Welcome to The European Library
Newsletter!
+ Agenda
+ In Focus: Patrick Peiffer - National Library Of Luxembourg (BnL)
+ News
-
Joint Knowledge Sharing Workshop (KSW) Recommendations
-
Implementing FRBR* In The European Library: An EDLproject
KSW Workshop
-
TEL-ME-MOR Project - A Successful Integration
-
Metadata Working Group (MWG) Meeting
-
Unicode And Multilinguality Of The European
Library Portal
-
Translations Of The Help-Texts
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The European
Library Newsletter team thanks new subscribers for joining us; readers have
registered from all countries in
In this
February issue, Patrick Peiffer, Project Manager of
The National Library of Luxembourg (BnL) gives an
overview of the collections the BnL will integrate in
The European Library dynamic services in 2007 and the current collaboration
state of the BnL with archives and museums. We also cover the EDL project partners and
European Library Technical Working Group* Joint Knowledge Sharing Workshop held
in the National Library of the Netherlands in January 2007, the successful
conclusion of the TEL-ME-MOR project and the Interoperability Meeting
discussions in Luxembourg.
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:
aubery.escande@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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Conferences
and meetings in 2007:
+ Delos Conference on Digital Libraries, Tirrenia,
+ 4th Information Policy Forum : February 18th, 2007,
+ ACRL 2007,
Baltimore, March 29 – April 1, 2007, ACRL 13th National Conference
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IN FOCUS:
PATRICK PEIFFER - NATIONAL LIBRARY OF
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The national language of
The National Library of
Luxembourg (BnL) is one of the 9
national libraries that will integrate The European Library as Full Participant
under EDL project. We interviewed Patrick Peiffer, BnL Project Manager about the Luxembourgian multilingualism
expertise, the BnL specific efforts in order to meet
The European Library requirements as Full Participant and its collaborative
level with other cultural institutions.
Patrick Peiffer
joined the National Library of Luxembourg in 2002 following a Masters in Library
& Information Science and a BA in Cultural and Media Studies. He is
responsible for digitisation services and 3rd party licensing of content for the national portal.
We obviously deal with
multilingualism daily; conversations among colleagues are in Luxembourgish even
if the majority of meetings are held in French or English. The BnL website is in French only but the OPAC* catalogue
interface and national portal are in 3 languages; French, German and
English. Historically, the object catalogue has always been in French,
therefore subject queries can only be performed in French. About 2/3rd of BnL’s collections are non-Luxembourg material, most of
which is in French, German, English and other European languages. The
cataloguing data (metadata) is in the original language for some fields (title)
and others are in French like pagination, subject headings, etc.
The BnL
collections implementation in The European Library portal is scheduled for
October, 2007. What are the technical or legal requirements the BnL needs to implement to meet the deadline?
There are no major technical
issues at this point. However, we do need to clarify copyrighting matters in
relation with catalogue items. Overall, we are optimistic. We are submitting 3
specific catalogues to The European Library, a Union catalogue starting in 1985
(LU1), a digitised catalogue of non-Luxembourg acquisitions prior to 1985 (LU2)
and a Digitised collection (periodicals and reference works – LU3).
Is the BnL
currently collaborating with other cultural institutions like archives or
museums?
The BnL
is close to such institutions due to the country’s size obviously. We are
currently installing “Digitool” to present digitised
archives in a suitable environment for long term preservation. It will provide
a constructive approach by offering a set of standards on a national level by
the end of 2007. These standards are of course relevant to other institutions
involved in digitisation. The BnL is also looking
forward to participating in EDL net proposal in order to tighten our
collaboration and move forward to actual content integration. (Editors note:
EDL net is a thematic network proposal of cultural heritage stakeholders aiming
to get agreement on the European
digital library under eContentplus
programme)
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JOINT
KNOWLEDGE SHARING WORKSHOP (KSW) RECOMMENDATIONS
EDL
project partners and The European Library Technical Working
Group* were invited to meet during the Joint Knowledge Sharing Workshop (KSW)
held in the National Library of the
The aim of the KSW was to
explain the Implementation Plan for EDL project partners, cover specific
technical issues, investigate OAI* compliance of EDL project partners'
collections, elaborate the concept of web services in The European Library
infrastructure and investigate FRBR* implementation solutions. The results of
the questionnaire distributed at the beginning of the Joint meeting showed the
benefits of sharing workshops among partners. It was a success in terms of
networking, communication with experienced Full Participants of The European
Library and a concrete opportunity to clarify technical issues related to
collection implementation. The KSW gave recommendations to induce national
libraries to implement OAI-PMH for all their digital collections. This would
clearly increase the multilingual search and retrieval capacities, allow simple
searches (no pre-selection) and sort results by relevance, popularity, or page
ranking. Other recommendations from the workshops will be available on the
Management Section of The European Library shortly.
