European online library back in action

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 23 Dec 2008 at 14:42

The EU's online library of famous works has come back online, a month after it collapsed under the weight of user demand.

Europeana is intended to offer a central repository of two million books, paintings and music held in more than 1,000 European institutions.

The site lasted just a day before the 10 million hits per hour it was receiving brought it crashing to a halt. However, a spokesperson for the project says the site is now back online, and the problems have been addressed.

"Europeana works again ... after we have quadrupled server capacity," says European Commission spokesman Martin Selmayr.

The news will come as a huge sigh of relief to Europeana's director, Jill Cousins, who believes the site brings a level of expertise to the information on offer, as opposed to rival sites.

"If you go onto Google, you don't always know what you're getting ... Here you do. The institutions have been here for hundreds of years and they know what they're talking about and that's what you're getting out of it," she claims.