One Europe? One European Library (online)!

It's not easy to get 45 countries to agree on something, but libraries have a long history of collaboration and sharing, and in Europe this has led to the creation of "The European Library,"

"a portal which offers access to the combined resources (books, magazines, journals.... - both digital and non-digital) of the 45 national libraries of Europe. It offers free searching and delivers digital objects - some free, some priced."

Why use it? Consider the reasons proffered by the developers:

• It brings together disparate collections on your desktop and will allow for cross-collection searching
• It presents integrated results and will deliver digital objects
• It enables types of collection-level searching which would otherwise be impossible
• It is a major contribution to research both in making resources widely available and by making possible new connections through exploitation of a huge virtual library collection.
• The European Library encourages new research!

Along with the catalog search interface, the EL's site includes personal account registration, handy for saving favorite items and search strategies for later use. 16 languages currently supported for searching. Bravo!