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On April 29-30, 2002 "The European Library (TEL) - The Gate to Europe's Knowledge: Milestone Conference" was held at Die Deutsche Bibliothek (The German National Library) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The meeting was attended by 115 people from 23 countries.
In addition to print media, which are likely to retain their importance in many areas, networked publications, interactive and multimedia products and services will play an increasingly important role over the next few years. In order to structure the vast flood of information for the benefit of the individual scholar and decision-maker, and ultimately for every private citizen, WWW gateways and portals will need to be created and continuously upgraded. This task requires international cooperation on both technology and content.
Nine European national libraries together with the Conference of European National Librarians are constructing the basis for such a portal concept in the project "The European Library" (TEL). TEL is an accompanying measure within the framework of the Key Action 3 of the IST-Programme (Information Society Technologies) of the European Union (EU).
On the basis of the decentralized digital and conventional holdings of the participating national libraries the technical, legal and context platform of a pan-European information server is to be created. In future users will be able to search all online catalogues of the European national libraries simultaneously with a single inquiry, proceeding from there to access their digital and conventional holdings and services. Definition and clarification of legal issues concerning copyright and licensing as well as a...