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Building the European Digital Library: an Insider's Point of View Building The European Digital Library: An Insider’s Point of View Olaf D. Janssen Abstract ing to common standards in i) data harvesting and ac- In December 2004 Google announced its plans to digi- cess protocols, ii) metadata, and iii) collection descrip- tise and publish millions of books from five prestigious tions and c) multilingual access. Anglo-American academic libraries by the year 2015. The reader will 1) learn what it takes to build a pan- Initiated by French fears that Google’s initiative could European Digital Library, 2) find out about the history create a bias towards Anglo-American language and and future of this project and 3) discover that this a culture, Europe quickly united to mobilise funds for the win-win-win project: for its users, for its builders, and digitisation, preservation, and accessibility of European for world knowledge. cultural heritage and the creation of a European Digital Library, including six million digital works from librar- 1. Introduction and History ies, museums and archives by 2010. In December 2004 Google announced1 its plans to Today The European Library (TEL) is a multi- digitise and publish online 15 million volumes from five lingual portal offering integrated access to the tens of prestigious Anglo-American academic libraries by the millions of resources of Europe’s national libraries. It year 2015. This bold initiative sparked a wave of activi- offers free federated searching and delivers digital ob- ties across Europe. jects—some free, some priced. In an article2 in the French newspaper Le Monde, The EU stressed that the European Digital Library the president of the French national library expressed should not be constructed from scratch, but built on ex- his concern that Google’s initiative could create a bias isting initiatives, such as TEL, because TEL has a long towards the English language and Anglo-American cul- history of successfully implementing and using some of ture, especially for future generations. He stressed that the vital ingredients for the European Digital Library. diversity and multilingualism are basic values of the Eu- These include a) internal and external collaboration and ropean culture that need to be protected and preserved. cooperative organisational networks, b) a technological His comments were widely picked up in the media, who platform based on creating, maintaining and conform- immediately presented it as a ‘cultural war with Google.’ Olaf D. Janssen is a Project Manager for The European Library Office, National Library of The Netherlands, The Hague, The Netherlands, email: [email protected]. 46 Building The European Digital Library: An Insider’s Point of View 47 Things began to speed up when the French call for museums and archives—have a long and successful his- safeguarding the European cultural heritage got criti- tory of collaboration, going back as far as 1987. In that cal backing from the leaders of five countries, support- year the Conference of European National Librarians4 ing French President Chirac in asking for coordination was founded. CENL aims to increase and reinforce the and funding from the European Union (EU) to create a role of the national libraries in Europe, in particular in European Digital Library. This initiative also found the respect of their responsibilities for maintaining the na- support of a broad coalition of 24 European national tional printed heritage. libraries. Members of CENL are the national libraries of the Making the holdings of Europe’s libraries, muse- member states of the Council of Europe5 and Vatican ums, and archives available online is not a trivial task. City. The Conference currently consists of 47 libraries6 There is a wide range of different materials available: from 45 European countries (Italy and Russia have two books, film fragments, photographs, manuscripts, sheet national libraries each). music, speeches, sounds, etc. Furthermore, what materi- als to select from around 2.5 billion books and bound 2.2 The European Library (TEL) periodicals in Europe’s libraries and archives and mil- One of the activities of CENL is the operation and lions of hours of film and video in its audiovisual ar- development of The European Library (TEL) portal.7 chives? Since 2005, it offers multilingual and federated access The EU recognised the vital importance to 1) digi- to the tens of millions of resources (books, magazines, tise, 2) preserve, and 3) open up Europe’s written and journals etc.—both digital and non-digital) of currently audiovisual heritage on the internet. In other words, to 23 national libraries. Aimed at both professional and make it usable for European citizens, innovators, art- non-professional researchers and informed citizens ists, and entrepreneurs for their studies, work, or leisure, world-wide, it offers free searching in a vast virtual col- for now and for future generations. In March 2006 the lection of materials from all disciplines. It delivers digi- EU announced3 financial, strategical, and organisational tal objects—some free, some priced. support for building a European Digital Library. The The current (April 2007) participants in TEL decision to co-fund the creation of a Europe-wide net- are the CENL members of Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, work of digitisation centres and to address the issues of Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, copyright protection was welcomed by all stakeholders Germany, Hungary, Italy(2x), Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, with great enthusiasm. Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slove- The EU proposed the following timeline: nia, Switzerland, and the UK. The collections and cata- • 2008—Multilingual access to digital collections logues of the remaining 24 CENL members will be of national libraries. The collections must be search- included at a later stage. Most notably, in September able and usable. A minimum of 2 million digital works 2006 an 18 month project8 started to include the nine (books, pictures, sound files etc.) should be accessible remaining EU and EFTA9 countries in TEL. Next year through the European Digital Library. the latest EU members Bulgaria and Romania will also • 2010—The European Digital Library needs to be be added. expanded to include collections of a number of archives, For understanding the rest of this article, it is im- museums, and other libraries, and possibly publishers. A portant to realise that The European Library is not only minimum of 6 million digital works should be accessible a very useful technical platform (in the form of the TEL through the European Digital Library. In practice, this portal10) for the end-users, because number could well be much higher, if cultural institu- • of the phenomenal depth and quality of trusted tions of different types and at different levels (national, deep web resources held in the national libraries. regional, local) participate. • It gives easy access to native resources held in oth- er countries. 2. The Situation Today • It enables types of collection-level searching which 2.1 CENL would otherwise be impossible. As is clear from this historical introduction, national li- • It is a major contribution to research both in mak- braries are the forerunners where building the European ing resources widely available and by making possible Digital Library is concerned. This is no surprise, because new connections through exploitation of a huge virtual European national libraries—as opposed to national library collection. March 29–April 1, 2007, Baltimore, Maryland 48 Olaf D. Janssen But it is also a very important organisational collab- possible to search Europe’s distributed—that is orative platform for the participating national libraries, to say, held in different places by different or- because ganisations—digital cultural heritage online. • It provides an international showcase for their col- Such an access point would increase its visibil- lections, products, and services. ity and underline common features. The access • It gives them an increased exposure on the world point should build on existing initiatives such stage with combined political mass providing greater as The European Library (TEL), in which Eu- marketing and negotiation power. rope’s libraries already collaborate… • It gives libraries a feedback loop on what users are expecting on a European scale. CENL supports the idea that TEL is a model plat- • It is a mechanism to extend collaboration. form and model organizational network for building the • It provides feedback on user demands which can European Digital Library. As a group, the members of prioritise institutional and national digitisation activities. CENL own Europe’s cultural published heritage; many • TEL provides a cooperative framework for con- of them according to legal deposit, many for the whole tinuous development, sharing and innovation in meta- period of time of their nation’s history. data, interoperability and other technical standards. From the above it will be clear that TEL—and CENL as its founding organisation—are in an ex- 2.3 Current position of TEL and CENL tremely advantageous position where building the Eu- A true European Digital Library should serve all types ropean Digital Library is concerned. No other organisa- of user needs: present and future, up-to-date and his- tions are mentioned so explicitly as catalysts to create a torical information, science and humanities, education, common multilingual access point for Europe’s collec- research and everyday, normal information needs. It
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