script can also be used on blogs. If you like, you can click here to find a link to the script generator.

Have nice evening!

 

Demo is live

The demo of the Europeana site is live!!

“Europeana is developing practical, user-defined tools for exploring and sharing content in a multilingual interface. The tools will make it easy for users to combine or compare related material across different countries – for example the artefacts, imagery, records and writings relating to the Roman Empire, the Vikings or the Renaissance.” (source: press release Europeana d.d. February 11^th)

Curious?

View the site demo, do the survey and who knows… maybe you win an iPhone!

http://www.Europeana.eu/

 

Fuma – what?

More good news for The European Library! The Swiss Development Agency is funding 8 more members of CENL to become full partners. The initials of the following countries: Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Ukraine, Moldova, Albania, Georgia, Armenia, Bosnia Herzegovina and Azerbaijan make up for its original title: FUMAGABA! More information will be made available at www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/fumagaba

FUMAGABA will be the fourth project in a systematic approach to extend The European Library. I guess this is a good moment to sum up all the projects:

1. TEL-ME-MOR (2004-06) has brought in the national libraries of Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Malta, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithiania, Estonia and Slovakia
2. EDLproject (2006-08) currently works towards the integration of the bibliographic catalogues and digital collections of the National Libraries of Belgium, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain and Sweden, into The European Library.
3. TELplus (2007-2009) will bring in the national libraries of Bulgaria and Romania by 2008
4. FUMAGABA (2008-09)

Please keep in mind that Europeana is NOT the same as The European Library. It is different in many ways. So what is and isn’t it?

Yes The European Library is very much involved in the creation of Europeana. However …..

• Where The European Library is a service of CENL (Conference of European National Librarians), Europeana is a service of many, many more organisations. This brings us to the second point:

• Europeana gives access to material from museums, archives, audio-visual institutions, and libraries. Via The European Library users can search and retrieve material from across Europe’s national libraries

• A very first demo of Europeana will be soon available. The European Library on the other hand is an operational service. It already exists for several years now.

I hope this makes it a bit easier to find your way through all the projects, accronyms, etc..

(Thanks Georgia!)