IMPLEMENTING FRBR* IN THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY: AN
EDLPROJECT KSW WORKSHOP
Following
a presentation by Maja Žumer
from the National Library of
The
primary motivations for implementing FRBR in The European Library are: to
improve the user experience; to prepare for participation in the semantic web
and to facilitate interoperability of cultural heritage metadata.
The
actions and recommendations arising for the workshop included: conducting a
survey with The European Library partners to find out what FRBR activities they
are involved in; creating a FRBR resources page in The European Library
Management section with links to information about FRBR documentation and
related activities; using FRBR techniques to de-duplication The European
Library’s central index and partner libraries analysing their metadata to see
which fields can to support FRBRisation.
TEL-ME-MOR PROJECT - A SUCCESSFUL INTEGRATION
The TEL-ME-MOR project
initiated in February 2005 ended on January, 31st 2007. Its main objectives
were to support the 10 national libraries from the EU
New Member States, partners in the project to become full
members of The European Library.
All undertaken tasks were
completed successfully. The final review of the TEL-ME-MOR project took place
at the Swiss National Library in
Equally
METADATA WORKING GROUP (MWG) MEETING
The
regular meeting of The European Library Metadata Working Group (MWG) took place
at the National
Library of Germany in
The
main item of discussion was the development of the new version of the Metadata
Registry, which will be published as a stand-alone website, later this
year.
As
part of the new development and maintenance procedure for the new Metadata
Registry, the MWG recommended that separate working groups be set-up for each
Application Profile (currently Objects and Collection Descriptions). The MWG will continue to be responsible for
the development and maintenance of the Metadata Registry itself. With the need to separate out the “service”
information from the collection description, for compliance with the NISO MetaSearch Initiative standard, it was also proposed that a
new Application Profile for Service Descriptions should be developed.
Following
a proposal from the Contacts Working Group to set up a working group to improve
the quality of The European Library Collection Descriptions, it was agreed that
various improvements could be made at the Application Profile level, including
adding elements to distinguish between physical, digital and mixed collections;
improved subject analysis and use of DDC (Dewey Decimal Classification) for
specialist collections, plus the addition of textual descriptions of collection
development policies for the larger general collections (e.g. National Library
catalogues).
Sally
Chambers reported on the work that is being undertaken as part of EDLproject (WP1, task 4) on investigating whether The
European Library Application Profiles can be used for providing access to
non-library content, e.g. from museums and archives.
The
next MWG is scheduled for 26th and 27th March at the British Library in
THE EUROPEAN DIGITAL LIBRARY, INTEROPERABILITY EXPERTS
GROUP MEETING, THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION,
Sally
Chambers from The European Library Office attended the first meeting of the
Interoperability Expert Group which took place at The European Commission in
Luxembourg, 23rd January 2007.
This
meeting was attended by technical and metadata experts from National Libraries
(including Theo van Veen from the National Library of the
Organised
by The European Commission, the aim of the meeting was to discuss issues of
interoperability and multilingualism in the context of the "European
Digital Library". The task of the
group is to prioritise which implementation issues can produce tangible and
operational results by 2008 which can then feed into the establishment of a
technical roadmap for developing a longer-term framework. A second meeting is planned for 9th March
2007, with a third meeting, which is likely to take the form of a workshop, is
intended to take place before summer 2007.
UNICODE
AND MULTILINGUALITY OF THE EUROPEAN LIBRARY PORTAL
EDL project WP2 led by The National and University
Library of Slovenia (NUK), with the assistance of the Swiss
National Library is dedicated to extending the multilingual
capacities of the network. Interface translations and multilingual search are
assets to improving "European" end-users access to the portal
content.
