This chapter focuses on traditional libraries, with librarians, walls, books and periodicals lined up on shelves, and tables and chairs for the readers. The next chapter will focus on digital libraries.
6.1. European and World Directories for Libraries
The first library website was that of the Helsinki City Library, Finland, which opened in February 1994.
A trilingual English-French-German site, Gabriel (acronym for Gateway and Bridge
to Europe's National Libraries) is the World Wide Web service for Europe's
National Libraries represented in the Conference of European National Librarians
(CENL).
"Gabriel also recalls Gabriel Naudé, whose Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque (Paris, 1627) is one of the earliest theoretical works about libraries in any European language and provides a blueprint for the great modern research library. The name Gabriel is common to many European languages and is derived from the Old Testament, where Gabriel appears as one of the archangels or heavenly messengers. He also appears in a similar role in the New Testament and the Qu'ran."
There are currently 38 national libraries from the member states of the Council
of Europe participating in CENL and Gabriel (Albania, Austria, Belgium,
Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany,
Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania,
Luxembourg, (Former Yugoslav) Republic of Macedonia, Malta, The Netherlands,
Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia,
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Vatican City).
During the 1994 Oslo meeting of the Conference of European National Libraries, it was suggested that national libraries should have an electronic noticeboard available to one another as a means of keeping up-to-date with current activities. An ad hoc meeting was held in The Hague, Netherlands, on March 27, 1995, at which representatives of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, British Library and Helsinki University Library met to discuss the proposed CENL WWW. Objectives were set out at the meeting and an action schedule agreed. These three libraries set up the pilot Gabriel project. Three other national libraries agreed to participate in the pilot project: Die Deutsche Bibliothek (Germany), the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Biblioteka Narodowa (Poland). Working together, these libraries created a functional pilot service based on entries describing their own services and collections between March and September 1995. The pilot service was endorsed by the CENL annual meeting at Bern in Switzerland in September 1995 and launched on the Internet. The service was then mounted and maintained in London by British Library Network Services and was mirrored in The Hague, Netherlands, and Helsinki, Finland.
A second stage in the project was initiated on behalf of CENL in October 1995. The project was hosted by the British Library in London. In November 1995, national libraries that had not participated in the Gabriel pilot project were invited to submit their entries. Using the pilot as a basis, this development project aimed to achieve comprehensive coverage of European national libraries within Gabriel. During the life of the project, the numbers of CENL member libraries with their own WWW servers had increased quite rapidly. Every participating library assigned staff members to act as contact persons for Gabriel. This project ended in September 1996. As content and publicity built up, and the numbers of linking sites expanded, measurable usage of the Gabriel service had increased rapidly.
During the CENL meeting in September 1996 in Lisbon, the CENL members decided that Gabriel should be launched as an official service of CENL on behalf of Europe's national libraries on January 1, 1997. The editorial maintenance of Gabriel was taken over by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of the Netherlands. The site is now mirrored from the websites of five national libraries in The Hague (The Netherlands), London (United Kingdom), Helsinki (Finland), Frankfort (Germany), and Ljubljana (Slovenia).
Updated in December 11, 1998, the introduction of Internet and the Library
Sphere: Further progress for European Libraries specifies: