Swiss join European digital archive gateway

Vintage Swiss posters will be among the items accessible on the Europeana website

Switzerland's national archives are to become part of a new Europe-wide digital library that will link collections from different countries.

The project aims to piece together shared European history and show how ideas, trends or movements have developed.

Digitalised items from the Swiss National Library will be pooled with around two million archives from institutions around Europe, accessible via a website being launched later this year.

A test page of the Europeana website went online on Monday featuring Vincent van Gogh’s painting A Pair of Shoes, currently housed at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, as an example of the kind of work that will be on view.

The website will be developed and undergo user trials over the coming months.

As a member of the Conference of European National Librarians in charge of the project, the Swiss National Library automatically agreed to take part.

“De facto we are part of this project even if Switzerland is not part of the European Union,” Swiss National Library director Marie-Christine Doffey told swissinfo.

“It is important as a national library to contribute actively to this type of project.”

Doffey said Switzerland’s multilingual tradition meant it could make an important contribution.

“We bring concrete answers to problems linked to different cultures that co-exist and work together, also in preservation and cultural heritage.

“We are always an interesting partner for this type of project.”

One-stop search engine

The website will be hosted by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the national library of the Netherlands.

Around €1.3 million (SFr2.05 million) in European Commission funding is being spent creating the website. Libraries, museums and archives around Europe have been asked to gather and contribute digitalised material by themes such as travel or religion.

Jonathan Purday, spokesman for Europeana, said the project aimed to provide a one-stop search engine of archives for use by researchers, teachers, students and creative industries.

He said: “Most organisations around Europe have already digitalised amounts of material, sometimes very significant amounts of material. Thousands of photographs or posters, thousands of pages of books.

“The problem is that people do not know about material in other countries. Material in other countries, of course, may be significantly related to the topic.”

Someone researching Leonard Da Vinci, for example, could tap into his manuscripts in the British Library or in Italy, digitalised paintings and drawings at various museums and galleries, or a number of important books published on him.

“At the moment you can’t bring all of that material together,” Purday added. “You cannot use a search engine to find it because often it is buried in the databases of the individual libraries or institutions.”

Digital puzzle

Doffey said it was like piecing together a digital puzzle of shared European history.

“We have a digitised collection of posters that is accessible via the website and 40,000 posters that represent all the diversity of this tradition of posters in Switzerland and are for example important evidence in the field of tourism or travel.”

“The goal is to make available all that has been digitalised and all that is interesting for Europeana.”

She stressed the website aimed to be attractive to users, enticing them to search and make use of resources of cultural institutions “while also offering the same technology as that they can find by using Google, but with more interesting and pertinent results”.

“We must absolutely make use of this wealth. It is ‘the’ European initiative.”

swissinfo, Jessica Dacey

Context

The Swiss National Library collects all publications that relate to Switzerland. Established in 1895, it now houses more than 3.7 million items ranging from books and daily newspapers to paintings and posters, as well as several special collections.

The library will select digitalised items from its archives and submit metadata to the Europeana website, which will be matched with other catalogues of digital material from other European collections.

The website will act as a search engine, allowing users a chance to browse and access material on their research subject from cultural institutions around Europe.

The Europeana website will undergo several months of testing by librarians, students and researchers to ensure it is user-friendly. The prototype will be available to the public in November 2008.