The European Library

This 'Collection' is everything harvested by The European Library from National Libraries and held in a central index. While this duplicates collections held under the libraries themselves, it has the advantage creating a general search under one target.

This virtual collection allows you to search in one place any of the digitised material gathered via OAI into our Central Index. It is a subset of The European Library Harvest.

A database with descriptions of collections of all the National Libraries accessible via The European Library. This database is useful for finding relevant collections to limit your search.

The treasures exhibited in this online exhibition come from national libraries from all over Europe, going back as far as the 8th century. These libraries have selected some of the most stunning artefacts in their collections, like rare and precious books, illuminated manuscripts, bookbindings, drawings, prints and decorated papers. Together, these treasures are an impressive representation of European cultural heritage throughout the centuries. Short descriptions have been added to provide essential information about the treasures and their provenance.

Historical Austrian newspapers and journals (1810-1935) have been digitized. Users can either browse in a list of titles or search via the date of publication. Nearly 3 million newspaper pages are online.

This online catalogue lists all works that have been acquired since 1992: all printed items (including microforms and AV materials) appearing from 1992 onwards; all university theses that have appeared from 1989 onwards; new acquisitions with an earlier date of publication.

This catalogue lists the printed items published in the period 1930-1991 and held by the Austrian National Library.

This catalogue contains all printed materials that appeared during the period 1501-1929 and that were acquired and indexed by the Austrian National Library before 1992.

This catalogue contains article records from collected editions, periodicals etc., related to women and gender research, that are held by the Austrian National Library.

The Catalogue of the Collection of Artificial Languages contains indexes of printed items, periodicals, manuscripts, broadsheets, audio visual materials, electronic data materials, and microforms held by the Austrian National Library.

The Catalogue of the Map Department contains the maps held by the Austrian National Library.

The "Old Autograph Catalogue of the Manuscript Collection" consists of all listings drawn up between 1955 and 1997. They cover autograph documents written by more than 40,000 people living between the 16th and the 20th centuries. This information used to be recorded on in excess of 138,600 catalogue cards. The catalogue data, giving information about persons, corporate bodies and papers, represents more than two third of the autographs holdings.

The "MUS-Opac" contains music manuscripts, texts of operas and vocal works, literature on musicology, cassettes, microforms and the closed collections of important Austrian composers.

At present the Austrian Incunabula Census lists all currently known Incunabula editions world wide. The listings of those of them that are preserved in Austria provide data about the holding institutions, and about the items' numbers and their completeness. The Census is based on a data pool of 29,000 incunabula titles from the Incunabula Short-Title Catalogue (© ISTC, The British Library Board). Since April 2002 holdings of Austrian libraries, monasteries, private collections have been searched in this catalogue, and entries for the incunabula titles found have been supplemented with data about the holding institutions, and about the items' numbers and their completeness.

The image platform of the Austrian National Library contains 50.000 historical images from the holdings of the Austrian National Library, the historical archive of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, the Association for the Study of the History of the Labour Movement and the archive of the Austrian Society for Contemporary History of the University of Vienna. Those images are available online for scientific research, for commercial and editorial use.

Belgian publications from 1975 onwards and foreign acquisitions from 1985. and publications from the special sections

Belgian works from 1875-1974 and foreign works acquired from 1930-1985

The collection contains digital reproductions of old books, manuscripts, maps, sheet music, graphics and drawings from The National and University Library's special collections (350 items).

Digital Archive contains Croatian web resources considered legal deposit copies, captured within the ongoing project Capturing and Archiving of Croatian Legal Deposit Web Resources started in 2003. The project is cooperatively led by the NUL and SRCE, University of Zagreb Computer Centre. Contains 850 items.

Bibliographic records of the holdings of the National and University Library, Croatia catalogued since 1981. It also includes records for Croatian publications retrospectively catalogued.

Contains digital reproductions of catalogue cards from the Catalogue of old maps, and the Catalogue of manuscripts from the Map and Atlases Collection, National and University Library, Croatia (16th to 18th century).

Contains digital reproductions of cards of the Catalogue of old atlases, the Catalogue of old maps, and the Catalogue of manuscripts maps of the Map and Atlases Collection, National and University Library, Croatia (16th to 18th century).

Contains digital reproduction of catalogue cards of the 13 catalogues: Manuscripts, Subject catalogue of manuscripts, Collection of oriental manuscripts, Correspondence, Incunabula - Alphabetial author catalogue, Incunabula - Alphabetical catalogue of publication places, Old books, The Zrinsky family library, The Kušević family library, Old periodicals, Partisan publications - periodicals, Obituaries.

