Brussels, 03/03/2006 (Agence Europe) - On 2 March, the European Commission published a summary of the results of a broad on-line consultation on its initiative to set up a digital library, launched on 30 September last (see EUROPE 9040). Forty-six percent of the 225 replies were from libraries, archives and museums, 19% from publishers and right holders, and 14% from academic circles. Replies were generally in favour of the initiative, seeing it as an opportunity to make European cultural heritage more accessible and usable on the Internet. On the other hand, opinions were divided over copyright issues, especially between cultural institutions and right holders. Information received will allow the Commission to better define the practical arrangements for setting up this library, which should provide a highly visible, multilingual access point, dedicated to the digital resources of Europe's cultural institutions.
A high level group will meet for the first time on 27 March under the chairmanship of Commissioner Viviane Reding, responsible for information society and media policy, in order to study issues such as collaboration between public and private sectors in the field of digitalisation and copyright. The Commission will then adopt, mid-2006, a proposal for a recommendation in order to tackle, in collaboration with the European Parliament and Member States, the obstacles to digitalisation and on-line accessibility. We recall that, back in November 2005, the EU Council had issued a favourable opinion on the approach adopted by the Commission (EUROPE 9068).
The Commission will soon be presenting its strategy with a view to creating digital libraries devoted to scientific and academic subjects. A communication on on-line content is foreseen by the end of the year in order to deal more broadly with the management of intellectual property rights in the digital era.
The European Digital Library, an important element of “i2010”, the global Commission strategy for stimulating the digital economy, will build on TEL (The European Library) infrastructure, which is currently the gateway to the catalogue records of collections in a number of national libraries, which also gives access to a range of digitised resources of the participating libraries. By end 2006, the European Digital Library should encompass full collaboration among the national libraries in the EU. In the years thereafter, this collaboration is to be expanded to archives and museums. Two million books, films, photographs, manuscripts and other cultural works will be accessible through the European Digital Library by 2008, this figure growing to at least six million by 2010.