The European Library project

Citation

(2004), "The European Library project", Interlending & Document Supply, Vol. 32 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ilds.2004.12232bab.014

The European Library project

The European Library project

A potentially valuable resource for your customers... (Ed.)

The European Library (TEL) project is a new pan-European service which ultimately will provide Internet access to the combined resources of the national libraries of Europe. Begun in January after 36 months of study, the project hopes to launch TEL by the end of this year. It will offer free searching for both digital and non-digital resources, and will deliver digital objects – some free, some for a fee. There will be limited multilingual features at launch; although the partners are committed to multilingual interfaces with links to translation services, there will be no integrated multilingual search capability. TEL will integrate with Gabriel, the Web service for 43 European national libraries. Aimed at informed citizens worldwide who want a powerful, simple way of finding European cultural resources, TEL's vast virtual collection of material is also expected to attract researchers from around the world. The European Library will be a “collection of collections” and allow for cross-collection searching which would otherwise be impossible. TEL will contribute to new research by making resources from many disciplines widely available, and by enabling new connections through exploitation of a huge virtual library collection. The TEL team will be established this month and start to transfer the project results into an operational service. (Ariadne January 2004) (Note: TEL is at www.europeanlibrary.org/) www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue38/woldering/

Source: Shelflife No 143.12 February 2004 at: www.rlg.org