The third session of the second day was held under the heading European Digital Library. The four speakers presented the initiatives that they work on, the gaps that are called to fill, what has been succeeded by now and what are their future plans.

Paul Doorenbosch, the first speaker, presented the project of the National Library of The Netherlands, the Dutch approach of the digitisation project in the European Context, the creation of a Digital Library.It is based on the i2010, the EU policy framework for the information society and media for a European Information Society for all citizens, based on a series of flagships; the key proposals of i2010. Digital Library focuses on both cultural heritage and scientific information. Paul Doorenbosch talked about the national plan for developing infrastructure, professionality and copyright issues. He mentioned the Dutch governmental actions in digitisation, the nationally - such as Images for the Future (Beelden voor de Toekomst) and Dutch Heritage:Digital!- and internationally based projects such as MICHAEL and EDN. EUROPEANA, a project which was analysed by the second speaker, is the reference point for the digitisation activities of The Netherlands.

Jill Cousins, the director of European Digital Library, took the floor to talk more thoroughly about EUROPEANA,a European digital library net that aims to connect museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections under the supervision of European Digital Library Foundation (EDL). She started by mentioning the gaps between vision and reality that EUROPEANA tries to fill, such as the relationships of users and content providers, content and copyright, Europe and nation, nation and Institution, funding and attitude.

Jill Cousins continued by presenting the work plan of EUROPEANA, what has been succeeded by now, which is the current situation and what are the next steps. A fully working prototype will be launched in November 2008. What EUROPEANA aims for the future is to increase the number of partners, to determine the discussion model, conceive the roadmap and, last but not least, find the funding for next year.
The third initiative was VideoActive, presented by Sonja de Leeuw, professor of Film and Television at the University of Utrecht. VideoActive is a two-year project (2006-2008) for bringing European television archives together. It has 14 members in 10 countries. It is about 10.000 items of television archival content from earliest TV recordings on film, to data such clipping of TV guides and still photos. The portal will be launched in May 2008. What adds value to this project is the procedure of comparison. It studies the differences and similarities of European television in different topics, like the content, the language. It is about a comparative survey of TV holding of archive partners.

The last speaker was Georg Erkes, who talked about the European Film Getaway (EGF) project which will give online access to film archival content. EFG will start in September 2008. Its aim is based on the new user expectations and the necessity of internet accessibility. Its objectives are to create a single access point, a common European filmography and a gateway to content from film archives. At this moment, EFG has 22 partners and 16 content partners. Georg Erkes mentioned that the technical part of the project will be supported by DRIVER (Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research). The content will be based on catalogues and film content, so it will be both media and document types. Of course, Georg Erkes pointed out the IPR issues that EFG has to deal with facts such as that the half material, especially the moving images, is not owned by the archives partners or the public domain and that there is not experience in rights-clearance. Netherlands Filmmuseum will lead on IPR work package. What it is attempted is the evaluation of copyright laws and regulations in each member country.

All speakers mentioned the difficulties of their projects but they also stressed their intention to continue the European vision for the digital unification of European archives.

Images for the Future has a broader context – all over the world major digitisation projects are creating large-scale online heritage resources. The European Commission acknowledges the magnificent value these resources have if this wealth of material in Europe’s libraries, museums and (audiovisual) archives would be accessible to all.

Since a few years, the European Commission is supporting various initiatives that help realising this vision, dubbed ‘the European Digital Library’. These include research oriented projects such as MultiMatch, projects focussing on providing access such as Video Active and best practice networks on a specific topic, such as COMMUNIA. Knowledge exchange between projects is stimulated by coordination actions like CHORUS.

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Until now, these efforts did not result in one single access point to collections across different domains. The heterogeneous nature of heritage (covering different languages, held by different organisations with their own standards for digitisation and annotation etc.) is the major obstacle. To meet user demands and in order to provide the complete picture, the access point should therefore provide solutions that provide for syntactic, semantic and linguistic interoperability between collections and objects. Needless to say: this is an extremely complex task. Therefore, expectations are high for the EDLnet, the recently launched initiative that tries to overcome exactly these obstacles and create the envisioned single window to the collections and objects. The press release states:

“The project – the European Digital Library network (EDLnet) – runs for two years, and will develop a prototype that demonstrates proof of concept, bringing together content from some of Europe’s major cultural organisations.
The project will be run by The European Library together with the National Library of the Netherlands. The project will look at the political, human, technical and semantic issues that will contribute to the creation of an interoperable system able to access fully digitised content. It will invite feedback from different types of users in order to create a service that enriches the widest public and answers the needs of researchers, students, teachers and the creative industries.”

Through Sound and Vision, Images for the Future is well represented in this network and contributes actively the workpackages around which the activities are organised. Representatives of the Video Active project participate in the workpackages on User Requirements and Interoperability, whilst mr. Edwin van Huis (general director of Sound and Vision and president of the International Federation of Television Archives) has a seat in the Executive Board of the EDL Foundation, the body that has been established to govern the further development of the European Digital Library.

I will– after this introduction – continue to report on the developments within this exiting initiative. Already, trough portals like Video Active, Images for the Future is making sure that we fully comply with the standards defined by the EDL Net. The content we offer online will be a great addition to the collections of others, the real power is enclosed in the relations that can be created between objects from different organisations; contextualisation on a pan European scale in the making!

(Johan Oomen is policy advisor at the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. Contact: joomen[at]beeldengeluid.nl)