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European cultural heritage at the click of a mouse. It might sound hard to believe, but since November it has become a reality. Europeana, Europe's multimedia online library allows Internet users to access more than two million books, maps, recordings, photographs, archival documents, paintings and films from national libraries and cultural institutions of the EU's 27 Member States. Europeana opens up new ways of exploring Europe's cultural heritage by giving free and fast access to Europe's greatest collections and masterpieces in a single virtual library through a web portal available in all EU languages.

 

On the first day of its launch, on 21 November 2008, Europe's digital library Europeana was overwhelmed by the interest shown by millions of users in this new project. On the basis of expert advice, Europeana had anticipated up to 5 million hits per hour on the site. The real interest was 3 times as strong. This massive interest slowed down the service so much that after having already doubled server capacity the next day, the Europeana management in The Hague (Netherlands) and the European Commission had to temporarily take down the site to take pressure off it.

 

This is an unexpected difficulty, but it is also an encouraging sign that citizens in Europe and around the world have great interest in the project. It also provides strong motivation for the Europeana team and the experts from the Commission working on the project to intensify their efforts and take the site's technical back-up even further.

Europeana makes it possible to search and browse the digitised collections of Europe's libraries, archives and museums all at once. This means users can explore themes without searching for and visiting multiple sites and resources.

Europeana was initiated by the Commission in 2005 and was brought to fruition in close cooperation with national libraries and other cultural bodies of the Member States as well as with the strong support of the European Parliament. Europeana is run by the European Digital Library Foundation, which brings together Europe's major associations of libraries, archives, museums, audiovisual archives and cultural institutions. Europeana is hosted by the Dutch national library, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek.

Over 1,000 cultural organisations from across Europe have provided material for Europeana. Europe’s museums, including the Louvre in Paris and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, have supplied digitised paintings and objects from their collections. State archives have made important national documents available, and France's Institut National de l’Audiovisuel supplied 80,000 broadcasts recording the 20th century, right back to early footage shot on the battlefields of France in 1914. National libraries all over Europe have contributed printed and manuscript material, including digitised copies of the great books that brought new ideas into the world.

 

The European Commission started to work on the digitisation and online accessibility of cultural material as early as 2000. Between 2000 and 2005 it co-funded research projects and stimulated a better collaboration between Member States that wanted to bring their cultural heritage online.

In June 2005, Commissioner Reding made the European digital library a flagship project of the EU's i2010 strategy for a European Information Society for growth and jobs (IP/05/643). In September 2005, the Commission outlined the measures needed to make Europe's cultural and scientific heritage accessible to all (IP/05/1202). This August, the Commission asked Member States to step up their efforts to contribute to Europeana, especially by providing more funding to digitisation and by putting clearer figures on how much material they would digitise. (IP/08/1255, MEMO/08/546)

The Commission's work on the European Digital Library is monitored by a High-Level Group of experts from the public and the private sector, representing cultural institutions, the ICT industry and stakeholders.

Links: Europeana Library
Digital Libraries website has been re-launched
European Parliament-Digital Libraries
European Commission-Audiovisual Service
Europe's Information Society - Europe's Digital Library