‘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 2005 - 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 2005 - 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 2006 - 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

Centres of Competence

From … www.TheEuropeanLibrary.org

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 27-28 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 www.edlproject.eu

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 materialOAI PMH compatibilityAdds Bulgaria and Romania

Improve access and usability:Full text indexing & automatic mapping between

multilingual subject indexesStandardised integration of services e.g. searching in

thesauri, annotationUser Personalisation

EDLnet - proposal

Joint proposal led by KB & Eremo for CENL circa €1.3 MGovernance, 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

julie.verleyen@theeuropeanlibrary.org

Technical Project Manager

The European Library office