Workshop pieces together European Library digitisation project

The workshop was intended to begin the process of building the European digital library. Remarking on the initiative, Hans Petschar, the director of the Austrian National Library’s picture archive said “It created an atmosphere of enormous willingness to work together with the European Library to achieve a European digital library.”

The workshop’s prime task was to focus on the practicalities of bringing together a vast amount of digital content from libraries throughout the EC and seamlessly deliver this material for the EDLProject . The eventual result will be for the European digital library to act as a portal – seamlessly linking digital content from its partner’s archives.

Content comprising from book, audio, video, photography, rare texts and archived documents from across the EC will need to adhere to certain common criteria including metadata standards, which will mean that users such as researchers can search by theme, across a variety of formats and all under one search inquiry.

“It is a tribute to the work undertaken and continuing to be done, by the National Libraries and the international metadata community, that the system is flexible enough to encompass a wider range of materials than text.” said Jill Cousins, Director of the European Library .

It is estimated the European digital library will be built over a three to four year period and its next move is to consider keeping the project sustainable with an organised business model. A second workshop is due to be held once more at the Austrian National Library at the end of January to consider the framework and timelines for the next phase.

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