No. The European Library is not a physical library. It is a web service of Europe’s national libraries. However, you may want to donate your material to one of the national libraries of Europe.

No. The European Library does not sell material. However, you can find links to bookshops from the catalogue records. You can find more information about this and other services in The European Library user guide.

No. However, if you have a library card from one of our partner libraries you can order a book from that particular library. Some libraries also offer inter-library loan and document delivery services. You can find more information about library services The European Library user guide.

No. The European Library is not a physical library. It is a web service of Europe’s national libraries. The day-to-day work of The European Library is undertaken by The European Library Office, which is located in The Hague, The Netherlands.

The European Library originates from the TEL-project, a project co-funded under the European Commission’s 5th Framework Programme.

Since then The European Library is 100% financed by its owners: the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL). The national libraries from each member state of the Council of Europe and Vatican City are eligible to become a member of CENL and also to become a full-participant in The European Library.

Projects that expand The European Library are supported by the European Commission. Recent projects such as TELMEMOR and EDLproject are co-funded under the eContentplus Programme.

The European Library represents Europe in all the colours of its cultural heritage. Being owned by public institutions guarantees its long-term preservation. Furthermore, quality and reliability are guaranteed. All content has been selected and categorised by experts who have done this work over centuries and centuries: Europe’s national librarians.

The European Library is a service of the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL). The national library of each member state of the Council of Europe and Vatican City is eligible to become a member of CENL and also to become a full-participant in The European Library. If your country is not represented in The European Library it may be because it is not a member state of the Council of Europe.

The European Library contains digital collections from each of its full-participant national libraries. Although we are encouraging all the national libraries in Europe to join The European Library as full-participants, unfortunately, not every library has been able to do so yet. In addition, there are many national collections that are not yet digitised and therefore are not currently available in The European Library.

The European Library Office produces a bimonthly newsletter in English. This newsletter is intended to inform The European Library’s users, partner libraries and other library and information professionals, about recent events and information related to The European Library. To subscribe to the newsletter, click here.

A national library is a library that has been established by a country, to collect, preserve and provide access to all the books, journals, manuscripts and other sources of information that have been written by citizens of that country, are about that country or are in the language of that country. National Libraries are often required by law (legal deposit) to collect these items and in many countries these laws have recently been extended to include digital items. National Libraries are often responsible for the national bibliographic control centre, where all these items are described (catalogued) so that they can be found in library catalogues, such as The European Library.

The Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) is the National Library of the Netherlands. It is a member of theConference of European National Librarians (CENL)and one of the founding members of The European Library. The National Library of the Netherlands previously hosted GABRIEL and the TEL Project, both “parent” projects of the current The European Library. The National Library of the Netherland still provides infrastructural assistance to The European Library such as server hosting. The European Library Office is located located in the National Library of the Netherlands.

A collection is an aggregation of books or other (physical or digital) materials owned by a library. These objects are organised and catalogued in a way that shows thematic, temporal, material type or other relevance. The European Library provides access to around 250 collections of which around 150 are searchable. The rest are browse-only.

A browse-only collection can not currently be searched in The European Library. However, these collections are often available on their own website. Ways of integrating browse-only collections into The European Library are currently being investigated.

A searchable collection can be searched in The European Library.

It is estimated that you can currently search in 100-150 million items in The European Library. In addition to searching through enormous numbers of items, The European Library uses federated searching to access and retrieve results directly from our partners’ local library systems. These factors will inevitably slow down your search. However, by selecting your collections in advance (ideally a maximum of 15 collections per search) you will get faster and more focused results.

For a quick and easy introduction to the architecture of The European Library and understanding of "federated searching", please see the following power-point presentation .

After you have entered a search in The European Library it is not advisable to use the “back button” in your web-browser to return to the previous page. This is because The European Library uses your web-browser to undertake some of the searching processes. To return to the list of search results it is better to use the “return to list” button as the initial information about your query will be retained by your web-browser.

Digital objects are the items that you find in a digital library, such as The European Library. They may have originally been physical items (such as a book, photograph or a painting) or may be sound, videos and animations, which have been digitised to make them available online. Among digital items, there are also "born digital" objects, which are documents that were created and exist only in a digital format like e-journals or e-theses.

The national libraries have their own selection policies for digitisation. Priorities depend on user preferences, urgency of preservation, historical value and, of course, availability of funding. The European Library is not involved in digitisation activities. However it seeks to analyse search habits so that the national libraries can adjust their digitisation policies accordingly.

The "Home" and "Collections" sections of The European Library (including the help-texts and error messages) are available in all languages of the full-participant national libraries. The “Treasures”, “Libraries” and “Organisation” sections are provided in English, French and German. You can change the language of The European Library interface by clicking on the drop-down language list on the top right-hand corner of every page in The European Library website. This list contains all the languages that are currently available.

In The European Library there are items in many languages. Unfortunately, it is not yet technically possible to translate the query that you enter or the results you receive into other languages. However, The European Library is working with language-technology experts to provide such multilingual services when they become available.

The European Library uses federated searching to access and retrieve results from our partner's local library systems. It is not yet technically possible to apply ranking functionality. Results from the collections selected appear as they “arrive” from our partner libraries’ databases. However, you can refine your query by searching within your results or excluding words from the results received.

For a quick and easy introduction to the architecture of The European Library and understanding of "federated searching", please see the following power-point presentation .

You can get help using The European Library by clicking on “help?” in the HOME and COLLECTIONS sections of the website. TEach sub-section has its own help page, for example, by clicking on “help?” in the browse all collections page, specific help on browsing collections is provided. There is also a user guide for first time users that you may find useful.