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