, Russia,
San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland,
Turkey, United Kingdom, and Vatican City.

How did Gabriel begin? During the 1994 CENL meeting in Oslo,
Norway, it was suggested that national libraries should set up
a common electronic board with updates about their ongoing
projects. Representatives from the national libraries of
Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek), United Kingdom (British
Library) and Finland (Helsinki University Library) met in March
1995 in The Hague, Netherlands, to launch the pilot Gabriel
project. Three other national libraries joined the project, the
ones of Germany (Deutsche Bibliothek), France (Bibliotheque
nationale de France) and Poland (Biblioteka Narodowa). Gabriel
would describe their services and collections, while seeking to
attract other national libraries into the project. The original
Gabriel website was launched in September 1995. It was
maintained by the British Library Network Services and mirrored
by the national libraries of Netherlands and Finland.

In November 1995, other national libraries were invited to
submit entries describing their services and collections. At
the same time, more and more national libraries were launching
their own websites and online catalogs. Gabriel also became a
common portal for those.

During the 1996 CENL meeting in Lisbon, Portugal, it was
decided that Gabriel would become an official CENL website in
January 1997. Gabriel was maintained by the national library in
the Netherlands, and mirrored by four other national libraries,
in United Kingdom, Finland, Germany, and Slovenia.

Eight years later, in summer 2005, Gabriel merged with the
European Library's website, as a common portal for the 43
national libraries in Europe. In March 2006, the European
Commission launched the project of a European digital library,
after a "call for ideas" from September to December 2005. This
European digital library - named Europeana - opened its
"virtual" doors in November 2008, with a crash from the server
within 24 hours, followed by an experimental period with part
of the collections.

In 1998, eight years before launching Europeana, the European
Commission was running a Library Program(me) for public
libraries, that aimed "to help increase the ready availability
of library resources across Europe, and to facilitate their
interconnection with the information and communications
infrastructure. Its two main orientations will be the