Portal of the European Digital Library Europeana

Prague - A website that presents digitized data from European archives, museums, libraries, and audiovisual collections through a single portal has launched its test operation. The site, which is part of the European Digital Library project, can be found at www.europeana.eu.
The homepage of the test operation features Vincent van Gogh's painting A Pair of Shoes from 1886; it entices visitors with an animation associated with Nancy Sinatra's song These Boots Are Made for Walkin’. The video introduces the symbol of shoes and offers visitors a walk through European history.
On the website, it will be possible to search for paintings, photographs, objects, books, newspapers, archival records, films, and audio documents that have been digitized by organizations and institutions dedicated to the preservation of cultural heritage in Europe. Europeana will enable people to explore how ideas were transferred from one country to another, how political and social trends evolved, and how artistic movements and tendencies influenced the entire continent.
As part of the European Digital Library project, the Europeana web portal began to take shape last autumn, and the work was funded by the European Commission. The prototype of Europeana is expected to be completed this November, providing access to nearly two million digitized objects, including books, photographs, maps, audio recordings, films, and archival records from European libraries, archives, museums, and audiovisual collections.
The idea of creating a European Digital Library was proposed by the European Commission in 2006, which noted that only a small share of artistic collections from member countries had been published online. It called on member states to establish digitization facilities and to systematically digitize their cultural heritage so that these materials would be accessible to the highest possible extent.
The library's initiative was also announced in response to the pressure from American internet search engines planning widespread digitization of Anglo-Saxon literature for commercial purposes.
One of the foundations of the EU Digital Library is the Czech National Library's Manuscriptorium project, which is dedicated to digitizing old prints and manuscripts.