European digital libraries: Commission strategy & on-line consultation

["Alice Keefer" <akeefer@arrakis.es>]

Of possible interest to members of this discussion group.
Alice Keefer, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

Brussels, 30 September 2005

Commission unveils plans for European digital libraries

The European Commission today unveiled its strategy to make Europe's
written and audiovisual heritage available on the Internet. Turning
Europe's historic and cultural heritage into digital content will make it
usable for European citizens for their studies, work or leisure and will
give innovators, artists and entrepreneurs the raw material that they
need. The Commission proposes a concerted drive by EU Member States to
digitise, preserve, and make this heritage available to all. It presents a
first set of actions at European level and invites comments on a series of
issues in an online consultation (deadline for replies 20 January 2006).
The replies will feed into a proposal for a Recommendation on digitisation
and digital preservation, to be presented in June 2006.

"Without a collective memory, we are nothing, and can achieve nothing.  
It defines our identity and we use it continuously for education, work and
leisure", commented Information Society and Media Commissioner Reding.
"The Internet is the most powerful new tool we have had for storing and
sharing information since the Gutenberg press, so let's use it to make the
material in Europe's libraries and archives accessible to all". Jan
Figel', Commissioner for Education and Culture, added:  "European
cooperation is an obvious necessity in this field: it is about ensuring
preservation and access to our common cultural heritage for the future
generations".

Making the resources in Europe's libraries and archives available on the
Internet is not straightforward. On one hand, we are talking about very
different materials - books, film fragments, photographs, manuscripts,
speeches and music. On the other, we have to select from very large
volumes - for example, 2.5 billion books and bound periodicals in European
libraries and millions of hours of film and video in broadcasting
archives.

The Commission communication sets out three key areas for action:  
digitisation, online accessibility and digital preservation. At present,
several initiatives exist in the Member States, but they are fragmented.  
To avoid creating systems that are mutually incompatible and duplicate
work, the Commission proposes that Member States and major cultural
institutions join EU efforts to make digital libraries a reality
throughout Europe. Private involvement and public/private partnerships are
a key element in achieving this goal.

For its part the Commission will step up coordination work and contribute
funding through its research programmes and through the eContentplus
programme:

  a.. the results of an online consultation on digitisation and digital
preservation issues (2005) will feed into Commission Proposal for a
Recommendation ( 2006). The results will also be an input for other
relevant initiatives such as the review of EU copyright rules (2006) and
the implementation of the Community R&D programmes (2007). A High Level
Group on digital libraries will advise the Commission on how to best
address the identified challenges at European level,

  b.. collaboration among Member States will be facilitated by an update
of the Lund action plan, providing operational guidelines on digitisation
(2005), backed up by quantitative indicators to measure progress. The
Commission will work together with cultural institutions, such as the
national and deposit libraries, to ensure co-ordinated action at European
level,

  c.. the Commission has made ?36 million available for research on
advanced access to our cultural heritage and digital preservation in the
fifth call for proposals under the sixth research framework programme for
R&D (2005). Under the seventh framework programme (FP7), the research on
digitisation, digital preservation and access to cultural content will be
considerably stepped up, inter alia through a network of Centres of
Competence in the fields of digitisation and preservation (2007), and
between 2005 and 2008, the eContentplus programme will contribute E60
million towards making national digital collections and services
interoperable and facilitating multilingual access and use of cultural
material.

Digital libraries is one of the flagship initiatives of Commissioner
Reding's initiative "i2010 - a European Information Society for growth and
jobs", adopted by the Commission on 1 June 2005 (see IP/05/643).

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