| The European Library The European Library is a free service run by the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL). It aggregates and gives users online access to a diverse range of content from Europe's 48 national libraries. The interface of the website is available in 36 languages. Digitised books from famous authors such as Charles Baudelaire and Miguel de Cervantes are represented, as are images of cities such as Paris, the digitised catalogues of Danish department store Daells Varehus and a wealth of bibliographical records. Objects are accepted from institutions located in countries included in the Council of Europe. There is no cost to access the majority of items. From 2011, The European Library is also leading the Europeana Libraries project. It will aggregate over 5 million objects from 19 research libraries and make them available to Europeana. These research libraries will also become partners in The European Library. BackgroundThe European Library of today has evolved from a number of earlier projects, starting in 1997 with GABRIEL (Gateway and Bridge to Europe's National Libraries). It set out to establish a joint web portal of European national libraries. At a basic level, the portal provided information about each library's collections and access to their online public access catalogues (OPACs). GABRIEL was followed by the TEL (The European Library) project, which ran from 2001-2004 and created a framework for access to key national and deposit collections within Europe. The project was part-funded under the Fifth Framework Programme of the European Commission. This led to the launch of TheEuropeanLibrary.org portal on 17 March 2005. Between 2005-2007, the TEL-ME-MOR project helped incorporate 10 more national libraries from new European Union member states as full partners of The European Library. By the beginning of 2008, a further nine national libraries had joined the service. The European Library was further enlarged by the EDLproject, during which national libraries continued to join The European Library. The project also focused on multilingualism, undertook the first steps towards a European Metadata Registry and created a roadmap for potential digitization efforts in the national libraries. The European Library and EuropeanaThe European Library provided much of the organisational structure and expertise required to launch Europeana. When the European Parliament called for Europeana to be established, The European Library was asked to apply to run the project under the eContentplus programme. Work began on a prototype in 2007 and Europeana was launched in November 2008. Europeana now operates independently but The European Library continues to work closely with Europeana. The European Library is the aggregator of digital content from national libraries for Europeana and delivers digital content from national libraries on a monthly basis to Europeana. As of January 2011, The European Library was the third biggest content provider to Europeana, with over 1.2 million items added to the Europeana database. Some human and technical resources are also shared between Europeana and The European Library. More Than An AggregatorIn addition to assembling cultural content from institutions across Europe and making this content available to Europeana, The European Library provides value-added services, expertise, technical infrastructure and networking opportunities to its partners and target users in the academic and research communities. The European Library has also created a series of virtual exhibitions and these have proven to be some of the most popular pages on its website. National Library Partners
Research Libraries (joining in 2011 as part of Europeana Libraries)
ContactsLinksThe European Library: www.theeuropeanlibrary.org |
- co-funded by the European Union
