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| Issue 5 Home | Editorial | Features | Regular Columns | News & Events | Misc. | ||
By Ute Schwens, Susann Solberg, Britta Woldering and Peter Dale - October 2001
As global networks grow in significance it is becoming more important to share knowledge and standards. By combining the resources of some of Europe's national libraries the idea of a single European Library has moved a step closer to becoming a reality. The European Library (TEL), a 30-month co-operative project of Key Action 3 [1] of the Information Societies Technology (IST) [2] research programme will provide the groundwork on which to build a pan-European service.
The main results are expected
to be the developing and testing of open standards, working
methods and practices that can readily be adopted by all national
libraries to work as a seamless partnership. The aim of this
article is to give an overall view of the projects objectives,
contents and structure.
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In addition to print media, which is likely to retain its importance in many areas, new media such as networked publications, interactive and multimedia products and services will all play an increasingly important role over the next few years. In order to structure the resulting vast flood of information for the benefit of the individual information seeker, Web gateways and portals will need to be created and continuously upgraded. This task requires international co-operation with regard to both technology and content, as is already happening with the new communication networks that have already been developed to act as international cross border “tools”.
In the TEL project [3] several of the leading European national libraries and institutions are aiming to jointly develop the basis for such a concept of a Web portal to facilitate easier and seamless access to this rich seam of information. TEL officially began on February 1, 2001. The project is largely being funded by the European Commission as an accompanying measure under the cultural heritage applications area of Key Action 3 of the Information Societies Technology (IST) research programme and is scheduled to run for 30 months. In addition to the EC funding the participating libraries have made a firm commitment to contribute a significant proportion of the development costs from their own resources, thus emphasising the importance that they place on a successful outcome, and a future operational service.
Eight national libraries and the national bibliographic centre of Italy are the active participants during the project phase of TEL. The Conference of European National Librarians (CENL) is also a full partner, and it is acting on behalf of the remaining national libraries who are members of CENL. After the conclusion of the project phase the concepts and findings emerging from TEL will be offered for adoption and further development by any other interested national libraries that have not been involved in the project phase, and it is hoped that these libraries will play a full part in the eventual operational service. The Project Co-ordinator and any of the TEL partners will be happy to discuss the progress of the project at any time so that any potential new participating libraries can begin preparations for taking part in the operational service as soon as is practical.
The project partners are:
National libraries are important “content-owners” in their own right, having national and comprehensive collection mandates in their respective countries and they have a close relationship with publishers and other rights-owners. Apart from this they are not only interlocked within a variety of co-operative structures but also play an important role, and sometime assume the leadership, within their national co-operative information and library systems. Their traditionally good contacts with publishers and rights-owners are beneficial to a continuing dialogue between public and private information suppliers so that services and contents can be offered to information seekers in a form that is easy to use, transparent, structured and comprehensive.
It is the aim of the TEL project to create the technical, legal and organisational means for a comprehensive European information service on the basis of decentralized records of either conventional or digital collections of the participating national libraries, although the emphasis during the project phase will be on digital collections. In the future it is hoped that it will be possible to search and order documents directly from the collections of the participating European national libraries by entering through a single portal and running a single search. It will be possible to access electronic publications directly. An important consideration that still has to be settled is the clarification and definition of copyright and licensing questions in each of the participating countries, and trans-nationally; the development of a business model for TEL will hopefully play an important role in resolving this. It has to be emphasised that TEL is not a technical project which aims to develop software and interfaces in the first place. The primary aim is the construction of a cooperation framework for better access to the great national holdings in conventional as well as digital formats. Access to electronic documents has priority here. The more electronic documents that become available (and the number of such publications is increasing exponentially), the more difficult it becomes to provide unitary access, as they are difficult to find within the flood of information. Sometimes, also, legal restrictions impede their usage.
