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oktÓber 2005

26 October 2005
About the British National Digital Library

The British Library , partner in TEL-ME-MOR project, is working actively on establishing and developing a National Digital Library. The project is already in a pilot stage with 23 journal publishers contributing their electronic content to the archive. According to the official strategy of the British Library for years 2005-2008 the library wants to redefine its role and purpose in the information revolution of the 21st century.

Ruth Jones, former general manager of Extenza e-publishing company was recently appointed head of development in the British Library. She will be responsible for further development of digital archives, co-operating with a team of six licensing experts and five product development experts. BL Direct , library's web-based document delivery service, is the platform from which the digital library will be launched.

25 October 2005
German publishers vs. Google Print

Google announced recently the expansion of its Google Print project to continental Europe, launching search portals for full texts of books in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, France and Italy. This can be seen as Google's answer to the leaders of European countries and directors of European national libraries who expressed their concern back in spring 2005 about Google's plans to digitise massive collections of books in English in several libraries of the United States and Great Britain.

However, the German Association of Book Publishers has announced its own digitisation programme in answer to Google's initiative and claims to have secured commitments from about 100 German publishers. Following the controversy in the United States where American Association of Publishers has filed a lawsuit against Google due to the potential violation of copyrights in Google Print project, German publishers do not want Google to hold the full texts of their books in its servers. The texts will be made available for indexing by search engines, including Google, but stored in the corporate servers of the publishers.

- Google goes to Frankfurt, rolls out European print portals (The Book Standard)
- German publishers announce competing book-scanning projects (The Book Standard)

14 October 2005
TEL-ME-MOR Review in Tallinn

Review of TEL-ME-MOR project by independent experts took place in the National Library of Estonia , Tallinn, on 12 October 2005. The purpose of this meeting was to evaluate the activities carried out during the first 9 months of the project and to give recommendations for future activities.

The meeting was chaired by Ian Pigott, project officer at the European Commission. John FitzGerald (Ireland), Myriam Diocaretz (Netherlands) and Zuzana Bauerova (the Czech Republic) acted as experts.

Experts were satisfied with the progress of TEL-ME-MOR. The findings on the research activities and requirements of the national libraries of the New Member States were considered to be especially valuable. Written report including recommendations from the experts will be produced by the end of October.

12 October 2005
Another search engine company to scan books

Yahoo Inc. has announced its plans to start cooperation with libraries and archives for digitisation of books. This initiative is the first major attempt on international level to compete with Google that launched its digitisation programme ( Google Print Library Project ) in December 2004. However, according to Yahoo they had started with preparations to launch their project already before the start of Google's programme and so it should not be seen as a response to Google's activities.

Yahoo has teamed up with the University of California, the University of Toronto, and several archives and technology companies on a project that could potentially bring the complete texts of millions of volumes into digital form. The new archive is called the Open Content Alliance and it was conceived in part by Brewster Kahle , director of the Internet Archive , a nonprofit digital library. Other partners in this project are Adobe, the European Archive, the National Archives of England, O'Reilly Media, and Hewlett Packard Labs.

Leaders of the project stressed that no books that are under copyright will be scanned unless the copyright holders give explicit permission. In that way the project hopes to avoid the controversy raised by Google's plan to scan nearly every book at the library of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, even works under copyright.

TEL-ME-MOR welcomes the idea behind the new project and sees it as one option for realising the public-private partnerships mentioned in the Digital Libraries Strategy of the European Commission.

Based on the news article from The Chronicle of Higher Education .

10 October 2005
The European Library Implementation Plan

The European Library Office has published three documents under the common title The European Library development and implementation plan for 9 New Member States . It outlines actions to be taken by The European Library Office as well as by the national libraries of 9 New Member States to integrate their collections into The European Library service.

The development and implementation plan is also one of the deliverables under work package 2 of TEL-ME-MOR project and can be found in the Materials and Results section of TEL-ME-MOR central web site.

4 October 2005
The role of libraries in the information society

Last week the members of the Conference of European National Librarians (CENL) met for their annual conference in Luxembourg, focusing this time on the role of libraries in the information society. The organisation plays an important role in increasing and reinforcing the role of national libraries in Europe. CENL is a key partner in TEL-ME-MOR which held its board meeting and an Open Forum for all CENL members on 28 September (see the news item below).

At the CENL Meeting, on 29 September, Viviane Reding, European Commissioner responsible for Information Society and Media, gave a speech on the role of libraries in the information society, where she referred to i2010 , a five-year strategy aimed to foster growth and jobs in the information society and media industries, mentioning digitisation, accessibility, preservation and archiving as main priority issues to realise digital libraries at European level.

4 October 2005
TEL-ME-MOR activities in Luxembourg

TEL-ME-MOR held its Management Board meeting and an Open Forum for all CENL members in Luxembourg on 28 September in conjunction with the CENL Annual Meeting taking place from 29 September till 1 October 2005 .

Management Board members reviewed project activities carried out since the last board meeting in Budapest in May 2005 and agreed on upcoming activities for next five months. In general the project has progressed fine, almost all required deliverables have been presented to the European Commission and dissemination on European initiatives has been successful.

Open Forum introduced the goals and activities of the project to those European National Librarians, members of the CENL, who are not partners in TEL-ME-MOR. General overview was presented by Monika Segbert, project manager from Eremo srl. All work package leaders introduced past, present and future activities in their field of operation. The presentations were followed by a session of questions and answers.

3 October 2005
Joining TheEuropeanLibrary.org

Persons responsible for integration of collections into TheEuropeanLibrary.org service from the national libraries of ‘old' and ‘new' Member States of the European Union met on 22-23 September in the Hague. This knowledge sharing workshop was organised by The European Library Office.

Most of the work was carried out in workgroups and focused on collection descriptions, preparing metadata for The European Library Application Profile and implementing Z39.50/SRU gateways. In addition to clarifying many technical issues the greatest value of this workshop was in networking between people from The European Library member institutions and from libraries preparing to join the service in 2006.

It was also agreed to compile the final version of The European Library implementation plan for 9 New Member States of the European Union (Slovenia has already joined the service) by the middle of October. As soon as it will become available, it will be published in the Materials section of this website.

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