The prototype of Europeana, or European Digital Library, is at http://www.europeana.eu. It is a joint project of the European Union Member States and the European Commission: a multilingual search system extending to the object level. The digitised materials of libraries, archives and museums form the key contents of Europeana.
Europeana constitutes a common view of European cultural heritage. At the moment, there are four million objects in the service. The completed service will be launched in the spring 2011.
The National Digital Library project participates in the development of Europeana. In the future, metadata on Finnish materials will be mediated to Europeana probably via the National Digital Library.
National digital libraries are developed simultaneously in many European Union Member States; in future their materials can also be searched for in Europeana.
There are also other ongoing projects in Europe promoting digitising and the availability of materials and supporting Europeana. For example, Finnish organisations are participating in the Athena, Apenet, BHL-Europe, EuropeanaLocal, EuropeanaTravel and European Film Gateway projects.
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The development website of Europeana: http://version1.europeana.eu/.
