European Library

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The European Library
European Library logo.PNG
European Library screenshot.PNG
Type of site
Portal to the content of Europe's national and research libraries
HeadquartersDutch Royal Library, Netherlands"
OwnerCENL (a consortium of 49 national libraries) [1]
URL The European Library at Europeana
CommercialNo
Launched17 March 2005

The European Library is an Internet service that allows access to the resources of 49 European national libraries [2] and an increasing number of research libraries. Searching is free and delivers metadata records as well as digital objects, mostly free of charge. The objects come from institutions located in countries which are members of the Council of Europe and range from catalogue records to full-text books, magazines, journals and audio recordings. Over 200 million records are searchable, including 24 million pages of full-text content and more than 7 million digital objects. Thirty five different languages are represented among the searchable objects.

Contents

The content of the European Library was frozen on 31 December 2016, with no new updates after that date. [3]

History and concept

The European Library of today has evolved from a number of earlier projects.

Its starting point was in 1997 when the GABRIEL (Gateway and Bridge to Europe's National Libraries) project 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).

The European Library exists to open up the universe of knowledge, information and cultures of all Europe's national libraries.

European Library Mission [4]

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. The national libraries involved in the TEL project were those of Finland, Germany, Italy (Florence), Italy (Rome), Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland and United Kingdom. [5]

This led to the launch of TheEuropeanLibrary.org portal on 17 March 2005.

Between 2005–2007, the TEL-ME-MOR project helped to 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 within the European Union and the European Free Trade Association had joined the service.

The European Library took a further step towards its enlargement with 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.

Year of JoiningNational Libraries
2005Netherlands, Switzerland, UK, Finland, France, Germany, Portugal, Italy-Florence, Italy-Rome
2006Malta, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, Austria, Serbia, Croatia, Denmark
2007Belgium, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Russia-Moscow
2008Albania, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Turkey, Russia Saint Petersburg, Ukraine
*San Marino, Vatican City (collections not searchable)
2011Wales

The European Library and Europeana

The European Library provided much of the organization and support required to launch Europeana – a European Commission initiative that makes millions of digital objects from libraries, museums and archives accessible to the public via the Europeana website.

When the European Parliament called for Europeana to be established, the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL), under the auspices of the National Library of the Netherlands and CENL's service The European Library, were asked to submit for a 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 July 2012, The European Library was the second biggest content provider to Europeana, [6] with 3.45 million items added to the Europeana database.

Some human and technical resources are also shared between Europeana and The European Library.

Virtual exhibitions

In addition to its search engine, The European Library pulls together themes from the collections of Europe's national libraries [7] and displays them in virtual exhibitions. These exhibitions unite geographically disparate objects in a single online space, offering Pan-European sources on the topic.

Financing and ownership

The European Library is financed by its owners, the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL). The portal is maintained by The European Library Office located in the premises of the Dutch Royal Library in The Hague. Its programme director is Jill Cousins. [15]

Partner libraries

The 48 National Libraries who participate in The European Library project are:

Research Libraries who have also contributed content to The European Library as a result of the Europeana Libraries project include:

See also

Related Research Articles

Electronic publishing includes the digital publication of e-books, digital magazines, and the development of digital libraries and catalogues. It also includes the editing of books, journals and magazines to be posted on a screen.

Digitization Process of creating a digital representation of a document or object

Digitization is the process of converting information into a digital format. The result is the representation of an object, image, sound, document or signal obtained by generating a series of numbers that describe a discrete set of points or samples. The result is called digital representation or, more specifically, a digital image, for the object, and digital form, for the signal. In modern practice, the digitized data is in the form of binary numbers, which facilitates processing by digital computers and other operations, but, digitizing simply means the conversion of analog source material into a numerical format; the decimal or any other number system can be used instead.

Digital object identifier ISO standard unique string identifier for a digital object

A digital object identifier (DOI) is a persistent identifier or handle used to identify various objects uniquely, standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). An implementation of the Handle System, DOIs are in wide use mainly to identify academic, professional, and government information, such as journal articles, research reports, data sets, and official publications. DOIs have also been used, however, to identify other types of information resources, such as commercial videos.

