Europeana back online
A victim of its own success, Europeana - the EU's online library - crashed shortly after its launch in November. It was unable to cope with demand - around 10 million hits per hour. Reopened, with its server capacity quadrupled, the prototype European digital library is again attracting culture-loving users from around the world.
At Europeana.eu you can admire the most famous paintings, have a good read and even download films that are in the public domain. What's more, this is a free service.
In this initial phase, the Europeana portal already provides access to over two million items from numerous museums, libraries and audiovisual collections in the Member States. By offering a single, multilingual point of entry, the site, hosted by the National Library of The Netherlands, enables Internet users to access a digital heritage preserved in different locations across Europe. By 2010 the site should be fully operational, allowing over six million works to be consulted.
In complementing what is commercially on offer, e.g. from Google Books, the scope of the collection of the Europeana site is enormous, making available to the general public a whole range of cultural items in every European language.
As culture ministers stated in the Council conclusions of November 2008, Europeana provides an excellent opportunity to showcase the cultural heritage of the Member States and to provide access for everyone to that heritage.
Forthcoming event:
Economic and Financial Affairs Council, 10 February