Towards a European digital library

Activities of the Conference of European National Librarians

(CENL)Dr. Britta Woldering, Dr. Jill Cousins

MICHAEL International Conference Rome 5-6 Dec 2006

CENL

• has members from (almost) every member country of the Council of Europe and Vatican City:

• 47 members from 45 countries• was established in 1987• is a foundation under Dutch law • INGO enjoying participatory status with the

Council of Europe

MICHAEL International Conference Rome 5-6 Dec 2006

CENL activities• Annual board meetings

• Working groups on – electronic publications (with FEP)– performance evaluation– persistent identifiers– digital content

• Joint projects– TEL– TEL-ME-MOR– European digital library project

MICHAEL International Conference Rome 5-6 Dec 2006

Digitisation of content• CENL promotes a cooperative and widespread

approach to digitisation• CENL promotes new models of collaboration with the

private sector, publishers and other right holdersOnline accessibility • CENL is a key player in the European digital library

Initiative• CENL creates The European Library as model platform

for multilingual accessibility of Europe's cultural heritage Digital preservation • CENL and National Libraries are stewards of national

collections and cultural heritage• CENL and National Libraries ensure long-term

preservation and access to digital material.

MICHAEL International Conference Rome 5-6 Dec 2006

Growth of The European Library

red: TEL founders

yellow: new in 2005

green: TEL-ME-MOR

orange: new in 2006

blue: EDL

white: rest of CENL members

EU Vision

Across Museums, Archives, Libraries initially – then other data or audio or visual repositories in the cultural heritage arena

Centres of Competence

Centres of Competence

Access

Digitisation

Preservation

from the Council of the European Union press release

“Underlines– the instrumental work done at European level by CENL:

• In organising & creating The European Library as a gateway to the collective resources of national libraries across Europe

• In carrying this work forward towards the creation of the European Digital Library

– the work ongoing in the Michael & Michaelplus projects in describing and linking collections of museums, libraries and archives from different Member states and providing access to these collections.

– that future work should be based on these and related initiatives, towards the goal of achieving a balanced cooperation between libraries, museums and archives”

Build on what we have but be open to new ways and new ideas – nothing is set in stone!

EU Vision in writing….

MICHAEL International Conference Rome 5-6 Dec 2006

MICHAEL International Conference Rome 5-6 Dec 2006

MICHAEL International Conference Rome 5-6 Dec 2006

European Digital Library

European Cultural Heritage in a click

In this timescale

End 2006 full collaboration among EU national libraries.

From 2007 collaboration to be expanded to archives and museums.

2,000,000 books, films, photographs, manuscripts, and other cultural works accessible by 2008

At least 6,000,000 works by 2010

Current state of play - www.TheEuropeanLibrary.org

Content

11

Access

Free cross-border, multi-lingual access to digital & non-digital items from 23 of the 47 National Libraries

Uses protocols in situ: 0AI, Z39:50 etc to search at item level across all the national libraries.

Imposes language, metadata & Collection description standards for interoperability

EDLproject adds 9 more libraries so minimum 32 by end of 2007

Uses inexpensive client side architecture available as open source.

2 million digitised items

Market to universities, research institutes, libraries, governments, learned societies and schools worldwide

Steps to the European Digital Library

Project BriefReview of funding at our disposalCreation of project proposalsEuropean Digital Library Office

Funding & Planning

ProjectsLiveTelMeMorEDL Project

In Proposal

TELplusEDLnet

MICHAEL International Conference Rome 5-6 Dec 2006

Brings in remaining 9 EU & EFTA countries: Belgium, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg,

Norway, Spain, Sweden.

But also:• Creates a European Metadata Registry• Uses log file analysis to determine user need• Extends multilingual capability of the work• Promotes OAI• Starts process of developing the European digital

library

Pieces of the European digital library Puzzle

CITER

MichaelThe European Library

European Schoolnet

TELPlus Proposal

Estonian National Library & Eremo circa €7.5M OCRing of previously digitised material – Czech

Rep. OAI PMH compatibility – Portugal. Improves accessibility – full text indexing &

automatic mapping between multilingual subject indexes - France

Creates generic module to integrate other services e.g. searching in thesauri, annotation - Netherlands

User Personalisation - Italy Adds Bulgaria and Romania

•If successful will start around May 2007

EDLnet Proposal

Joint proposal led by Koninklijke Bibliotheek (The European Library) & Eremo for CENL circa €1.3 M

Human & Political Interoperability– Governance, Organisational Structure, a Roadmap and

eventually the Business Model

Technical & Semantic Interoperability– Prototypes of possible architectures, creating solutions for

various interoperability issues of access, metadata schemas, language, search and display

Users for usability.

Run by a European Digital Library Office – in parallel with The European Library

Working Collaboratively

MICHAEL International Conference Rome 5-6 Dec 2006

European Digital Library

European Cultural Heritage in a click

European digital library

Dr. Britta Woldering & Dr. Jill Cousins