EUROPE: Digital library under construction

The creation of a European digital library has begun at the University of Leuven in Belgium, where a group of doctoral students is using a dome scanner to produce digital images that can be used remotely by researchers. Leuven University, a leader in IT technology in the Benelux countries, is at the forefront of the development of 3D digitisation.

The university is working through the EPOCH network to develop new technology to help preserve ancient and decaying texts and artefacts while at the same time opening them up for research. EPOCH is a network of about 100 European cultural institutions collaborating to improve the quality and effectiveness of IT in preserving cultural heritage.

At present the Leuven team is working to produce a digital image of a cuneiform tablet from the 4th millennium BC, comprised of up to 260 pictures, for manipulation as a virtual image by researchers across the world.

The project is linked to a large-scale digitisation programme conducted by the National Library of the Netherlands in The Hague.

Already books, manuscripts, photographs and letters can be accessed through the library’s website which has now begun to digitise its whole collection of 30 million items. The library claims to own an 8 million-page newspaper collection dating back to 1618.

The Leuven project uses specialised equipment developed by the Vienna company, Quidenus Technologies, which has created a robotic book scanner capable of digitising up to 2,000 pages an hour.

The company said that 50 engineers and technicians were involved in the creation of the machine, which automatically turns all the book pages regardless of differing properties, such as paper quality, thickness and weight.

Leuven University has also joined with the Dutch historian Ewoud Sanders who has developed a database of 1.5 million pages using a high speed scanner.