Hundreds of Thousands of Books and Periodicals Online

Within the National Digital Library project, co-financed from EU Structural Funds through the Integrated Operational Programme, the National Library of the Czech Republic and the Moravian Library in Brno will digitise a significant part of their collections, preserve it in the long term and make it accessible for you. 

The Creation of the NDL project has three main aims:

1. The digitisation of a significant part of the Bohemica of the 19th–21st centuries, i.e. books issued in the Czech Republic, written in Czech or discussing the Czech lands. By the end of 2019, we will have digitised a total of more than 50 million pages, hence approximately 300,000 volumes.

2. The long-term preservation of documents in a reliable digital repository, which will provide a space for the safe placement of already digitised documents as well as the digital documents created or acquired in the NDL project and within other projects.

3. Making digital documents accessible in a uniform, user-friendly interface with a high degree of personalisation possible. From a single place, the digitised documents as well as paid online databases will be accessible. This will offer you one instrument to browse extensive sources provided by your library

Which documents will be given priority in digitising and making accessible?

• Documents of the 19th and 20th centuries which are most threatened by acid-paper degradation
• The most user-interesting and most requested publications from 1801 to the present
• The most user-interesting historical documents until 1801 (including full-text translations)
• Documents freely accessible to the wider public or through Czech libraries
• Other types of documents according to the criteria of significance, uniqueness, physical state, etc.

 The project is financed with roughly CZK 300 million from the Call 07 of the Integrated Operational Programme ‘Electronisation of Public Administration’, Priority Axis 1: Modernisation of Public Administration, Area of Intervention 1.1 Development of Information Society in Public Administration.  

The 85% contribution from the ERDF structural fund of CZK 254,946,300 is complemented by a 15% co-financing from the state budget of CZK 44,990,700. The total eligible public expenditures thus are CZK 299,937,000.

The project is implemented by the National Library of the CR; the partner is the Moravian Library in Brno.