The European Library and
Europeana: an overview
Sally Chambers, Interoperability Manager,
The European Library
Vision
Provision of equal access to promote world-wide
understanding of the richness and diversity of
European learning and culture.
Mission
The European Library exists to open up the
universe of knowledge, information and culture of
all Europe's national libraries.
 2005: Finland, France, Germany, Italy-Florence, Italy-Rome,
Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland, UK
10
 2006: Austria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark,
Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Serbia,
Slovakia
23
 2007: Belgium, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Liechtenstein,
Luxembourg, Norway, Russia-Moscow, Spain, Sweden
33
 2008: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia & Herzegovina,
Bulgaria, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Georgia,
Moldova, Romania, Russia-St. Petersburg, Turkey, Ukraine
45
 2009+: Montenegro, San Marino, Vatican City
48
www.theeuropeanlibrary.org
Service of all 48 European National libraries to provide
access to their catalogues & digital collections via one
central, multi-lingual web-interface (“the portal”)
 Alternate point of access
 Exposure to a wider
audience
 Platform for collaboration
 Single point of access
 Search multiple libraries
and collections
 Multi-lingual interface
Europeana: the vision
‘A digital library that is a single, direct and
multilingual access point to the European cultural
heritage.’
European Parliament, 27 September 2007
‘A unique resource for Europe's distributed
cultural heritage… ensuring a common access to
Europe's libraries, archives and museums.’
Horst Forster, Director, Digital Content & Cognitive Systems
Information Society Directorate, European Commission
Europeana:
the
timetable
Europeana: the timetable
Currently bringing in digitised content from
Europe’s cultural collections
Public prototype launching in November 2008
Over 2 million digitised objects
Content that represents all 4 domains
Pan-European coverage
Multilingual interface
Access to over 6 million objects by 2010
The Europeana network
Funded by the Commission’s digital libraries
initiative under the eContentplus call
2-year thematic partnership network
100 partners representing:
all EU Member States
related Commission-funded projects
the 4 cultural heritage domains:
audio-visual collections
archives
museums
libraries
www.europeana.eu