Contains digital reproduction of catalogue cards of the Printed music catalogue (Prussian Instructions) - up to 1978, Music cassette's catalogue (ISBD) - up to 1990, Gramophone records catalogue of the Music Collection of the National and University Library, Croatia

One main catalogue (around 33000 records). It does not contain digited materials, only metadata records. It contains publications like printed books for all subjects (except journals), and some audiovisual materials like videotapes and cds. Articles of books are not recorded.

Bibliographic descriptions of printed books that are published in Cyprus. Offprints, magazines and newspapers are not concluded in the bibliography for the time being.

Catalogue of music books, scores (about 801 titles). It does not contain digited materials, only metadata records. The collection is a donation of the Cypriot musician Kapsalis.

Online catalogue of the National Library of the Czech Republic. It contains bibliographic records and holdings information of printed books and serials. Since 1995 it also contains maps, musical scores, sound recordings, graphics, electronic resources etc.

Union catalogue of books, serials and other documents available in Czech research, academic, public and specialized libraries.

Digitised periodicals and monographs published mostly on the territory of the Czech countries during 19th and 20th century.

Manuscriptorium is the Open Catalogue of Historical Collections and the Digital Library of manuscripts and very rare old printed books. It contains data from 33 Czech institutions (public and research libraries, archives, museums; and castle and monastery libraries) and from 12 foreign libraries. In the near future, it will be expanded substantially with the framework of the new eContentPlus ENRICH project.

Books (from 1900 to the present time), periodicals, maps, musical scores, audio and electronic materials (from 1990 onwards) published on the territory of the Czech Republic.

The Danish collections contain works published in Denmark. This refers to books, periodicals, printed ephemera and newspapers published in Denmark since the first book was printed in 1482. The term "Denmark" comprises present-day Denmark as well as countries and regions which have belonged to the Danish crown at one point in time, such as Norway until 1814, Iceland until 1944, Southern Schleswig and Holstein until 1864. The collections have been created through legal deposit, an obligation by all printers to send one or more copies of everything they produce to the Royal Library, first promulgated in 1697. Since 1998 cd-roms, videos and dvds have been subject to legal deposit. In addition, the library has received gifts of books and periodicals which have not been deposited. Since the late 18th century the library has also attempted to purchase all books and periodicals, dealing with Denmark or Danes, or translations of Danish authors. of importance to Danish culture and research into Danish society. Among the sub-collections included are Pamphlets and corporate publications, newspapers, Dano-Norwegian literature on World War I and The Collection of Clandestine Literature published during the German Occupation of Denmark 1940-45.

The Old collection is The Royal Library's stocks of foreign prints from about 1450 up to 1949. The catalogue consists of 530,000 handwritten catalogue cards and 159 big registers (266 volumes), covering all kinds of subjects. Most of the records are now retroconverted and can be searched in the database REX.

The Oriental Collection (approximately 70.000 titles) comprises of texts in Asian and Norht-African languages in the form of manuscripts written on parchment and paper as well as on other materials (e.g. palm leaves, bark, metal sheets), block prints, and printed books. The collections also has a small museum collection, illustrating book production and the arts of the book, including 200 miniature paintings.

In contrast to many other European public and private Judaica and Hebraica collections, the Judaica Collection of the Royal Library was untouched during World War II. Currently the collection comprises 35.000 titles, covering both Judaica (- 1950; materials on Jewish Studies in Western languages) and Hebraica (material written in Hebrew scripts). The core of the collection is professor Rabbi David Simonsen's private library and archives collection, aquired in 1932

The Music Collection is the national main collection of Danish music prints, manuscripts with music by Danish composers. It also inlcudes a comprehensive selection of music by foreign composers for research and performance, score and parts for a number of works to be used by amateur and professional orchestras and choirs and a complete collection of Danish music recordings from 1998 and onward and a small selection of foreign cds.

The Map Collection (1960 -), which can be searched in the online catalogue, consists of maps and atlases of all geographic areas, with a particular regional focus on Denmark and Scandinavia. The collection also holds national responsibility in regard to the history of cartography and thus acquires literature on this topic, along with facsimile editions of old maps and atlases.

