Welcome to The European Library Newsletter!

+ Editorial

+ Agenda

+ In Focus; Elena Zimina & the Russian State Library (RSL)

+ News

- EDLproject and more!

- New chair for The European Library Management Board

- Final Preparations for version 2.0 Of The European Library Metadata Registry

- The European Library static content “Face Lift”

- A resolution service For European National Libraries?

- Brand and The European Library: Management Board Recommendations

- Progress on short term Interoperability Recommendations for The European digital library

+ Stats and Facts

+ Partners update

+ About the Newsletters

+ Explanatory note

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EDITORIAL

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The EU 50^th anniversary of Rome treaty coincides with the 2^nd anniversary of The European Library portal; the website was launched in March 2005 with initially 122 collections. It now provides access to 250 collections. The amount of referenced material increases regularly. In the last weeks, Denmark added 9 new "searchable" digital collections, Austria added its first “searchable” collection; "Image platform of the Austrian National Library" and Poland added the "National Digital Library Polona" collection which has 9 sub-collections.

In this Newsletter, Elena Zimina, Deputy Director of International Communications Department of the Russian State Library gives an overview of the RSL cooperative level with The European Library, other national libraries and other cultural institutions.

This April issue also features an overview of the latest Management Board meeting held in The Hague, the final preparations for version 2.0 of The European Library Metadata Registry and the progress on short term interoperability recommendations for the European digital library.

The European Library invites all National Libraries and members of CENL to communicate with our readers through this Newsletter or join the “In Focus” list of participants. To do so, send your email to:

Info@TheEuropeanLibrary.org

Note that you can find a definition of all terms with asterisks at the bottom of this Newsletter in our "Explanatory note".

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AGENDA

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Conferences and meetings The European Library is participating in during 2007:

+ Open Educational Practices and Resources for Lifelong Learning – Salzburg- April 16/17, 2007

+ FESABID 2007 - Sandiago de Compostella (Saint James of Compostela) – May 09/11, 2007

+ INFORUM 2007 - Prague – May 23/24, 2007

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IN FOCUS: ELENA ZIMINA - THE RUSSIAN STATE LIBRARY (RSL)

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How is the partnership between the Russian State Library (RSL) and The European Library considered in your organisation?

Collaborating with The European Library is of course prestigious for the RSL; we regard this partnership as profitable and strategically important. We already promote The European Library through our representative status as Russian State Library; the linking programme for example was a good opportunity for us to promote The European Library on national ground. However, the step towards Full Partnership is unfortunately a financial matter at this point; we hope to be able to join as soon as the situation is economically feasible.

To what extent does the RSL collaborate with other national libraries?

The RSL has an extensive collaboration programme with other national libraries throughout the territory, the ex Soviet Union countries and with Western Europe. The level of collaboration is multiple and goes from expert exchange programmes to book exchange, frame agreements, virtual library projects, etc. The collaboration level with ex Soviet Union countries and the National Library of Russia (NB of Russia) located in Saint-Petersburg is of course facilitated by the common usage of Russian.

Is the RSL currently collaborating with other cultural institutions such as archives or museums?

The RSL has an agreement with the State Archive on microfilming preservation. However, the level of collaboration is generally focused on exhibition activities. For example the RSL and the German Historical Museum are currently organising the “Art and Propaganda” exhibition featured in Berlin until the end of April. Similarly, the RSL, Tretiakov Art Gallery in Moscow and Artemizia foundation in Italy are involved in the organisation of "Saint Nicholas - Figure and Image, from East to West" - Bari, Italy, Castello Svevo. Last, the exhibition “Russia & the Soviet Union: Art, literature, theatre 1905 -1940” organised in collaboration with Palacco Ducale was held in Genova - Italy from October 2006 until January 2007.

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NEWS

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+ EDLPROJECT AND MORE!

The expansion of the Full Participant members of The European Library is an ongoing process. As EDLproject national library partners are integrating their collections into The European Library, new collaboration projects are already on the horizon for 2008-2010.

The integration of EDLproject partners collections into The European Library are scheduled throughout 2007. The national libraries of Spain and Greece are in a test phase to iron out their Z39-50/SRU* compatibility issues and the Liechtenstein and Icelandic national libraries collections integration will follow in April and May 2007 respectively.

