The 'Europeana' website, launched yesterday by Commission President José Manuel Barroso and French Culture and Communication Minister Christine Albanel, gives access to hundreds of thousands of books, many of which are rare or out-of-print altogether. It seeks to provide a "common access point" for Europe's digitised resources
In total, some two million 'digitised objects' from all 27 member states were put online, including paintings, music, maps, manuscripts and newspapers to complement the books. The Commission believes the amount of content online at the beginning is "respectable", but admitted for some countries only "very limited" material was available. The Europeana website is available in all the official EU languages except for Maltese and Bulgarian, which the Commission said would be added "in the coming months".
After initial success…
Speaking yesterday morning, EU Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding described the launch as "an extraordinary success," saying the website received "at least ten million hits per hour" in its first morning. "We could not have imagined such a run to Europeana," she said.
…'Europeana' taken offline
But the site has since been taken offline after its servers proved unable to cope with "overwhelming interest". "We are doing our utmost to reopen Europeana in a more robust version as soon as possible [and it] will be back by mid-December," reads a statement on the site's landing page, which today (21 November) provides links to a development page instead.
Asked yesterday why the Europeana site collapsed shortly after launch, Commissioner Reding's spokesperson, Martin Selmayr, said the website's three servers could not cope with demand in the region of ten million hits per hour. "We re-lauched the site on six servers instead," he said.
Content challenge
In the longer term, it remains to be seen whether the portal, which will receive €2m per year of EU funding over the period 2009-2011, will meet the challenge of providing enough content. At present, 1,000 cultural institutions have committed to uploading material.
Commissioner Reding wants ten million objects to be available on the website by 2010, but the move might be hampered by copyright considerations. It is up to the holder of the material to decide what to include on the portal, while member states have been asked to set up national portals to serve as Europeana content aggregators.
For his part, President Barroso stressed at the launch event that Europeana had "the potential to change the way people see European culture," making it easier for Europeans "to appreciate their own past" and "become more aware of their common European identity".
In addition, it would allow the rest of the world "to see the important contributions that Europe has made" to literature, art, politics, history, science, architecture, music and cinema, while "preserving Europe’s cultural heritage for future generations," Barroso said.
Industry supportive
Welcoming the launch of Europeana, Santiago de la Mora, responsible for European partnerships at internet search giant Google, said "the more there are of these projects, the easier it will be for readers and researchers around the word to be able to search books and other materials that are now scattered throughout the globe and difficult to access".
Indeed, Google itself last month settled copyright claims from US publishers over the similar Book Search website, which it hopes Europeana will complement.
The company believes the Book Search project, which features the full text of over seven million books, will create new markets for out-of-print books.
