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Welcome to The European Library Newsletter!
+ Agenda + In Focus: Adam Horváth – National Széchényi Library (Hungary) + In Depth: The European Library log
file analysis + News - The Romani Digital
Collection of The European Library + In Brief + Partner’s
update: The National Library of Finland ======== ======== We are pleased to
announce that the amount of subscribers to The European Library Newsletter has
significantly increased; we have registered 1700 subscriptions and almost
doubled the amount of registration under a year! We would very much like to
thank you for joining us. Each newsletter is designed to give our readers valuable and usable information about The
European Library and its network; in this issue, Adam Horváth, Director of Informatics of
the National Széchényi Library, tells us about the OSZK and its involvement in
TELplus project*. We also feature The
European library log file analysis, the Romani digital collection, EDLproject
review meeting and EDLnet kick-off meeting in The European
Library Office sees some changes with the addition of new staff and promotion
of others. In the last 2 months 7 new
people have joined to help us continue to produce The European Library and
manage its various projects plus create the European Digital Library prototype
under EDLnet. As well as 2 new General
Managers for The European Library and EDLnet, in Note that you can find a definition of all terms with asterisks at the bottom of this Newsletter in our "Explanatory note". ====== ====== CONFERENCES AND
MEETINGS THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY IS PARTICIPATING IN DURING 2007: + ECDL in + Memory
in Digits in + TELplus kick-off meeting in + World
Digital Library Demo in Paris ( + LIBER-EBLIDA
Workshop on Digitization in + The European Information Space:
Infrastructures, Services and Applications Workshop in + CITRA, International Conference of the
Round Table on Archives, + EVA/MINERVA Jerusalem
Conference: The Mission of National Libraries in the Hi-Tech Convergent
Environment, + Online
Information 2007 Conference in + IACDL – 10th
International Conference on Asian Digital Libraries - in ==================================================== IN FOCUS: ADAM HORVÁTH – NATIONAL SZÉCHÉNYI LIBRARY ( ==================================================== The National Széchényi Library (OSZK) joined The European Library
as Full Participant* under the TEL-ME-MOR project* in July 2006. Adam Horváth, Director of Informatics of the OSZK
and their representative in the Technical Working Group in The
European Library, describes his activities within his organisation and the OSZK
participation to TELplus. Adam graduated from the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest M.A. in Hungarian
language and literature and library science. He completed a postgraduate course
at the International Computer Education and Information Centre as a programmer.
Adam became Director of Informatics of the National Széchényi Library in 2001;
his solid knowledge of remote data access protocols created an early
partnership with The European Library through the TEL-ME-MOR project. The European Library: "How many people work for the
OSZK?" Adam: "Although the
library had to cut back on staff in 2007, we still employ about 500 people. In
my department I lead 22 people; 5 of them, mainly programmers left the library
environment last spring in order to get higher salaries in the private sector
and another 2 will leave this autumn. I am not allowed to replace them. This is
one of the biggest challenges in my field of work: the library can't compete
with the salaries in the commercial environment. The European Library: "How many people work in
collaboration with The European Library since the OSZK joined as
Full-Participant in 2006?" A varying number of people
work for The European Library. Work package leaders are assigned to these tasks
on a permanent base (but not exclusively). Others are recruited depending on
the actual work involved. People assigned to The European Library either
permanently or occasionally often do not work for the Information and Computer
Technology Department, but rather for the Document Supply Service, the
Manuscript Collection, and Reference and Readers' Services." The European Library: "The OSZK is involved in
TELplus / Work Package 4; "the main objective of Work Package 4 is to create a
modular web services infrastructure that enables users to integrate services
with the European Library portal." Could
you tell us more about it? What are "services"? What are the benefits for end
users? What improvement would that imply for The European Library?" Adam: "A service can be anything on the Internet: a translation service,
an online bookstore, a library catalogue, a digital library, a thesaurus and so
on All of which might be related to The