In the TEL project consideration is being given to the difficult question of how Europe-wide access to the collections of the national libraries, on site as well as from other countries, can be made possible. An important precondition is the creation of the necessary organisational and technical fundamentals for the long term establishment of a European digital library consisting of distributed digital collections. The existing digital libraries of the participants are being included in this work.
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| Members of work package 5, Dissemination and Use of the project “The European Library” (TEL) and authors of the article about TEL. From the left: Susann Solberg, Dr. Britta Woldering, Peter Dale and Ute Schwens (work package leader) |
Gabriel [4] the World Wide Web service of the CENL national libraries, which was established in 1997, has a significant role to play in all of this. Currently 41 national libraries from 39 member states of the European Council participate in Gabriel. The service offers, via a single Internet address, individual access and consistently structured information about the European national libraries, their collections and services. Gabriel provides an extremely useful model for further networked services in international librarianship, apart from its most useful function as an online guide to the national libraries. The basic concept of Gabriel is very closely linked with the aims of TEL.
The main results expected to emerge from TEL consist include:
As the project is primarily concerned with the development of a framework for co-operation, the technical aspect is limited to specifying the requirements for an interoperable test bed. The individual participants will be responsible for the development and implementation of operable (and interoperable) systems and services after the end of the project.
In accordance with the overall aims of TEL the project tasks are divided into four main workpackages:
In the first workpackage it is intended to consolidate current procedures in respect of deposit (voluntary or statutory), copyright and user rights between national libraries and publishers on a national level as well as elaborating general standardised procedures on a European level by means of pragmatic guidelines and the development of rational negotiation procedures. TEL will aim to engage as partners the larger publishers of electronic publications as well as national and European publishers associations.
Workpackage Leader: Koninklijke Bibliotheek (The Netherlands)
Always keeping an eye on the results of the other workpackages, in this workpackage the TEL participants will aim to generate business plans and models to be applied within a mutually-agreed co-operation framework (product definition, price models, etc.) The work will be based upon intensive market research and user surveys. Beyond this the partners’ individual and collective aims concerning service utilisation shall be clarified, and their practices and procedures regarding registration and clearing etc. will be closely examined with a view to standardising these practices wherever possible.
Workpackage Leader: The British Library
Co-operating closely with, and drawing on the results of, other relevant projects and agents a joint practicable procedure concerning metadata standards and schemes will be developed in order to support broader access to online and offline digital materials in national libraries. In order to facilitate this work metadata from publishers will be integrated, and this workpackage intends to identify the best way of achieving this aim. In order to be consistent a “virtual” European library needs to offer multilingual search possibilities and services. Therefore, a prototype for a multilingual service will be developed within TEL. The results of the earlier Multilingual Access to Subject Headings (MACS) [5] project fit very logically into the planned model. MACS started in 1999 as a CENL project and delivered a working prototype early in 2001.
Workpackage Leader: Koninklijke Bibliotheek (The Netherlands)
For the operation of TEL the functional and technical specifications for the development of optimal searching possibilities in decentralized databases as well as on Z38.50 and on XML platforms via a joint portal are to be developed in this workpackage.
With the test beds for Z39.50 and XML the following aspects are being considered: access, content, interoperability and performance. Benchmarking will be developed beyond this. The test beds can later be passed on to other national libraries for further utilisation and will serve in this way for generating a “best practice”. It is emphasised that it is not the task of this workpackage to create a mini-version of a feasible system; the only development during TEL will be testbeds.
Workpackage Leader: Die Deutsche Bibliothek (Germany)
A fifth work package is responsible for all aspects of publicity and public relations, the organisation of workshops and seminars, the dissemination and publication of project results, and the maintenance of a dedicated project Web site.
This workpackage will also, during the lifetime of the project, arrange for initial steps to be taken towards the actual utilization of the project findings and the setting up of an operational service.
