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Article Excerpt
Just as I was beginning to wonder whether the world really needed Europeana [http://www.europeana.org], the ambitious new digital repository of Europe's art treasures, to construct its site in 22 different languages, there comes a press release announcing that The European Library has relaunched its impressive site, incorporating many of the recommendations from user feedback studies conducted since its start in 2005. At the top of the wish list: more multilingual facilities. According to the press release, itself issued in at least seven languages, users can now navigate and scan the collections of 38 national libraries across Europe "in their native language" and read support FAQs and user guides in 22 European languages.
As I write this column, I'm thinking the unthinkable and speaking the unspeakable (especially since I am speaking--actually, writing--in English): Is all this language development necessary?
But before delving into that politically incorrect question, let's have a brief overview of the two sites and projects.
The European Library
I first wrote about The European Library (TEL) [http://www. theeuropeanlibrary.org] in my column for the March 2006 issue ("Building a European Digital Library: A Challenge in the Culture Wars"). The European Library was, and remains, a project of the Conference of European National Librarians [http:// www.cenl.org]. It provides integrated access to the digital and nondigital collections of member national libraries, which fund the site with membership through the national library directors. A major part of TEL is its service as a "union catalog," a bibliographic portal to all the catalogs representing the working collections of its member libraries. But the portal also serves as a showcase to the digitization efforts of the libraries; many objects are viewable as parts of exhibitions or as special national treasures from the homepage and by search within a "digital collections" theme. When launched in 2005, The European Library site maintained English, French, and German interfaces and had 13 full members that opened their national library collections through the portal. By March 2009, the number of participants had expanded to 38 European national libraries.
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Europeana
Europeana [http://www.europeana.eu] is newer than The European Library. It opened to much fanfare in November 2008 and then immediately closed due to capacity problems [http://news breaks.infotoday.com/News Breaks/Europeanaeu-Launches Jacques-Brel-Is-Alive-and-WellbutTemporarily-Speechless- 51690.asp]. Back up in December, this time it did a rolling relaunch and became fully functional again as a beta in the first quarter of 2009. Europeana is still seen as a prototype with plans to run until 2010. This European Union (EU)-funded collaboration provides access to nearly 5 million digital objects from libraries, museums, archives, and audiovisual collections in 27 EU-member countries. It supports formats for film material, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books, newspapers, and archival papers. Currently some 90 institutions participate in Europeana. Launched with the top interface available in 21 of the 23 official European languages, by April 2009 navigation was supported in 26 languages.
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Funding, membership, and collections distinguish the two megasites. Both cooperative programs are huge by any standard; Europeana is limited to European Union member countries, currently 26, though this seems to be an ever-growing number. The European Library recognizes 48 national European libraries and currently has collections from 38 of them. Europeana targets objects in museums, archives, and audiovisual collections, as well as libraries, while The European Library concentrates on library collections, including federated bibliographic access to records describing those collections.
The two projects share some of the same goals, working space, and personnel. Jill Cousins is programme director for both The European Library and Europeana, and the two projects share six staff members in the marketing and editorial department, project management, and technical development and research areas [http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/portal/organisation/about _us/organigram_en.html]. Offices for both projects are in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National Library of the Netherlands, in The Hague.
Language Policy
Language has always been a sensitive political issue in Europe. The Europa languages portal [http://europa.eu/languages/ en/home] gives the official word about language policy in the EU. Currently, the EU has 27 member states and 23 official languages. They are, in alphabetical order by English name: Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, and Swedish. Note that these are official languages in which the EU does business. (And you thought the United Nations, with six official languages, was difficult!)
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Each nation, upon joining the EU, designates its official language or languages. The EU policy on multilingualism is deliberate; it sees the use of its citizens'...
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