The Portrait Collection contains Danish and foreign portraits as well as group pictures, with the earliest dating back to the 17th century. The collection contains prints as well as photographs (mostly from 1870-). The Danish collection contains approximately 600.000 images and the foreign collection around 200.000. The Online Portrait Collection contains scanned portraits of Danes who have died before 1940. Portraits of people deceased after 1940 are not published out of respect for private life. A message then reads, 'Ingen portrætter fra Portrætsamlingen online'( which means no portraits from the Portrait collection online) If a person has died before 1940 and is represented in the physical collection with merely a few portraits, you will be likely to retrieve the complete set and a message reading, 'Alle portrætter fra Portrætsamlingen online'(which means all portraits from the Portrait Collection online). Should there be more portraits of a particular person than what is possible to publish online, a sample of images will be captioned 'Udvalgte billeder fra Portrætsamlingen online.'(which means selected portraits from the Portrait collection)

Acquisitions from 1924-1987 of papers, letters and manuscripts from Danish writers, composers, scientists of all branches of science, artists and cultural figures as well as similar material from institutions and associations

Acquisitions fom 1988- of papers, letters and manuscripts from Danish writers, composers, scientists of all branches of science, artists and cultural figures as well as similar material from institutions and associations.

Digital version of the works of Søren Kierkegaard in facsimile and in searchable version

Digital version of the works of Hans Christian Andersen (H.C. Andersen) in facsimile and in a searchable version

Digitized editions of the classic works in Danish Literature by over 70 authors who lived between 1200-1936. Here you can study the authors' texts supplemented by extensive documentary material.

The Danish Drama Collection holds nearly complete collections of theatre texts performed at the leading theatres including the Royal Theater from the mid-1950s to today. It also includes many collections deriving from leading Danish theatre publishers and prominent actors and directors (including several scrapbooks) as well as collections of unpublished plays. Today more than fifty Danish theatres (incl. Danish radio and television) regularly deliver a copy of each performed drama text to the Drama Collection.

The collection consists of approximately 11 million photographs (prints and negatives), drawings and etchings mostly of Danish origin and covering every imaginable subject. Appr. 100.000 prints and photographs (primarily dealing with Danish history and topography) are registered and in many cases digitized.

The Royal Library holds invaluable historical book collections, both Danish as foreign. The Rare Book Collection contains about 4.500 incunabula, i.e. books printed before 1501. At the death of the great Danish book collector Count Otto Thott in 1785 the library received all his books printed before 1531, of which about 1.500 were incunabula. Later the collection experienced particular growth in the time of Director H.O. Lange (1901-1924), and today it is the largest of its kind in Scandinavia. The Post-Incunabula Collection comprises books from the period 1501-1530. It was not established until the mid-1970s and currently contains about 6.500 volumes. Early in the 19th century the books printed on parchment were gathered in a special collection, the Parchment Collection, which today comprises of 125 volumes. In the 1950s a Study Collection of the History of the Book was established by selecting books from the foreign collections. These books were to demonstrate characteristic examples of binding, printing, illustrations and previous ownership. The department further takes care of a group of foreign books from the Older Collection (Ældre Samling) of the Royal Library. These books - about 7.000 vols. - are particularly rare and/or precious, and among them are many items of great interest from a book historical point of view.

Online catalog of the National Library of Estonia (is part of the shared catalogue of several research libraries)

Digital archive meeting the international standards for long-term preservation. Collects, preserves and makes available digital pre-print originals and online publications issued by public sector institutions of Estonia. Compiled since 2004. In December 2005 it contained ca 540 objects. Annual growth is ca 700 publications.

Bibliographic databases of articles on humanities and social sciences (8 subject subdatabases in total). Databases are compiled since 1993 on the basis of newspapers, journals and article collections published in Estonia. The databases are updated daily, in December 2005 they contained over 750 000 records. Annual growth is ca 100 000 records.

Bibliographic database on law and public administration. Includes data about books and articles from journals and article collections published in Estonia or abroad (related to Estonia) during 1918-1940 and since 1991. Also containes information about Bachelor's, Master's and Doctoral theses since 1993. The database is updated weekly, in December 2005 contained over 24 000 records. Annual growth is ca 2 000 records.

Database includes records of books, serials, maps, printed music, sound- and video recordings, etc published in Estonia and in Estonian regardless of information carrier. New publications are registered upon receipt by the National Library of Estonia as legal deposit. Retrospective material is included gradually. The database is updated twice a month, in December 2005 contained ca 172 000 records. Annual growth is ca 5000 records.

