The three-day LIBER-EBLIDA conference held in the Dutch capital brought together representatives from 27 national and university libraries and commercial entities across and outside Europe to discuss the way forward for the digitization of library material in Europe.The conference kicked off with a progress report by Paul Ayris, Director of Library Services at UniversityCollege, London, of the actions recommended during the 1st LIBER-EBLIDA conference held in Copenhagen in October 2007, where a LIBER Road Map toward digitization had been launched. Ayris analysed the status of the Road Map and illustrated the significant advances which LIBER had made in the field of digitization since the 2007 Workshop.The new LIBER Strategic Plan highlighted digitization as one of LIBER’s core aims.LIBER’s work aimed at putting the student/researcher at the centre of the web of provision of digitized material.The challenge for LIBER libraries and institutions was to reach out to meet the student/researcher in the space where they work and want to be.
A thought-provoking presentation was delivered by the representative of the European Commission, Javier Hernandez-Ros, who spoke about Public-Private Partnership in Digitization, thus introducing the subject of the Google Digital Library, which was to become one of the most heatedly debated topics during the workshop.Hernandez-Ros argued that since the first agreements between Google and US and European libraries for scanning library collections were announced at the end of 2004, little had been done in Europe to engage public commercial entities, like Google in the US, on digitization projects.Apart from Google initiatives, public-private partnerships have not yet really taken off as a common method of digitizing content in Europe.They have the potential of combining digital technologies and private investments with the invaluable collections of public cultural institutions.The resources and skills of the private sector are essential for digitizing cultural heritage and they can help to achieve the European Commission’s strategy for digitization, online accessibility and digital preservation of Europe’s collective memory. Ben White from the British Library gave an interesting exposition about the British Library’s experience of entering into public-private partnerships with publishers to facilitate digitization of its collections.The topic of public-private partnerships continued to come up frequently during the workshop, especially during the time reserved for questions or commentaries after each presentation.
Another main theme of the LIBER-EBLIDA workshop was Europeana, a project initiated by the European Commission as a search platform to a collection of European digital libraries with digitized books, paintings, films and archives.The European Commission had focused on Europeana as the main vehicle for bringing together already digitized material in Europe, expecting libraries to find their own funding for digitizing collections to contribute to Europeana.The main concern was that the digitization of library materials was being taken out of the hands of libraries and given to Google which intends to increase its control after agreeing the book settlement.This can be prevented if libraries find ways to fund and organize digitization and monitor what the other parties are doing to ensure the needs of the public and libraries are considered.Collaboration across European boundaries can help to prevent technical differences emerging, to find funding, to identify overlaps and efficiencies and to produce the tools needed to display and manage the content.While the Google model and its initiatives around content partnerships in the UK and the Netherlands were described by Jason Hanley of Google Books, Jill Cousins, Executive Director of Europeana, spoke about the challenges faced by Europeana in its efforts to aggregate digitized material from various sources.Aggregation aids the user of digital cultural heritage material and by increasing traffic keeps our cultural heritage institutions relevant in the 21st century.The weaknesses of Europeana as a portal for European digitized material were highlighted by Ricky Erway, senior program officer in OCLC Research.She drew comparisons with other digitization programmes, especially Google, in areas such as access, funding and collaborative processes.During the break-out session on the topic of Aggregation held on the last day of the workshop, there were calls for a greater coordination across countries and within countries themselves for material to be digitized under a single portal for the benefit of researchers the world over.
Silvia Gstrein, Project Manager at the University of Innsbruck, described the interesting eBooks-on-Demand (EOD) initiative practised since 2007 in libraries in ten European countries ranging from Portugal to Estonia and from Denmark to Hungary.The EOD network allows users to order digital copies of copyright-free books from the EOD network libraries’ collections.Once requested the library digitizes a particular item and delivers it to the end user via the EOD service network.After a certain amount of time the book digitized in this way is then incorporated into the digital libraries of the participating libraries and thus made accessible to the general public via the Internet.The EOD service is implemented within the framework of a network.Each individual library is responsible for processing the order, digitizing the book and its long term preservation.A central database with web access is responsible for the generation of eBooks, their delivery to customers, electronic payment and automatic text recognition including recognition of gothic font texts.This is an initiative which the National Library of Malta would do well to look into.
Focus was placed on the needs of the user whose expectations and demands keep rising as technology advances.Stuart Dempster, Director of the Strategic Content Alliance, contended that in times of rapid change and budgetary constraints, digital libraries should be delivering programmes and services that make best use of resources and effort.Understanding one’s audiences is essential to deliver services which provoke the maximum public value and demonstrate impact.It is important to understand how audiences wish to consume digital content.Also, the issue of metadata cannot be underestimated.Catherine Lupovici, Operations Director at Europeana, gave an interesting presentation about the needs for metadata.The digitization process and organization includes the creation of metadata for custodial and access purposes that can cover medium to very long term objectives.They are currently mainly standardized for custodial perspective including description, persistent identification and administration.The same metadata have to allow the building of discovery and navigation user services for short term access to web and mobile devices users.
The workshop gave space to various single libraries to present their projects regarding digital collections.Such projects included the Gallica by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Arnaud Beaufort), the Cabrio project by the Bruges Public Library (Koen Calis) and the digitization project developed by the Lyon Public Library (Magali Haettiger).
We cannot conclude this report without mentioning the issues highlighted in the very interesting presentation entitled ‘What’s the point of digitization?’ by Alistair Dunning, Digitization Programme Manager at the Joint Information Systems Committee, UK.Dunning’s exposition summed up the core issues proposed for discussion during the entire workshop and brought home the basic question ‘Why, after all, are we digitizing?’He explained that when digitization projects began in the 1990s, the advantages seemed evident because knowledge could be democraticized, fragile items could be preserved and hidden collections could be revealed to all.However, soon enough, cracks began to appear in cases where websites disappeared because they could not be sustained and where content was underused.This led creators of digital content to ask themselves why they are engaging in digitization and how do researchers, teachers, students, special interest groups and the general public engage with digital resources.Only if such evidence is gathered and synthesised will it be possible to make more coherent cases for the continued digitization of analogue material.
During this three-day conference, the highly important themes of relevant metadata standards, public-private partnerships, user needs and aggregation and cross-domain aspects were brought to the attention of all participants from across Europe.The reasons for digitization as well as the delicate Google vs Europeana issue also frequently came to the fore.Delegates were given plenty of material for thought and action.However, it is also stressed that national governments encourage and support digitization initiatives on the part of libraries and provide funds for the necessary infrastructure to be put in place in order to create a common national database of cultural heritage items from libraries, archives and museums.Once this is done, European libraries could be better equipped to face the major challenge of creating an integrated information environment by facilitating the access to digitized materials across Europe.
article by Claudio & Maroma
One last comment to: Carmen Morlon & Claudia Forero - You did a great job indeed!
