EU Launch Online Library

The European Union launched a digital library recently and were swamped by 10 million hits an hour. The site was so popular that after it was first launched the site crashed and had to be temporarily closed. The website is a prototype project called Europeana and is Europe’s answer to Google Book Search, full of digitised versions of millions of books, artworks, manuscripts, maps, objects and films from Europe’s most important libraries, archives and museums, providing them free to download from one website – europeana.eu. The project is a response to fears that Google was dominating the internet. Europeana will go one step further and provide interactive content, audio and video as well as print sources.