Opening soon: a digital library for Europe

Europe’s cultural diversity in books, music, paintings, photographs, and
films open to all citizens at the click of a mouse via one portal – this
dream of a European Digital Library could become reality this autumn.
However, further efforts by the EU Member States are needed, said the
Commission today in a new Communication on making available digital
versions of works from cultural institutions all over Europe.
Digitisation of cultural works can give Europeans access to material
from museums, libraries and archives abroad without having to travel or
turn hundreds of pages to find a piece of information. Europe’s
libraries alone contain more than 2.5 billion books, but only about 1%
of archival material is available in digital form. The Commission
therefore called on Member States to do more to make digitised works
available online for Europeans to browse them digitally, for study, work
or leisure. The Commission itself will provide some € 120 million in
2009-2010 for improving online access to Europe’s cultural heritage.

The Commission today confirmed its commitment to help Member States
bring their valuable cultural content online. In 2009-2010 € 69 million
from the EU’s research programme <http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/> will go
to digitisation activities and the development of digital libraries. In
the same period, Europe’s Competitiveness and Innovation Programme
<http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/ict_psp/index_en.htm>
will allocate about € 50 million to improve access to Europe’s cultural
content. However, the total cost of digitising five million books in
Europe’s libraries is already estimated at approximately € 225 million,
not including objects like manuscripts or paintings. Realising the
vision of a European Digital Library (Europeana) needs substantial
investment from national institutions, but at present most countries
only provide small scale, fragmented funding for digitisation. The
Commission today called on Member States to raise digitisation
capacities to make their collections available for Europe’s citizens,
team up with the private sector, and address the following priorities:

* More *funding* needs to be allocated to digitisation, along with
plans for how much material will be digitised.
* Most countries still lack methods, technologies and experience for
the *preservation* of digital material, vital so that content
remains accessible to future generations.
* *Common standards* need to be implemented to make different
information sources and databases compatible for and usable by the
European Digital Library (/Europeana/).

For more information see:
http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/digital_libraries/index_en.htm