European libraries work on e-book search engine

Libraries across Europe have been working on better integration between their e-book collections as part of the eBooks on Demand (EOD) initiative.

This work includes the recent launch of a common search engine for finding books which already are or will be digitised. The EOD search currently makes available over 2.5 million records from 15 libraries, and gives direct access to already digitised items as well as books offered for digitisation on demand.

‘Our aim is that European cultural heritage would be only one mouse-click away from the readers and the EOD search enables that,’ said Silvia Gstrein, who is EOD project coordinator.

The EOD service, which was started in 2006, is co-financed by the European Commission Culture Programme. Today, 30 libraries from 12 countries offer the EOD service.

The libraries involved also met in the National Library of Portugal in November for hackdays aimed at providing information from library catalogues and repositories in social web and other platforms.