Workpackage Leader: Die Deutsche Bibliothek (Germany)
The apparently endless possibilities for global communication that have been made available by the Internet, as well as the requirements resulting from the massive emergence of Web-based and other electronic publications has created an exciting new field of work. This has led to a range of accompanying features such as quite sophisticated new technical requirements, complicated legal questions and high costs. A co-operative European project like “The European Library” is well-placed to create scope for development in this field by taking advantage of synergy effects and by developing software tools for creating a full range of rationalization potentials in the service-delivery of Europe’s national libraries.
TEL is still at a very early stage of its work, and few findings are available yet for public consumption. However, in the coming months the results will begin to flow and they will be made available on the constantly updated project Web site [3]. Cultivate readers are invited to follow the progress of TEL by constantly re-visiting the Web site or by subscribing to the TEL newsletter. Anyone who requires more personal attention is welcome to get in touch with the Co-ordinator; contact details are given below.
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Ute Schwens
Deputy Director of Die Deutsche Bibliothek
TEL Work Package Leader and member of the TEL Management
Committee
Ute Schwens is the Permanent Deputy of the Director General of Die Deutsche Bibliothek, Deutsche Bibliothek Frankfurt am Main. Ute is a Certified librarian and the positions she has held include: Assistant to the Director General and Head of Department, Bibliographic Services. After qualifying as a senior librarian she was Head of Department, Digital Library and Director Services and Archives (Reader Services, National Bibliographic Services). Since 1999 she has been Permanent Deputy of the Director General of Die Deutsche Bibliothek in Frankfurt am Main.
In the TEL project Ute is manager of the TEL activities of Die Deutsche Bibliothek, a member of the TEL Management Committee and Workpackage Leader for Workpackage 5 (Dissemination and Use). She also plays a prominent role in the CENL/FEP Joint Committee on Electronic Publications which is acting as an Advisory Committee for Workpackage 1 (Publisher Relations).
Susann Solberg
Assistant to the Director General of Die Deutsche
Bibliothek
Susann Solberg is the Deutsche Bibliothek, Assistant to the Director General and responsible for public relations. Susann is a Certified librarian, with experience in descriptive cataloguing, the National ISSN-Centre, subject indexing, and in the periodicals acquisition department as press officer. Since 1999 she has been Assistant to the Director General and responsible for public relations. In the TEL project she has a primary role in Workpackage 5 (Dissemination and Use) and and is the DDB representative for Workpackage 2 (Business plans and models).
Dr. Britta Woldering
TEL representative
Britta Woldering received her PhD from the Department of Japanese Studies of Ruprecht-Karls-University in Heidelberg, Germany, in 1997. In 1997/1998 she was a trainee at the Library of Trier University, where she obtained her qualification as a senior librarian in 1999.
Since 2000 Britta has been a project officer at Die Deutsche Bibliothek, Deutsche Bibliothek Frankfurt am Main. She works on the CARMEN project WP12, which deals with cross-concordances of thesauri for Social Sciences. In the TEL project she is assisting on all issues in which DDB is involved within the TEL project and in particular she is a prominent member of the team working on Workpackage 5 (Dissemination and Use).
Peter Dale
The British Library
96 Euston Road
London NW1 2DB
United Kingdom
Phone + 44 20 7412 7078
Fax + 44 20 7412 7018
Peter Dale has worked in various departments of Bibliographic Services in the British Library. After many years working in the BLAISE database services he took up a more prominent role in the marketing of BL’s bibliographic services. In the last few years the main emphasis of his work has moved towards international co-operation among Europe’s national libraries, with an active role in initiatives such as CoBRA and GABRIEL. He is the overall Project Co-ordinator for TEL and as such is Workpackage Leader for Workpackage 6 (Project Management/ Liaison with the EC), and additionally plays an active role in Workpackage 1 (Publisher Relations), Workpackage 2 (Business plans and models).and Workpackage 5 (Dissemination and Use).
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For citation purposes:
Schwens, U., Solberg. S., Woldering, B. and Dale, P. "The European Library (TEL) – The Gate to Europe’s Knowledge", Cultivate Interactive, issue
5, 1 October 2001
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue5/tel/>
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