Brussels, 08/05/2007 (Agence Europe) - During the meeting of the culture and education committee at the European Parliament, on Monday 7 May, MEPs took part in an exchange of views on the report entrusted to Marie Hélène Descamps (EPP-ED, France) concerning the creation of digital libraries. Invited to attend were Elisabeth Niggemann, Director of the National Library of Germany; Agnes Saal, Director of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF); and Peter Mollerup, President of the Danish publishers' association. The initiative symbolises “an unprecedented joint project”, said Ms Descamps, saying it was a project aimed to give “access to all and to preserve Europe's cultural heritage”. It is therefore necessary to move forward “step by step” by first of all focusing on the “written heritage”. Ms Niggemann stressed the imperatives of quality and the lasting values inherent to the project, which cannot be carried out without a “political will” behind it. She noted the need to reach agreements with publishers so that works, which are no longer published, may be digitalised and accessible to all. Ms Saal, for her part, recalled that the project took shape as a response to Google's digitalisation of works from world libraries. However, in contradiction to this private initiative, “the project is deeply European, deeply cultural and deeply democratic”, she said. “Our ambition is to give something different, an organisation of knowledge, and not just a mass of knowledge in which we get lost”, she added. She thus called for a joint action to be swiftly defined and implemented, developed at the level of the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL), as well as at the level of each member state, mainly in order to reach an agreement on technical standards and documentary choices. In order to speed up the on-line process, she hoped digital markets would be launched. She stressed the progress that could be made in digital libraries (to facilitate collaborative work, allow index research, create personalised work areas, etc) but also said how urgent it was to find a viable economic model for publishers so that they may authorise the digitalisation of private works. To this end, she gave her support to the development of public/private partnerships, considering that all parties (national libraries, publishers and web surfers) may find what they are looking for. She underlined the constructive partnership between the BnF and France Telecom in the development of research engines. Finally, in order to encourage cultural pluralism and linguistic diversity, she set out her ambition to involve other continents in the project. Summing up, Ms Descamps stressed the need to send a “powerful signal (…) in favour of a project that will contribute to building the European identity”. (gc)