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Friday 16 October 2009: EU Bookshop Digital Library goes live - All the EU publications in one place

• The news
• The background
• The event
• The sources
• The Toolbox
• The contacts

The news

Scanning 12 million pages makes more than 110 000 EU publications available free of charge for download in the EU Bookshop Digital Library. It offers all publications ever edited by the Publications Office on behalf of the EU institutions, agencies and other bodies since 1952.

The EU Bookshop is a valuable information source for citizens, journalists, education professionals, students, librarians, publishers, and anybody interested in Europe, in 50 languages, including the possibility of ordering printed copies.

The background

The Publications Office's archives have long represented a veritable treasure trove of European history. These publications can once again see the virtual light of day through the Publications Office Digital Library.

The Publications Office Digital Library was a response to a growing demand to digitise out-of-print publications. In 2007, the Publications Office launched a PDF-on-demand service, wherein users could request publications to be retrieved from the archives and scanned as needed. They turned out to be in such high demand that within six months the service was saturated. To better serve the users, it was decided to scan the industrial volumes of the entire archive.

The result – less than two years later – is an electronic library of more than 14 million pages of web-optimised PDFs progressively available to the public free of charge. Public response has been overwhelmingly positive, and the numbers speak for themselves: total PDF downloads jumped from just 65 000 in 2008 to an expected 230 000 per month for 2009.

The event

16.10.2009 - 15:30-17:30: Frankfurt Bookfair, Hall 6.2 Press Centre Conference room, Messegelände, Ludwig-Erhard-Anlage 1, 60327 Frankfurt.

Speakers:

• Leonard Orban, EU Commissioner for multilingualism
• Claudia Lux, President of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions 2007-09 (IFLA) and Director General of the Central and Regional Library Berlin

Commission Newsroom

The sources

• EU Bookshop
  
• Publications Office of the European Union
  
• Frankfurt Bookfair

THE TOOLBOX

Press release [30 KB]  Leonard Orban - “All the EU Publications you are looking for” (speech of 16.10.09) [36 KB]  Presentation of the Digital Library (S. Stapel) [459 KB]  Libraries and digital publications (Cl. Lux) [220 KB] [36 KB] Examples of what can be found in EU Bookshop [160 KB]  Frequently Asked Questions about the Publications Office Digital Library and the EU Bookshop [87 KB]   Technical background document [33 KB]  Flyer 'Launch event' [2 MB]  Flash banner (small) [9 KB]  Flash banner (big) [19 KB]

The contacts

Pietro Petrucci	+32 229 89492
Roger Nunn	+32 229 53647