The Swiss Development Agency, on the request of the Swiss National Library, has offered to sponsor the national libraries of Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia Herzegovina, Georgia and Macedonia, Moldova and Ukraine with a 240’000€ funding project during a 2 years period (2008-2010). This sponsorship will enable these national libraries to become full members of The European Library by the end of 2008 The Swiss Development Agency are also to be thanked for the monies provided to the TEL-ME-MOR national libraries which has considerably eased their transition from project to fully paid up members.

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+ NEW CHAIR FOR THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY MANAGEMENT BOARD

Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of The British Library, elected as the new chair of The European Library Management Board*.

During the sixth meeting of The European Library Management Board, held at the National Library of the Netherlands in The Hague on 19^th March, the election for the new chair of The European Library Management Board took place. The chair became vacant following the departure of Fernanda Campos from the National Library of Portugal. Tiiu Valm, Director General of the National Library of Estonia was appointed as Vice-Chair.

Among the items on the agenda were the approval of The European Library’s audited accounts for 2006, a questionnaire about the digitisation programmes of the national libraries, recommendations on Branding for The European Library (refer to Brand And The European Library for further details) and an update to The European Library’s Product and Services Plan. The Board also discussed the possibility of hosting collection descriptions externally in a Web 2.0 semantic tagging environment and has agreed in principle on a pilot to be able to understand the challenges of such a move. The next meeting of The European Library Management Board meeting will take place in September in Helsinki as part of the CENL annual meeting.

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+ FINAL PREPARATIONS FOR VERSION 2.0 OF THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY METADATA REGISTRY

During the latest meeting of The European Library Metadata Working Group* (MWG) held at the British Library in London on 26^th and 27^th March 2007, the final preparations for the launch of 2.0 of The European Library Metadata Registry where made.

The new version of the Metadata Registry, which is scheduled for release on 15^th May 2007, will not only be a standalone website, but will also include a searchable Directory of Terms. This new feature of the registry has been developed by Guillaume Fesquet who is on placement for four months in The European Library Office from the French National Library School. The next meeting of MWG is scheduled for 16^th and 17^th July at the National Library of the Netherlands in The Hague.

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+ THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY STATIC CONTENT “FACE LIFT”

Following the 4^th Full Participants Contact Meeting recommendations in Rome in December 2006, The European Library has scheduled several updates of the Treasures/Libraries/Organisation pages. The updates involve navigation and readability improvements. Existing archives such as Gabriel, TEL project, white papers that are currently only accessible from the “For Partners” section will be made publicly available. TEL-ME-MOR website will be integrated into The European Library projects archives shortly.

The European Library applied an intermediate “face lift” to the Organisation pages. Following TEL-ME-MOR project successful conclusion in March 2007, the TEL-ME-MOR website will become part of the Cooperation archives of The European Library portal in the course of April 2007; the archive of the previous “GABRIEL” and “TEL project” will also be made publicly accessible. The May Version 1.5 release of the portal will look to further merging of the Libraries and Treasures pages under a single access point in the portal. The November portal release will introduce a dedicated partners’ exhibition page and feature exhibition/web-exhibitions across national libraries in Europe.

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+ A RESOLUTION SERVICE FOR EUROPEAN NATIONAL LIBRARIES?

On 16^th March 2007, the Persistent Identifiers' Working Group of the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL) met with representatives from The European Library’s Technical Working Group* to discuss the potential of developing a National Libraries Resolution Service for Europe.

Using National Bibliography Numbers (NBNs), the “persistent and unique identifiers assigned by the national libraries”, the National Libraries Resolution Service will enable the persistent links to be created to the digital objects in the national libraries of Europe. The resolution service will be developed using resolvers in each of the participating national libraries and a directory of the persistent web addresses or Persistent Uniform Resource Locators (PURLs) of the resolvers. This directory will be maintained by The European Library Office. A prototype service is expected to be available in autumn 2007 following approval by CENL at their annual meeting in September.

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+ BRAND AND THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY: MANAGEMENT BOARD RECOMMENDATIONS

As The European Library attracts more projects and includes more members it becomes more important to promote the brand name. This means that we have to insist on the English version of the name, not that we think it is a great name but if we don’t the traffic generated in the partner countries becomes wasted if it is not directed to www.TheEuropeanLibrary.org. Equally to capitalise fully on the dissemination opportunities that projects give us we need to be more clever how they fit with the mother brand.