The database contains images of the most important newspapers published in Estonia between 1821-1944 (digitised by National Library of Estonia in cooperation with Estonian Literary Museum). From 2006 the major journals of that period will also be added. In December 2005 contained approximately 360 000 digital page images (59 titles of main and supplement publications). Annual growth is ca 200 000 page images.

Includes 25 digitised historical city maps of Tallinn, Tartu, Pärnu and Narva from 1840-1941

Includes over 780 digitised book illustrations from 40 Estonian artists from 1938 to today

Bibliographic database containing the published speeches, articles and interviews of the Presidents of the Republic of Estonia as well as overviews of their activities and writings on them. Also includes press coverages of the spouses of the Presidents and the Office of the President. Covers the period from nomination for President until the end of the term of office. The database is updated once every 3 months, in December 2005 contained over 4 500 records. Annual growth is ca 1 000 records.

Union catalogue of all Helsinki University libraries, including also the National Library of Finland. Contains records for over 3 million items.

FENNICA is the Finnish National Bibliography. It contains references to monographs, serials, maps, non-book material and computer records published or in other way produced in Finland. It also includes publications published outside Finland but with a Finnish author or related to Finland. The FENNICA database contains more than 763 880 references (1.3.2005), books and serial publications from 1488, Maps from 1967 onwards, older material partly available (for instance parish maps), audiovisual material from 1981 onwards, some hundred electronic publications and occasional online publications.

This site contains doctoral dissertations and other publications from the University of Helsinki. All of these full-text publications are freely accessible via the Internet.

Web Thesaurus. VESA combines four thesauri: general subject heading in Finnish and Swedish, musical subject headings in Finnish and Swedish.

The National Library of Finland's historical image database. The collection contains national material consisting of publications either complete or extracted: books, ephemera, maps, printed music, pictures, and manuscripts from the Middle Ages to the early years of Finnish Independence.

The National Library of Finland digitizes all newspapers published in Finland between 1771 and 1890. The Newspaper Library contains 165 titles and approximately 900 000 pages.

Bibliographic descriptions of the holdings of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (11 million records) and the authority files (4 million records)

Gallica is the digital library of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BnF), open to the general public around the world since 1997. It serves as a digital encyclopedia and consists of printed materials (books, journals, newspapers, printed music, and other documents), graphic materials (engravings, maps, photographs, and others), and sound recordings. Gallica makes it possible to find sources that are rare, unusual, out-of-print, or difficult, if not impossible, to access. These materials are royalty-free and available free of charge when used strictly for private purposes. Today, this digital library includes more than 70,000 volumes of digitized texts, 80,000 still images, and 30 hours of sound recordings.

Mandragore is an online database which purpose is to inventory and to describe the decoration of the manuscripts held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (French national Library). In January 2007, about 50.000 records out of 130.000 give access to a digitized image.

The Banque d'images (Picture collection) is an online database created by the Reprographic Department of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (French national Library). It inventories more than 100.000 digitalized still images from documents and objects hold in the collections of the Library. You can make an order online to get digital printings or files in multiple formats or resolutions.

Catalogue of the holdings of the German National Library since 1913. It comprises of publications like printed books, online publications, digital and digitized publications, newspapers, journals, maps, theses and dissertations of all subjects. German-language publications issued abroad are recorded until publication year 1996. Translations of German publications and foreign-language publications about Germany are recorded since 1941. Single chapters or articles of books or journals are not recorded.

Catalogue of holdings of the German Music Archive in Berlin since 1984 : printed music and recorded music

Thirty digitised periodicals and newspapers of the German exile archive from 1933-1945 which represent a broad range of the German exile press

Catalogue of more than 1.000 incunables and incunable fragments of the German Museum for the History of Book and Writing and its collections: Klemm-Sammlung, Becher-Einband-Sammlung, Inkunabeln der Bibliothek des Börsenvereins der Deutschen Buchhändler zu Leipzig

Circular letters of the bookselling business are short, printed messages to the bookselling business, which inform about changes in the bookselling companies. They represent a basis source for the history of the publishing and bookselling business. The German Museum for the History of Book and Writing holds about 25,000 circular letters of the bookselling business within 65,000 items. These items belong to the library of the Börsenverein der Deutschen Buchhändler zu Leipzig and represent an unique collection for the time period between 1737 and the middle of the 20th century. The database contains descriptions of the circular letters of the bookselling business and delivers information about the persons and companies named there.