An institutional repository is an archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution.

Google Books Service from Google

Google Books is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition (OCR), and stored in its digital database. Books are provided either by publishers and authors through the Google Books Partner Program, or by Google's library partners through the Library Project. Additionally, Google has partnered with a number of magazine publishers to digitize their archives.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to library science:

Fedora Commons

Fedora is a digital asset management (DAM) content repository architecture upon which institutional repositories, digital archives, and digital library systems might be built. Fedora is the underlying architecture for a digital repository, and is not a complete management, indexing, discovery, and delivery application. It is a modular architecture built on the principle that interoperability and extensibility are best achieved by the integration of data, interfaces, and mechanisms as clearly defined modules.

National Library of Moldova

The National Library of the Republic of Moldova located in Chişinău, Moldova is the main library of the state which is responsible for conservation, valorization and protection of written cultural heritage. The National Library operates according to the guiding principles of UNESCO referring to this type of libraries, it is part of the European Digital Library. Founded in 1940, it traces its roots to the Gubernatorial Public Library of Bessarabia established in 1832. At present, the National Library is one of the objectives with great value of the national patrimony and presents the treasure written and printed cultural heritage of the country. Library ensures wide public access to its collections for research, study and / or information. The Director General is Elena Pintilei.

Metadata Data about data

Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:

A digital library, also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, or a digital collection is an online database of digital objects that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital documents, or other digital media formats or a library accessible through the internet. Objects can consist of digitized content like print or photographs, as well as originally produced digital content like word processor files or social media posts. In addition to storing content, digital libraries provide means for organizing, searching, and retrieving the content contained in the collection. Digital libraries can vary immensely in size and scope, and can be maintained by individuals or organizations. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks. These information retrieval systems are able to exchange information with each other through interoperability and sustainability.

Library of Congress US Congress research library

The Library of Congress (LC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the de facto national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.; it also maintains a conservation center in Culpeper, Virginia. The library's functions are overseen by the Librarian of Congress, and its buildings are maintained by the Architect of the Capitol. The Library of Congress is one of the largest libraries in the world. Its "collections are universal, not limited by subject, format, or national boundary, and include research materials from all parts of the world and in more than 470 languages."

National Library of Latvia

The National Library of Latvia, also known as Castle of Light, is a national cultural institution under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture of Latvia. The National Library of Latvia was formed in 1919 after the independent Republic of Latvia was proclaimed in 1918. The first supervisor of the Library was Jānis Misiņš, a librarian and the founder of the Latvian scientific bibliography (1862–1945). The current building was designed in 1989 by noted Latvian-American architect Gunnar Birkerts (1925–2017), who emigrated to the United States and made his career there. It was constructed in the early 21st century and opened in 2014. Today the Library plays an important role in the development of Latvia's information society, providing Internet access to residents and supporting research and lifelong education.

Europeana Digital collection of European cultural heritage

Europeana is a web portal created by the European Union containing digitised cultural heritage collections of more than 3,000 institutions across Europe. It includes records of over 50 million cultural and scientific artefacts, brought together on a single platform and presented in a variety of ways relevant to modern users. The prototype for Europeana was the European Digital Library Network (EDLnet), launched in 2008.

Trove Australian online library database aggregator

Trove is an Australian online library database aggregator and service which includes full text documents, digital images, bibliographic and holdings data of items which are not available digitally, and a free faceted-search engine as a discovery tool. The database includes archives, images, newspapers, official documents, archived websites, manuscripts and other types of data. Hosted by the National Library of Australia in partnership with content providers, including members of the National and State Libraries Australia, it is one of the most well-respected and accessed GLAM services in Australia, with over 70,000 daily users.

The JISC Digitisation Programme was a series of projects to digitise the cultural heritage and scholarly materials in universities, libraries, museums, archives, and other cultural memory organizations in the United Kingdom, from 2004 to 2010 The program was managed by the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee, the body that supports United Kingdom post-16 and higher education and research in support of learning, teaching, research and administration in the context of ICT.