European Library portal through bibliographic data. For example the portal may
offer a link to a translation service translating an abstract from the search
results or may offer a link to an ordering service when the results contain an
ISBN field. The main benefit for the end user is that many Internet resources
are linked to the catalogue by just one click. Work Package 4 of TELplus aims
to develop the technical background to this integration service; this will
include, among other things, the possible standardization of service
descriptions. A good service description format will allow end users to create
their own personalised digital library." The European Library: "Does the OSZK collaborate with other National Libraries and on what
terms?" Adam: "The OSZK has collaboration programmes with other national
libraries. There are permanent and occasional programmes. The permanent ones
include interlibrary loans with several national libraries, book exchange with
almost every national library and expert exchange programmes with some of them
(the latest exchange programme was launched with the Slovak National Library). The
OSZK organizes conferences, exhibitions and publishes books together with other
national libraries. The main participants are the Austrian, Dutch, Finnish,
French, German, Italian and Russian national libraries. Occasional programmes
include working together under the umbrella of different EU funded projects. In
the field of informatics we have a good level of cooperation with the national
libraries of the Nordic Countries, the National Library of the ======= ======= + THE EUROPEAN
LIBRARY LOG FILE ANALYSIS The University of Padua and Max Planck Institute for Informatics have been
analysing The European Library log files throughout the year 2007. EDLProject Work
Package 1, Task 3 also involved Max Plank Institute for Informatics; this organisation
dedicated its research to analysing the European Library Action Logs - server
log files - from December 2006 to May 2007, in combination with the data from
the registered users’ database. Max Plank Institute for Informatics
particularly concentrated its research on users’ queries. Julia Luxemburger, a member of the
institute's Department for Databases and Information Systems headed by Gerhard
Weikum - Research Director -, used statistical methods to derive a
user-interaction model from the logs. "This model sheds light into
the users' behaviour when refining queries and clicking on results from
different collections" says
Gerhard Weikum. "The predictive power of such a model could eventually lead
to a smarter and automated way of selecting the best-suited collections on
behalf of the user. Currently, the logs are not yet sufficiently large to generate
statistically significant conclusions and make reasonably accurate predictions.
As The European Library's user base continues to grow and more logging data
becomes available, we expect to gain better predictions of user interactions
and therefore give better support for satisfying the users' information
needs." + THE ROMANI DIGITAL COLLECTION OF
THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY The European Library and the National
Library of Serbia are
collaborating in an ambitious project that aims at creating a pan-European bibliography
of Romani language publications and a Romani Virtual Collection of digitised
resources across The project was accepted by
The European Library board meeting in The project will be achieved
in 4 steps. In the current and initial phase, available records are being
collected and harvested from the national libraries across The following countries have
contributed by providing bibliographic records or keywords for harvesting
purposes: ============= An EDLProject review meeting took place on the 11th of September in the
Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National library of the Two reviewers
chosen by the Commission have assessed the EDLProject progress under EC Project
Officer, Mr. Federico Milani,. The Agenda featured
a presentation from Britta Woldering of the German
National Library covering work completed to date and a general overview. The
conclusions of the reviewers were very positive and EDLproject activities can
further proceed. EDLproject
is a Targeted Project funded by the European Commission under the eContentplus
Programme and coordinated by the German
National Library. ============= A TELplus kick-off meeting date has been provisionally set
for the 15th and 16th of October (subject to confirmation and a
contract signature from the European Commission.) TELplus is a 30
month targeted project. It
aims to
OCR more than 20 million pages of content in many languages, to make library
data OAI compliant and therefore harvestable, to address usability issues
through improved presentation of search results and to make improvements in
semantic interoperability including multilingual search and retrieval.
