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HomeNews European Commission to Establish “European Digital Library”
European Commission to Establish “European Digital Library”
The European Commissions’ plan to promote digital access to Europe’s heritage is rapidly taking shape. More than 6 million books and other culturally significant works are to go online via the European Digital Library over the next five years. In order to boost European digitisation efforts, the Commission will co-fund the creation of a Europe-wide network of digitisation centres.
The European Commission published the results of a consultation on the digital libraries initiative. The results showed that the opinions are divided on copyright issues, in particular between cultural institutions and right holders. The European Digital Library will build upon the TEL (The European Library) infrastructure, which also gives access to a range of digitised resources of the participating libraries.
By the end of 2006, the European Digital Library should involve collaboration among all the national libraries in the EU, while in the following years this will be expanded to include archives and museums. By 2010, potentially every library, archive and museum in Europe will be able to link its digital content to the online resource.
A High Level Group on the European Digital Library will meet for the first time on 27 March 2006 chaired by Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding. It will bring together major stakeholders from industry and cultural institutions and will address issues such as public-private collaboration for digitisation and copyrights.