After having
successfully led the TEL-ME-MOR WP3 dedicated to multilingualism, the NUK is
currently investigating ways to improve the multilingual capabilities of The
European Library by classifying character sets and creating Unicode compliance
policies of project partners. Unicode is an industry standard designed to allow
text and symbols from all of the writing systems worldwide to be consistently
represented and manipulated by computers. The most widely-used variant is
UTF-8, which can provide up to 63.488 characters in a single font as opposed to
the traditional ASCII which has only room for 128 characters. Next reports
regarding Unicode and multilinguality of The European
Library portal will be made public.
TRANSLATIONS OF THE HELP-TEXTS
The release of version 1.4 of The European Library in
December 2006 marked the completion of the first phase of the project to
translate The European Library help-texts into all the languages of the
full-participant libraries.
For phase one the help texts were made available in ten
languages (Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian,
Portuguese, Serbian and Slovenian) in addition to English. To access the translated help texts, select
the language of your choice in www.TheEuropeanLibrary.org and click on: [help?] or [pomoć?] or [nápověda?]
or [abi?] or [opastus?]
or [aide?] or [Hilfe?] or [súgó?] or [ajuda?] or
[Pomoć?] or [Pomoč].
The second phase of languages to be made available will go
live in the next release of the portal (v1.5) which is scheduled for May
2007. Already, for this phase,
translations in Greek and Latvian have been received. With each release, the help texts are also
updated for any new functionality in the portal.
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FIGURES:
+ After a slow
December traffic, the visitors’ rate is climbing again
+ In January
most visitors came from
+ Despite a
Google algorithm change, The European Library has remained at Google Page Rank
8 out of 10
As part of the
TEL-ME-MOR project each of the partners performed a number of actions to
promote The European Library within their own country. TEL-ME-MOR national
library partners and The European Library Office worked closely together over
the last months. Besides giving assistance on how to plan and implement
specific marketing actions, the Office also introduced new marketing tactics.
Following the end of the TEL-ME-MOR project an assessment was made regarding
the impact of local marketing efforts on The European Library global marketing
results. After having performed various large-scale marketing actions,
ELCTRONIC
BROCHURE
Would you like
to have a short and simple overview of The European Library? Since the end of
January you can download an electronic brochure in PDF format at the following
address:
http://libraries.theeuropeanlibrary.org/press/europeanlibrarybrochure.pdf
SEARCH BOX
From next week
on, you will be able to add a unique and free service to your site: a mini TheEuropeanLibrary search box! Let your users run a quick
check or guide them to reliable material (books but also photos, maps, images,
music, films, etc.). They can enter their own search terms in the box and get
immediate results from all national libraries in
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THE NATIONAL
LIBRARY OF THE
The National Library of
the Netherlands (KB)
currently runs six programmes for mass digitisation, availability and
web access.
+ The Memory of the Netherlands:
Coordination of the national digitisation programme for important sources of
the
+ Metamorfoze:
National programme for the preservation of library material
+ Proceedings of the Senate (pilot site): the KB and the Senate of the
+ Digital
Databank for Newspapers: the development and exploitation of a digital
databank for newspapers as a large text corpus (8 million pages) for both scientific
research and larger audiences. The first results are expected to be available
online in 2008.
+ ANP:
Digitisation of the typo-scripts of the ANP (Dutch national agency) radio
news-bulletins that were broadcasted between 1937 and 1989.
+ Digitisation
of Special Collections: 5.000 titles from the 1781-1800 STCN (Short Title
Catalogue of the
Find out
more by clicking on the KB website.
The European
Library invites all National Libraries to disseminate their national programmes
details through our Newsletter. To do so, send your email to:
aubery.escande@theeuropeanlibrary.org
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If you wish to
subscribe or unsubscribe please send an email to sally.chambers@kb.nl
The newsletter
attached to this message is also published in PDF format on our website at:
http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/newsletter
Archives to our
previous newsletters are available at:
http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/newsletter
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: fleur.stigter@theeuropeanlibrary.org or
aubery.escande@theeuropeanlibrary.org
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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.
OPACs: On-line Public Access Catalogues are on-line library
bibliographies collection available to the public.
OAI: Open Archive Initiative/PMH: Protocol
for Metadata Harvesting. Initiative to develop and
promote interoperability standards to facilitate the efficient dissemination of
content.
FRBR: Functional Requirements of
Bibliographic Records