The European Commission endorsed the work of the European Digital Library Foundation when high level EC officials met members for the formal handover of their statutes. “Europe's citizens should all be able to enjoy our rich cultural heritage. This Foundation is a significant step towards making that ambition come true," Commissioner Viviane Reding, responsible for Information Society and Media commented. "It shows the commitment of Europe's cultural institutions to work together to make their collections available and searchable by the public through a common and multilingual access point online."
Foundation members include the key European heritage and information associations. Their statutes commit members to work in partnership to:
* Provide access to Europe's cultural and scientific heritage though a cross-domain portal
* Co-operate in the delivery and sustainability of the joint portal
* Stimulate initiatives to bring together existing digital content
* Support digitisation of Europe's cultural and scientific heritage
The European digital library is developing its prototype site for launch next year. To coincide with the formal handover to the Commissioner, the Foundation announced the CITY as the first of the site's themes.
The CITY is a broad theme that will enable the prototype site to show the European urban experience from several perspectives. Emerging ideas include:
* cities of the future/cities of the past
* migration and diaspora
* trade and industry
* design, shopping and urban cool
* pox, cholera and the plague: the route to urban health
* archaeology and architecture
* utopias and cities of the imagination
* riot and disorder
* palaces and politics
The European digital library will launch a prototype in November 2008. It will give direct access to at least 2 million digitised books, photos, maps, sounds, films and archival records from Europe's libraries, archives, museums and audio-visual collections.
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