The Management Board Meeting held on the 19^th of March 2007 in The Hague acknowledged The European Library branding concerns and proposed several recommendations to improve it, including the following:

* Make sure that no future project name should carry The European Library or its acronym,

* All communication whether from The European Library Office or from the partner libraries should adopt the name of The European Library as the sole brand name, therefore partners’ translations of “The European Library” should not be used

* The “European digital library” initiative must be closely monitored so that it is not confused with The European Library, nor should it be understood as a project name.

* Clearly associate satellite projects of The European Library under The European Library portal umbrella (TELplus as well as EDLnet)

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+ PROGRESS ON SHORT TERM INTEROPERABILITY RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE EUROPEAN DIGITAL LIBRARY

On 9^th March 2007, the second meeting of the European Digital Library Interoperability Experts Group took place at The European Commission in Luxembourg. By the end of the meeting twelve recommendation areas for interoperability and multilingualism had been agreed.

The initial task of Interoperability Export Group is to prioritise which interoperability issues can produce tangible and operational results by 2008. During the meeting, twelve recommendation areas had been identified including object modeling, metadata standards, multilingual search and retrieval, basic semantic interoperability and authentication data exchange. Due to the complexity of the area, a sub-group for Metadata and Packaging standards has been set up, led by Sally Chambers from The European Library Office. These metadata recommendations, plus the other eleven recommendation areas, will be finalised at the next meeting of the group on 4^th May 2007.

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STATS AND FACTS

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+ FIGURES

- The European Library website recorded a 30% increase of new visitors in March compared to February.

- March top 3 visitors’ origin: France, Poland and US of A.

+ TOWARDS SERVICE IMPROVEMENT: ADVISORY BOARD AND MINI SEARCHBOX

The European Library is setting up an Advisory Board to help the Office improve The European Library portal readability and understanding. The Advisory Board members are all candidates recommended by national libraries throughout Europe. The Advisory Board members’ selection is based on candidate’s background and position in the literary/library environment.

The European Library is also promoting the “Mini Searchbox”, which is a standalone search box that gives access to all the functionalities of The European Library. The “Mini Searchbox” can be set up on any website upon request; it is free and user friendly. Installation can be done in 3 basic steps. Find out more by clicking here:

http://libraries.theeuropeanlibrary.org/services/services_en.html#mini

The national libraries of Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary have already adopted this ingenious tool.

Fleur Stigter from The European Library Office is developing Key Performance Indicators for The European Library. These are intended to increase our understanding of the market and its requirements.

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PARTNERS UPDATE

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THE GERMAN NATIONAL LIBRARY (DNB) EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS

The German National Library (DNB) currently features the following exhibitions and events across Germany:

+ HANS TICHA - BOOK & ARTWORK - 1970 - 2006: 30 years of Hans Ticha's artistic activities. The exhibition is held in Leipzig from March to September 2007. Click here for more details (Page in German).

+ During the German presidency of the EU, the DNB organises a conference entitled "The Challenge: Long Term Preservation - Strategies and Practises of European Partnerships". The conference will be held in Frankfurt am Main, 20^th-21^st of April 2007. Click here for more details (Document in English and PDF format)

+ The permanent exhibition of the German Book and Writing Museum in Leipzig features "Mercury and the Books - 500 years Leipzig as book town". Click here for address, opening hours, etc. (Page in English)

Find out more by clicking on the DNB 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:

Info@TheEuropeanLibrary.org

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ABOUT THE NEWSLETTERS

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The editorial content of the above Newsletter was gathered with the kind cooperation of Elena Zimina from the Russian State Library (RSL), Britta Woldering from the German National Library (DNB), Sally Chambers, Fleur Stigter, Jill Cousins and Aubéry Escande from The European Library Office.

We send this newsletter following your registration on the mailing list. Please feel free to circulate this newsletter to anyone you think may be interested.

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://libraries.theeuropeanlibrary.org/newsletter/newsletter_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

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EXPLANATORY NOTE

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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.

The European Library Management Board: This group (Full Participants only) is responsible for policy direction, the setting of subscription levels and high level monitoring.

The European Library Metadata Working Group is responsible for the development and the maintenance of The European Library Metadata Registry, which is a database containing a list of metadata terms and their characteristics.

Z39-50/SRU is a standard communication protocol for the search and retrieval of bibliographic data on-line. Z39.50 is an old protocol developed before the Web existed. Its complexity urged the development of a new protocol based on current web standards called SRU (Search & Retrieve via URL's). SRU will gradually replace Z39.50. The European Library protocol for searching purposes is the SRU. To allow access to Z39.50 databases that are the most common ones in the library collection environment, a SRU to Z39.50 gateway has been developed.