Digital Scriptorium

Digital Scriptorium (DS) is a non-profit, tax-exempt consortium of American libraries with collections of pre-modern manuscripts, or manuscripts made in the tradition of books before printing. The DS database represents these manuscript collections in a web-based union catalog for teaching and scholarly research in medieval and Renaissance studies. It provides access to illuminated and textual manuscripts through online cataloging records, supported by high resolution digital images, retrievable by various topic searches. The DS database is an open access resource that enables users to study rare and valuable materials of academic, research, and public libraries. It makes available collections that are often restricted from public access and includes not only famous masterpieces of book illumination but also understudied manuscripts that have been previously overlooked for publication or study.

Canadiana.org, formerly the Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions, is a non-profit dedicated to preserving Canada's heritage and making it accessible online.

EUscreen is a website that provides free access to Europe's television heritage through videos, articles, images and audio from European audiovisual archives and broadcasters. Its digitised content covers a period from early 1900 until today. EUscreen "aligns the heterogeneous collections held throughout Europe and encourages the exploration of Europe's cultural and television history by different user groups". EUscreen is also the name of the overarching network of institutions working on providing access European audiovisual collections.

The European Film Gateway (EFG) is a single access point to the digitized holdings of historical European film documents from numerous film archives and cinematheques, including over 600,000 individual objects from over 60 collections. The European Film Gateway gives access to images, textual materials, and moving images. The vast contents include film stills, set photos, posters, set drawings, portrait photographs, scripts, correspondences, film censorship and visa rulings, out-of-print books, film programs and reviews, as well as newsreels, documentaries, commercials, and feature films. The portal facilitates access to the archives which hold the original materials.

AthenaPlus is a CIP best practice network started in March 2013 which aims to facilitate access to networks of cultural heritage, enrich metadata, as well as improve search, retrieval and re-use of Europeana’s content by enhancing multilingual terminology management and the export/publication tool. By the end of the project, AthenaPlus will contribute more than 3.6 millions of metadata records to Europeana, from both public and private sectors, focusing mainly on museums content. In addition to enabling access to cultural heritage, AthenaPlus is also focused on creative use of content, and adapting data to users with different needs by means of tools that support the development of virtual exhibitions, tourist and didactic applications.

References

  1. CENL, Official Website of CENL. Accessed 09 October 2015
  2. Singer, Natasha "Playing Catch-Up in a Digital Library Race." New York Times, 8 January 2011. Accessed 17 January 2011.
  3. "Europe's national libraries and CENL commit to collaboration and mutual support as they build on the legacy of The European Library: TEL services to be discontinued from 31 December 2016" (PDF). 13 December 2016.
  4. The European Library Vision and Mission. TheEuropeanLibrary.org. Accessed January 18, 2011.
  5. Van Veen, Theo and Oldroyd, Bill. "Search and Retrieval in The European Library." D-Lib Magazine Volume 10 Number 2 (2004). Accessed 18 January 2011.
  6. List of Europeana contributors Archived 21 January 2011 at the Wayback Machine . Europeana.eu. Accessed 18 January 2011.
  7. Bjørner, Susanne. Thinking About Culture and Language. Searcher, 1 June 2009. Accessed 18 January 2011.
  8. Manuscripts and Princes in Medieval and Renaissance Europe TheEuropeanLibrary.org. Accessed 30 July 2012.
  9. Travelling through History TheEuropeanLibrary.org. Accessed 30 July 2012.
  10. Reading Europe: European Culture Through The Book TheEuropeanLibrary.org. Accessed 18 January 2011.
  11. A Roma Journey TheEuropeanLibrary.org. Accessed 18 January 2011.
  12. Napoleonic Wars TheEuropeanLibrary.org. Accessed 18 January 2011.
  13. Treasures of Europe's National Libraries TheEuropeanLibrary.org. Accessed 18 January 2011.
  14. National Library Buildings TheEuropeanLibrary.org. Accessed 18 January 2011.
  15. About Us TheEuropeanLibrary.org. Accessed 18 January 2011.