The European Library's opening to research libraries

Colleagues

The European Library is approaching the end of its two-year project Europeana Libraries, by which it started to expand its membership from national libraries to include research libraries in Europe. As the project draws to a close, The European Library will start to put its business plan into action. The subscription model whereby the national libraries of Europe supported TEL by a membership fee has been expanded, with the structure simplified and the fees reduced to take account of an expected larger number of library members. Accompanying the revised subscription model is a comprehensive list of services that the new European Library offers to all members.

This is an opportunity for the research libraries of Europe to expose their metadata at the highest level. It will be visible in both The European Library portal and in Europeana, thus ensuring a wide audience of researchers and general public alike, who will be able to re-use the data in their own workflows. Membership of The European Library greatly benefits libraries too, as extra services are available to enrich members’ metadata and expose it again in other research environments.

Project staff working on Europeana Libraries are keen to speak with research libraries’ senior staff to gauge their interest in joining The European Library and to test the financial business model with them. My colleagues conducting this work will be Thomas Baldwin, CERL (thomas.baldwin@cerl.org), Julia Brungs, The European Library (julia.brungs@kb.nl) and Marian Lefferts, CERL (marian.lefferts@cerl.org). They will be contacting research libraries, asking for a short telephone or Skype interview with the relevant senior library staff member. To provide a foundation for discussions, a prospectus and a consolidated list of services have been prepared, outlining the background to The European Library’s development and the benefits of membership (for libraries and for researchers), respectively. Please feel free to distribute these documents through your own networks to spread the message.

The project team looks forward to speaking with you.

With best wishes,

Dr Paul Ayris

Director of UCL Library Services & UCL Copyright Officer;

President of LIBER  (Association of European Research Libraries)