EU's new digital library operational again

The European Union's first large-scale digital library, Europeana (www.europeana.eu), was online again a month after it crashed after being overwhelmed by readers' interest.

"Europeana works again... after we have quadrupled server capacity," European Commission spokesman Martin Selmayr told a daily news briefing.

Europeana gives multilingual access to two million digitised books and other items of cultural and historical significance held in more than 1,000 institutions in the 27 EU states.

Soon after its launch on November 20 the website froze, with servers overwhelmed by a volume of 10 million hits an hour.