The Bookseller.com

2nd December 2008

« Headlines

France to push Euro library

25.06.08 Barbara Casassus

The European Digital Library (EDL) prototype Europeana will be launched at a meeting of European culture ministers on 20th November in Brussels, French culture minister Christine Albanel has said.

The EDL will be one of France's cultural priorities when it takes over the rotating six-month European Union (EU) presidency on 1st July.

It will offer initially at least 2 million print and audiovisual items from achives, libraries and museums. The French input will come from Gallica2, the digital library of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France' (BNF). By the end of this year, Gallica2 will offer 120,000 of its own documents, including 40,000 in text mode, 1,400 periodicals, 100,000 images and more than 5,000 documents from other libraries.

Some of the documents will be copyrighted and protected through the system that has been under trial by Gallica2 since March. The Europe-wide project ARROW, which aims to create a database for orphan works and to select the best technical, legal and economic models for copyrighted works throughout the EU, will draw on the results of the French pilot scheme.

The cultural events to be held during the six-month French presidency include a conference on cross-border and online copyright in Paris on 18th and 19th September, and a conference on the EDL, also in Paris, on 28th November.

Barbara Casassus Home France Global European Digital Library Europeana