The inventory of archival sources about the history of the German book trade in the 19th and 20th century provides access to archival material and bibliographic data which supports research in the fields of literature history, cultural history as well as economic and law history. More marginal areas like lending libraries, reader circles, censorship, press and media are also included.

Internet access to digitised legal sources of the era of the Allied Control Council for the territory of the later Federal Republic of Germany (1945-1949)

The Main Catalogue of the National Library of Greece includes 330000 bibliographic records and is updated daily. It includes metadata for books, maps and audiovisual material. Metadata for periodicals, serials, manuscripts and digitized material are not included

The collection contains 220006 digitized pages from 6 Greek newspapers from the period 1893-1983 (among them the Tachidromos of Egypt). Several searches can be performed (by keyword, article title, date, etc.)

This collection contains the digitized yearbooks of the Philosophical Schools of the Universities of Athens and Thessaloniki for the years 1925-1997. Search can be performed by article title (keyword within the title of the article) or by article author. Alphabetic catalogs of authors and articles are also provided for search

Union database of bibliographic records created by the National Széchényi Library of Hungary, the Library and Information Science Library and the Hungarian National Museum Library. The NSZL holds 1.3 million documents published in Hungary and foreign publications bearing a relation to Hungary. The database contains: 810 000 books and serials published in Hungary since 1952 or abroad since 1945; 170 000 Hungarian and foreign periodicals held in Hungarian libraries since 1665; 45 000 maps, 800 of them digitised; 2600 videos; 2100 sound recordings; 8000 printed music; 3500 electronic documents; 10 000 records from the holdings of the Library and Information Science Library; 10 000 items from Hungarian National Museum Library on archeology and museology. 500 records of Radio Free Europe programmes broadcasted during the Hungarian Revolution on 22-24 October 1956 are included, too. The name authority file containing 25 000 records is also searchable. New records are added countinously.

Bibliographic descriptions of 35 codices from the 15th century that were part of the Bibliotheca Corviniana. The Bibliotheca Corviniana was the library of King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary in the second half of the 15th century. It was the second largest collection of books in Europe in the Renaissance period, after that of the Vatican. It represented the literary production and reflected the state of knowledge and arts of the Renaissance. The collection covers the subjects of philosophy, theology, history, law, literature, geography, natural sciences, medicine, architecture, etc. Each record is linked to the digitised image form of the described corvina.

The collection contains 45 000 bibliographic descriptions of printed and hand-drawn maps as well as atlases and globes from the 16th-21th centuries which mostly represent Hungary and its neighbouring countries. Records of maps depicting Hungary and Transylvania from the 16th-18th century are linked to their digitised form.

The system is the virtual union catalogue of 15 libraries, including the national library, large university libraries, major research and special libraries and the largest public library of the country, the Metropolitan Szabó Ervin Library. About 70% of the foreign documents (titles) in Hungary and practically 100% of the Hungarian imprints are available in the holdings of these libraries since 1850. The collection contains 2.5 million bibliographic descriptions of books and periodicals. In a recent decision the time coverage has been extended to all document types since 1450.

The Hungarian Electronic Library is a collection of digitised works relating Hungary or the Central European region, in the fields of culture, education and academic research. The collection consists of text-based resources, but does not exclude other formats such as maps, sheet music etc. The Hungarian Electronic Library also collects periodicals and journals, and links to other relevant resources, services and documents concerning libraries. The collection contains about 5500 digital objects.

Union database of Hungarian OAI repositories with the most varied contents. It contains descriptions of digitised documents of different types numbering about 100 000 items: full texts, videos, audio materials, pictures, electronic documents. Most of the records are linked to the digital object. The scope of NDDA includes literary works, periodicals, filmographies, programs, films, music recordings, art pieces, research reports, statistics, theses, essays, abstracts, state administrative documents, etc. Harvested from public collections, libraries, television and radio archives, film, audio and photographic libraries, scientific and scholarly databases, press, public educational databases, state administrative archives, etc. It covers the period from 15th-21st century

GEGNIR includes the Icelandic National Bibliography and is a union catalog for most of the libraries in Iceland. This includes the National and University Library, the Reykjavik City Library, other public libraries, elementary school libraries, secondary school libraries, university libraries and research libraries. It contains about 1 million bibliographic records for monograms, journals, newspapers, sound recordings and manuscripts.

The collection contains digitized newspapers and journals from Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland (1773-2001). Users can search the database by title and country and eventually a full text search will be provided. They can also browse through the material and print se