Since its launch in November 2008, the Europe's multilingual digital library Europeana has  doubled the number of objects to which users can access, reaching 4.6 million digitized contents. The Commission's objective is to reach 10 million by 2010. This objective comes along the public  debate opened by the Commission on the challenges of digitization of books in Europe, and the implications of this with projects such as Google Books.

The multilingual European digital library, Europeana, which was launched in November 2008 as part of the Digital Libraries initiative, already counts with 4.6 million digitised books, maps, photographs, film clips and newspapers, compared to 2 million nine months ago. New items that have been added include: a collection of 70 incunabula (books printed with the earliest printing techniques) from the library of Catalonia, a 1572 edition of "Os Lusíadas" by Luís de Camoẽs, the national poem of Portugal, and footage of the Friedrichstraße in Berlin from 1913, from the Association des Cinémathèques Européennes.

However, the substantial progress made with Europeana also brings to the surface the challenges and problems linked to the digitisation process. At the moment, Europeana includes mainly digitised books which are in the public domain and are thus no longer protected by copyright law (which extends to 70 years after the death of the author). For the moment, Europeana includes, for legal reasons, neither out-of print works (some 90% of the books in Europe's national libraries), nor orphan works (estimated at 10 – 20% of in-copyright collections) which are still in copyright but where the author cannot be identified.

Europeana also shows that licensing of copyright-protected material in Europe still takes place under a very fragmented legal framework. Earlier this year a French aggregator had to withdraw photographs from Europeana, since it only had the right to disseminate the material on French territory. This debate about copyright implications in projects for the implementation of digital libraries, has been brought to the scene in many occasions, as it was the case in June 2009 when the Council called on the Commission to asses the implications of the Google Books project could have on copyright in Europe.

To address all these issues, the Commission launched on August 28th 2009 a public consultation on the future of Europeana and the digitisation of books that will run until November 15th 2009. Questions the Commission asks include: How can it be ensured that digitised material can be made available to consumers EU-wide? Should there be better cooperation with publishers with regard to in-copyright material? Would it be a good idea to create European registries for orphan and out-of print works? How should Europeana be financed in the long term?

EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding, highlighted that despite the progress made with Europeana it is “alarming that only 5% of all digitised books in the EU are available on Europeana. I also note that almost half of Europeana's digitised works have come from one country alone, while all other Member States continue to under-perform dramatically. To me this shows, above all, that Member States must stop envying progress made in other continents and finally do their own homework. It also shows that Europeana alone will not suffice to put Europe on the digital map of the world. We need to work better together to make Europe's copyright framework fit for the digital age”.