‘european digital library’ (EDL) Julie Verleyen TEL-ME-MOR / M-CAST Seminar on Subject Access Prague, 24 November 2006

Introduction  This presentation: –Beginnings of roadmap –What needs to be achieved –Where we are –Challenges and how to overcome them –How to be funded

Beginnings - Context  Context: –Google Print –Digitisation –Preservation –Copyright

Beginnings - Development timeline  28 April Six Heads of State and their respective Governments advocated the creation of a virtual European library, aiming to make Europe’s cultural and scientific record accessible for all.  7 July Mr José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, replied to the letter from 6 Heads of State and their respective Government's and welcomed the digital libraries initiative.  30 September 2005 – EC adopts a Communication “i2010: Digital Libraries”  27 February EC adopts the Decision on setting up the High Level Expert Group on Digital Libraries  24 August 2006 – EC recommendation on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material and digital preservation.

EC Recommendation 1/3 “A common multilingual access point would make it possible to search Europe’s distributed […] digital cultural heritage online. Such an access point would increase its visibility and underline common features. …..…

EC Recommendation 2/3 …..… The access point should build on existing initiatives such as The European Library (TEL), in which Europe’s libraries already cooperate. …..…

EC Recommendation 3/3 …..… It should where possible closely associate private holders of rights in cultural material and all interested stakeholders. A strong commitment by the Member states and cultural institutions to arrive at such an access point should be encouraged.”

EU vision  Access Initially: Museums, Archives, Libraries Then: other data / audio / visual repositories  Digitisation  Preservation Centres of Competence

From …

To … European Digital Library

Towards a European Digital Library  End 2006  full collaboration among EU national libraries.  From 2007  collaboration to be expanded to archives, museums and other libraries.  By 2008  2,000,000 books, films, photographs, manuscripts, and other cultural works accessible.  By 2010  at least 6,000,000 works accessible.

Towards a European Digital Library  End 2006  full collaboration among EU national libraries.  From 2007  collaboration to be expanded to archives and museums.  By 2008  2,000,000 books, films, photographs, manuscripts, and other cultural works accessible.  By 2010  at least 6,000,000 works accessible.

Towards a European Digital Library  End 2006  full collaboration among EU national libraries.  From 2007  collaboration to be expanded to archives and museums.  By 2008  2,000,000 books, films, photographs, manuscripts, and other cultural works accessible.  By 2010  at least 6,000,000 works accessible.

Towards a European Digital Library  End 2006  full collaboration among EU national libraries.  From 2007  collaboration to be expanded to archives and museums.  By 2008  2,000,000 books, films, photographs, manuscripts, and other cultural works accessible.  By 2010  at least 6,000,000 works accessible.

Where we are now… 1/2  Access to digitised items of 23 libraries  Remaining 9 EU libraries accessible by end 2007  Multilingual access in all partner libraries languages  Access using the protocols in situ in the libraries = low barrier to entry for the stakeholder, but high barrier to usage by the user.  Moving towards OAI-PMH compliancy

Where we are now… 2/2  Development of a virtual User Board  Workshops on interoperability issues with other eContentPlus projects eg.: Digmap – November in Vienna  CENL workshop on the European Digital Library & possible organisational models.  2,000,000 digitised materials are now accessible via The European Library

Challenges  Lack of content  Multilingualism – Automatic translation works best with full text  Usability - Federated vs centralised search  Funding

Steps a European Digital Library  Project Brief outlining steps to create a user friendly / multilingual / multi-institutional EDL  Review of funding at our disposal  Creation of project proposals  European Digital Library Office

Funding & planning Projects  Live –TelMeMor –EDLproject  In Proposal –TELplus –EDLnet

EDLproject

EDLproject - 4 Main objectives  Integrating catalogues & collections of 9 target libraries into TEL  Increase number & usability of resources for researchers  Extending the multi-lingual capacities of TEL portal  Unicode compliance, multilingual subject access, authority files  Expand Marketing & Communication of TEL  Online & Offline M&C  Central and local M&C  First steps towards collaboration between TEL and non-libraries  Archives & museums : interoperability, organisational, technical

EDLproject – Further tasks  Creation of a European Metadata Registry  Log file analysis to determine user need (DELOS)  Promotion of OAI-PMH  Feasibility of applying GIS tools in portal

TELplus - proposal Adding and improving content:  OCRing of previously digitised material  OAI PMH compatibility  Adds Bulgaria and Romania Improve access and usability:  Full text indexing & automatic mapping between multilingual subject indexes  Standardised integration of services e.g. searching in thesauri, annotation  User Personalisation

EDLnet - proposal Joint proposal led by KB & Eremo for CENL circa €1.3 M  Governance, Organisational Structure, a Roadmap and eventually the Business Model  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

Conclusion  Many obstacles and challenges ….  … but if we all join efforts, if we allow flexibility in our collaboration to assume our diversity, if we can find consensus on standards …  … it might be possible to get there !

EUROPEAN DIGITAL LIBRARY Thank you Julie Verleyen Technical Project Manager The European Library office