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The European Library – An overview

TheEuropeanLibrary.org : service of European National Libraries to provide access to their (deep web) catalogues & collections via 1 central web interface (= portal)

Layout of presentation1. Introduction: National libraries in European context

2. Overview of The European Library

3. Technical approach

4. Future

DRH 2005, Lancaster, 6-9-05Olaf D. Janssen, Web & New Projects managerThe European Library Office, The Netherlands

1. How do we know that the work we accomplish is new and innovative?

2. How does technology change the way that we work?

3. What kinds of methodologies are being used?

from http://www.drh.org.uk/

The European Library & Conference goals

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Nature of a national library• By law 1 per country (Russia & Italy 2)

• Roles: Deposit library (national bibliography)Scientific libraryOften also university library (eg FI, SI)

• Preserving, managing & opening national cultural heritage (documents)

• Promoting & supporting national & international co-operation

• Research & development (national & international)

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• 44 official national libraries – 42 countries (Council of Europe)

• Co-operation since 1987, since 1995 online • CENL : Conference of European National

Librarians (directors of NLs)

National libaries in European context

• Regional subgroups (Northern, South-East)• CENL is umbrella of many European projects &

task groups• Financing: own means + EU funding• Case study: The European Library (2005 - ..)

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History of The European Library• 2001-2004: TEL Project = feasability study = is

it possible to create one central service for searching the collections of all European NLs ?

• Financed by EU (30 months) + own recources – 2MEuro

• 8 pilot libraries: UK, Finland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland

• Intended to create operational service from start, so business plan was part of project

• 31-1-2004: TEL Project ended successfully - other NLs can participate too

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Start of The European Library

• 31-1-2004: * End of TEL Project (= feasability study)* Start of The European Library (= operational service)

• Now funded by the national libraries (non EU)• European Library Office set up (KB – 4.5 FTE)• 3 years initially

* 2004-2005: developing the portal (website) - TheEuropeanLibrary.org

* 2005-2006 : operational service, incl. adding new collections & more libraries

* Q3 2006: evaluation, continue or not?

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Current status (september 2005)

• TheEuropeanLibrary.org live (beta) since 17 March 2005Stable (alpha) version expected for October 2005

• Current participants are founding 8 pilot libraries + France + Austria, Croatia, Serbia (June 2005) * all committed for 3 years.

• 150+ collections, 500K digitised objects, 11M records

• TEL-ME-MOR project is underway (10 EU NMS ; 2005-2006)

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Vision

“Provision of equal access to promote world-wide understanding of the richness and diversity of European learning and culture.”

“The European Library exists to open up the universe of knowledge, information and culture of all Europe's national libraries”  

Mission

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TheEuropeanLibrary.org is able to

• Give integrated access to national collections across Europe - digital (500K) and non-digital (10.5M)(1. How do we know that the work we accomplish is new and innovative?)

• Drive up usage and readership of national collections

• Allow for cross-collection item searching• Enable collection level searching • Deliver integrated results• Give access to digital and non-digital resources

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Benefits to national libraries and users

• Another route to collections & services of NL• Increased visibility of national collection via

• links• Google, Yahoo, Scirus…..

• New resources for users of NLs• Access to native resources held in other countries• Foster open standards - development & sharing• Political – all NLs operate as one force (more

weight than individual NLs)

2. How does technology change the way that we work?

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1. Search and retrieval in The European Library

2. Targets : Central Index vs. Remote targets

3. Metadata in The European Library

SRU = protocol for Search & Retrieval via URLs

Technics in The European Library

3. What kinds of methodologies are being used?

Layout:

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1. Portal (XML, JavaScript, HTML, XSL) is downloaded from TheEuropeanLibrary.org to browser (no central components)

2. User types in query (Hamlet by Shakespeare)

3. Query is transformed (JavaScript) to SRU request = HTTP URL :

Search & retrieval – ‘Portal in browser’ approach

SRU request = BaseURL + Searchpart, separated by "?". BaseURL• identifies the target; • is read from collection description (=XML file loaded in browser)Searchpart : "key=value&" pairs. key = metadata field; value = user

query

Exmpl: SRU request = http://sru.kb.nl:9090?Title=Hamlet&Author=Shakespeare&4. SRU request is send to target (if necessary via a SRU/Z39.50 gateway)

5. Response from target = XML file, sent back to browser. Transformed by XSL stylesheet (XSLT), giving HTML in browser. Different XSL = different presentation

For short : “SRU request = web address of XML file”

Drawback: SRU approach is browser dependent: support XSLT and JavaScript.Currently IE and Mozilla/Firefox are supported

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Sidestep: Z39.50/SRU gateways

Z39.50/SRU gateway (= translator )

1. Protocol conversion : translation of SRU request into Z39.50 session

which will find & retrieve the requested records from a pre-specified

Z39.50 target.

2. Search language conversion : From CQL to local search language of

Z39.50 target.

3. Character set conversions (if necessary)

4. Record format conversion (MARC21 to DublinCore, etc… )

5. Addition of metadata fields in records

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1. Metadata in TEL Central Index : harvested through Open

Archives Initiative (OAI) Protocol and stored & indexed

centrally in Central Index (Verity - on KB servers): Google

approach.

2. Databases that can’t be centrally harvested : queried on-

demand, remote targets

From the user point of view: no difference between searching

Central Index and searching remote targets.

Targets : Central Index vs. Remote targets

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1. Remote targets that 'speak' SRU: directly

accessible by TEL portal

2. Remote targets that 'speak' Z39.50: accessible

via central Z39.50/SRU gateway ('translator'),

hosted by BL

3. Libraries can set up their own local Z39.50/SRU

gateway for their Z39.50 databases

3 types of remote targets

Advantages: - having local control & expertise

- relief of central BL Z39.50/SRU

gateway

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TEL Application Profiles: based on Dublin Core

2 Types:

Metadata in The European Library

1. TEL AP for Objects (books, magazines...) = object

descriptions

(XML file)

2. TEL AP for Collections = collection descriptions (XML file)

1 and 2 have 75% overlap

Collection descriptions are loaded in Central Index: collections

can be result of a query!!

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Future steps (2006 - …)

• 2005-2007 : TELMEMOR = EU funded project to include 10 EU New Member States in The European Library www.telmemor.net

• 2006 : Google to crawl & index all metadata

• 2006-2007 : more (non-NMS) NLs to join TheEuropeanLibrary.org

• End of 2006 : 25-30 national libraries searchable

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The BIG issues

• Usability of portals (TheEuropeanLibrary.org, Metalib…)* People are Google-minded: they want to find, but not search* Picking relevant collections to search in* Presentation of results (ranking, merging)

• Multi-linguality:* Searching in Dutch (‘fiets’), retrieving results in English (‘bicycle’) MACS project

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www.TheEuropeanLibrary.org

Thank you!

olaf.janssen@theeuropeanlibrary.org

olaf.janssen@kb.nl

Olaf D. Janssen, Web & New Projects managerThe European Library Office, The Netherlands