European digital library is slow on take-off

The digital European library Europeana isn't growing as fast as it could. While Google Books is expanding the European project is struggling with different copy right laws and the lack of contributions from member states.

Europeana, the online database for Europe's cultural heritage, is less than a year old, but already the EU commissioner responsible for the information society and the media felt the need to complain twice about its slow progress.

"Member states must stop envying progress made in other continents and finally do their homework," Viviane Reding said last month. She was referring to Google Books, Google's searchable online library, which seems to be in much better shape than the European, government-funded project Europeana.

So how bad are things with Europeana? Jon Purday, Europeana's marketing manager, is laconic about it. "Our collection has grown from two million objects to nearly five million this year," he said. "The plan is to double in size each year, and I have no doubt we will meet that target."

Jealous of Google

EU commissioner Reding's complaints were meant to shake up the member states, Purday suspects. "She has noticed that Google has been investing money and effort in digitalising the cultural heritage, including that of Europe."

Major libraries in France and Italy have entered into talks with Google this summer about possible collaboration. For governments this is an easy way to save money in hard economic times, but it is a decision they may come to regret.

Purday: "There is a good chance that Google will gradually acquire a monopoly on digitalised material. Until now they have always been very open en generous with information, but who is to say what they will be like in ten or twenty years."

Germany recently objected to Google Books, which has already scanned 7 million books for commercial exploitation. Germany wanted Google to remove all German authors and publishers so that copyright holders could decide for themselves whether they want to be part of Google Books are not. As a result Google decided to exclude all European books that are still on the market from Google Books for now.

EU commissioner Reding, who has admitted to being impressed by Google's aggressive approach, has suggested a collaboration between the US company and Europeana as far as works in the public domain are concerned. That means any material on which the copyright has expired - 70 years after the artist's death in Europe - and which can be reproduced freely. A Google spokesperson confirmed that the company is talking to Europeana, but there are no concrete plans on the table yet.

Copyright law nightmare

Europeana's collection until now consists only of rights-free material. It is part of the reason why progress is perhaps not as fast as it should be: 90 percent of all the books in Europe's libraries are no longer available in print but are still subject to copyright, which means that Europeana first has to clear the rights for every single book.

It is an unworkable situation, said Madeleine de Cock Buning, a professor in copyright, communications and media law at Utrecht university. "European copyright law leaves too little room for disclosing information in the public interest," she said.

One solution would be to standardise copyright laws, which now differ from country to country. "Another possibility is to introduce a compulsory license for certain digitalisation projects, compulsory disclosure in the public interest."

EU commissioner Reding is open to such ideas, but she has a powerful opponent in the publishing industry, which fear losing revenue to the internet. "It will be at least another five years before we have a uniform copyright law in Europe, if ever," said De Cock Buning.

Another hurdle is the gathering of the data themselves. Some libraries, like the Hungarian National Library in Budapest, are also part of the eBooks-on-Demand programme. They digitalise copyright-free material from their collections and send it to private individuals for a fee. This precludes the same material from being sent to Europeana, which gives it away for free.

There is also an imbalance between the member states' contributions. Almost half the material digitalised to date is from France; the remainder is from the other EU countries plus Norway and Switzerland. As a result, Goethe is available in Hungarian and French, but not in the original German.

Purday: "There are only twenty people working at Europeana. That means we can't go looking for material ourselves; we have to rely on what is offered to us."