A library containing 11 million documents from nine European national libraries has been launched online at www.theeuropeanlibrary.org, with Slovenia one of the countries that took part in the project launch.
Coordinated by the British National Library, the project involved Germany, Finland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia and Switzerland. The remaining members of the 43-country Conference of European National Libraries are expected to join in soon.
The portal, which is currently running in beta version and will officially open on 26 May, coincides with the initiative of 19 European countries, including Slovenia, for a digital library to counter a book digitisation project carried out by the search engine Google.
Zoran Krstulovic, assistant headmaster at the National and University Library in Ljubljana, said that the digital library initiative should be understood as an upgrade to the European library project, not merely as a response to Google.
However, Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg prime minister, said on Tuesday that the EU is in favour of the digital library project designed as a counterweight to Google's digitisation.
Referring to Google, he said he supports the initiative of the 19 European countries because Europe should not bow down to American supremacy.
More articles from this issue:
Archive
|