Additionally, the national libraries of In TELplus the
National Library of Estonia will be financial coordinator and Eremo srl, scientific coordinator. Toomas Schvak,
Project
Manager of the Research and Development Centre of the National
Library of Estonia, explains how both partners will collaborate day by day: "The National Library of ============= A first meeting of the major European associations for
Museums, Libraries, Archives and Audio-visual Archives (MLAA) took place on the
12/13/14 of September 2007 at the National Library of the Netherlands in The
Hague; 70 senior managers and technical experts from the MLAA domains came
together to plan the European Digital Library. Everyone in The
European Library Office worked their butts off to make this meeting a
success. Some serious preparation took
place over the summer, when really we should all have been sunning ourselves in
one of the countries that actually had a summer. As well as recruiting individuals to create
an EDL Office, work took place to invite partners into the Thematic Partner
Network Group which is the core of EDLnet. To create an agenda that made use of
the newly formed work groups covering the areas of Human and Political
Interoperability, Technical and Semantic and Users for Usability, but also
ensured that each work package and work group knew what the others were doing was
also part of the challenge. The meeting
seems to have achieved its goals of getting the various cultural heritage
organisations and institutions involved in the project and talking to each
other. The Kick Off
started with The project – the
European Digital Library network (EDLnet) – runs for two years, and will
develop a prototype that demonstrates proof of concept, bringing together
content from some of Europe’s major cultural organisations. Information on the
project can be found on www.EDLnet.eu and within the next month or so a
newsletter will be launched to inform people about its activities. ====== ====== + The National
Bibliographic Data Bank of the Lithuanian National Library is now available for search through The
European Library portal at: http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/portal/?coll=collections:a0301&q=vilnius 171 collections are now searchable through the SEARCH button
on The European Library HOME page! + The Russian State Library (RSL) joined
The European Library as Full Participant* in July 2007. Click here for more
info. + EDLproject.eu provides information and material
related to progresses and results of the project outcomes. A
description of future web-based marketing actions is now available at http://www.edlproject.eu/outcomes.php.
This also includes a summary of developments related to Key Performance
Indicators. + The European
Library is moving towards Web 2.0 and its community-based networks. You can now join The European Library discussions and
forums on http://www.facebook.com/
and http://wordpress.com/.
============== ============== THE NATIONAL
LIBRARY OF The National Library of Finland currently features the following
exhibitions and events: + "From
Agricola to Donald Duck" celebrating the 300th anniversary
of Legal Deposit Act in + "Jean Sibelius work" features
the Collected Works of Jean Sibelius. The project aims at publishing Sibelius
entire oeuvre based on study of all remaining sources. The exhibition is held
in the national Library of Finland until the October 29th, 2007. A
lecture is further scheduled on October 24th and a concert on
October 28th. + "J. V. Snellman - European Thinker"
is an itinerant exhibition organised in order to celebrate 200th Anniversary of
J. V. Snellman's birth. Find out more by clicking on the NFL events/exhibitions page. The European
Library invites all National Libraries to tell others about their national
library initiatives or exhibition programmes through our Newsletter. To do so,
send your email to: ====================== ====================== With great pleasure, we introduce our new members of The European Library
Office: * Ms. Louise Edwards, our new General Project Manager for The
European Library. Louise previously worked as Research and Innovation Manager at
the * Mr. * Besides new staff specifically for The European Library EDLnet sees the
recruitment into the Office of 2 other individuals well known to the library
world +
JOBS AT THE EUROPEAN DIGITAL LIBRARY To make the dream
a reality we need your help! Would you like to uncover the rich cultural
heritage of =================== The editorial
content of the above Newsletter was gathered with the kind cooperation of Adam
Horváth from the National Széchényi
Library, Maristella Agosti from the from the University of Padua, Gerhard Weikum from Max
Plank Institute for Informatics, If you wish to subscribe or unsubscribe please send an email to Info@TheEuropeanLibrary.org The newsletter attached to this message is also published in PDF & HTML formats on our website at: http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/portal/organisation/newsletter/newsletterarchive_en.html If you have any
comments or suggestions about the way we can further improve the newsletter or
The European Library portal please let us know! Use our feedback form or send your email to: Info@TheEuropeanLibrary.org The European Library Technical Working Group represents
The European Library members in issues concerning metadata and protocols. This
group (Full Participants only) makes sure that technical developments are in
line with strategy, and help to create and test the portal and website. TEL-ME-MOR was a project funded by the European Commission under the Sixth Framework Programme of the Information Society Technologies (IST) Programme. The TEL-ME-MOR project ran for 2 years from 1 February 2005 with the objectives of supporting the 10 national libraries from the New Member States in becoming Full Participants of The European Library. The participating partners of The European Library are either Basic participants or Full participants |