Although The European Library and Europeana are different in various ways, they often get mixed up. This is very understandable. Indeed their offices are located in the same building (National Library of The Netherlands) and – last but not least – The European Library is a key piece in the greater Europeana puzzle.
The European Library gives online access to the cultural heritage accessible in the national libraries of Europe. The portal is a service of the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL). Only national libraries of the member-states of the Council of Europe can join CENL and The European Library.
Via The European Library a user has access to roughly 150 million catalogue entries from across Europe. During the course of 2008, this number will grow substantially as the community of participating libraries increases. From a total of 47 states of the Council of Europe 44 countries will have become full partner of The European Library.
The European Library targets a global, higher-educated audience. Special attention however goes out to the European scholarly and librarian community.
Visitors may find digitized material as varied as music scores, posters, books and numerous important cultural treasures. To ensure that visitors can always find their way to the material – while the digitization process is still going on -, every query leads to a list of bibliographic records of the participating libraries. The number of digital resources within The European Library is expanding rapidly. For instance over the next two years, a further 20 million pages of fully digitised material from collections across Europe will be added.
Image 1: Screenshot of The European Library homepage
Users can search cross-library or focus on one particular national library, or a thematic collection.[1] The portal is gradually bringing more content to the surface. Browsing experiences are now showing material that previously remained hidden in the deepweb. It currently gives free access to a whole range of cultural treasures and includes a unique webexhibition featuring 300 pictures of the national libraries of Europe.
Europeana will give integrated access to Europe’s cultural richness. Via this cross-domain service users will be able to search and explore millions of digital resources that have been made available by museums, archives, libraries and audio-visual institutions from across Europe.
Image 2: Screenshot of Europeana homepage (demo-version)
A first demoversion has recently been made public. In its capacity as proof of concept for a user-oriented interface for search, discovery and use across all the contents of the domains, it shows the basic functionalities and features of the anticipated prototype.
Europeana is being produced by EDLnet, a 100% funded eContentplus project. It started in July 2007 and will run for 2 years. EDLnet takes the form of a ‘Thematic Partnership’ and is supported by the European Commission as part of the i2010 policy.[2]
The partnership brings together representatives from the four major cultural heritage domains: museums, archives, libraries and audio-visual collections, and from the majority of Member States. It also includes members of other European Commission projects who are working on related technical themes. The partnership between cultural heritage institutions contributing to the creation of Europeana was formalised at the end of 2007 through the creation of a Dutch Foundation entitled EDL Foundation.
The Foundation’s statutes commit members to:
- Providing access to Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage though a cross-domain portal
- Co-operating in the delivery and sustainability of the joint portal
- Stimulating initiatives to bring together existing digital content
- Supporting digitisation of Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage
For more information about the websites and their organization please go to http://www.europeana.eu and http://www.TheEuropeanLibrary.org
Source: This a paragraph from an article I wrote for ELAG conference, entitled ‘Putting the shoe on the other foot – formulating user requirements for Europe’s cultural heritage portals’, published at http://library.wur.nl/elag2008/presentations/fleur_stigter.pdf
[1] The portal works as an aggregator. Eric van der Meulen, one of the developers of The European Library, explains the technical side via this power-point presentation.
[2] ”August 2006, the European Commission issued a Recommendation on digital libraries to Member States, which led to Conclusions of the Culture Council in November 2006. The Council endorsed the vision of a European Digital Library as a common multilingual access point to Europe’s distributed digital cultural heritage.” Source: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/econtentplus/calls/faq/index_en.htm
November 25, 2008 at 6:43 pm
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