The European Library

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To celebrate the French EU presidency, this month’s newsletter has French National Library - BnF as its focal point. Overseeing our guide through Gallica, Globes and Europeana is The French National Library’s Elisabeth Freyre, who’s on hand as guest Chief Editor. And as well as our French focus, we’ve also slipped in a survey to help better inform our readership.

"My role in the Bibliothèque nationale de France centers around the Department of International Relations where I oversee and manage the BnF’s European projects. As the contact person for The European Library I coordinate, with the assistance of a team, the input in areas such as metadata, collection description and technical issues" says Elisabeth.

"The BnF’s work for The European Library is vital in providing access to BN-OPALEplus, the bibliographic database containing more than 10 million records, as well as Gallica, its digital library"

"I’m also involved in the Editorial Working Group which oversees the editorial content of the site, such as treasures, library information and virtual exhibitions. One of our first virtual tours focused on the architecture of the national libraries across Europe, where visitors experienced a digital delve in to the inner sanctums of each building"

"The European Library offers users huge online content as well as new access modes to a vast amount of cultural and scientific data. The European Library places a strong focus on multilingualism. Coupled with The Languages Working Group’s role in translating over 23 languages, we hope to make our service easily accessible to an ever expanding audience"

"With over 48 national libraries joined under The European Library’s umbrella, it offers a perfect opportunity for the sharing of experiences and ideas. Such a worthwhile collaboration can only benefit the ongoing development and refinement of the service."

Our partners in The European Library play a unique role as national libraries. Each has an exciting story to tell and we are delighted to be able to profile the National and University Library of Slovenia in this video. Dare Balažic, an advisor to Senior Management for International Cooperation of the NUK, accepted our invitation to act as narrator.

"I am a member of the Editorial Working Group of The European Library. The Group makes an active contribution to improving the presentation and promotion of the NUK collections in The European Library portal and also undertakes vital coordination work for the creation of online exhibitions" says Dare.

"The NUK was one of the original partners in the EC-funded TEL project and was one of the Full Participants at the launch of The European Library service in 2005. Multilingualism was soon recognised as a key issue in the success of the service. Users’ expectations involve the ability to interact with the service in their native language. In order to fulfil this goal, I have been translating the HOME & COLLECTIONS interface and metadata into Slovenian. I also helped raise awareness about opportunities for cooperation during the TEL-ME-MOR project."

"The Digital Library of Slovenia is now a well established portal, offering an increasing digital content and services. Consequently, more collections have become searchable through The European Library service."

Our partners in The European Library play a unique role as national libraries. Each has an exciting story to tell and we are delighted to be able to profile the National Library of Ireland in this video. Katherine McSharry – Assistant Keeper, Services and Systems - of the National Library of Ireland/Leabharlann Náisiúnta na hÉireann (NLI), accepted our invitation to act as narrator.

Katherine McSharry tells us: "My role in Digital Projects also includes liaison responsibility with The European Library. During EDLproject, I helped to coordinate the work here that brought the NLI into The European Library as a Full Participant. Our entire online catalogue, including digital images from our visual collections, is now fully searchable from The European Library site. As we are embarking on major digitisation projects, the range and variety of digital content available will grow significantly over the next few years."

"Involvement with European projects such as The European Library helps to drive the adoption of those standards and protocols that maximize interoperability - and thereby bring our resources to the widest possible audience."

"Readers create the new value": this video is devoted to the 90th anniversary of the National Library of Estonia.

Visit the Rossiiskaya Gosudarstvennaya Biblioteka - Russian State Library (RSL)