European Commissioner for Information Society and Media Viviane Reding delivers a speech during the opening ceremony of the launch of the European digital library Europeana, in Brussels November 20, 2008

With the European digital library Europeana officially online Thursday, Internet users worldwide can now have access to over 2 million books, maps, recordings, photographs, archives, paintings and films from national libraries and cultural institutions of the 27 member states of the European Union (EU).

More contents will be added to this already enormous digital library in the coming years.

"With Europeana, we combine Europe's competitive advantage in communication and networking technologies with our rich cultural heritage. Europeans will now be able to access the incredible resources of our great collections quickly and easily in a single space," said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

EU commissioner for information society and media, Viviane Reding, called for cultural institutions, publishing houses and technology companies in the EU to continue to supply Europeana with resources in digital form. "My objective is that in 2010, Europeana will include at least 10 million objects," she said.

"Europeana offers a journey through time, across borders, and into new ideas of what our culture is. More than that, it will connect people to their history and, through interactive pages and tools, to each other," she added.

Europeana, initiated by the European Commission in 2005, is run by the European Digital Library Foundation, which brings together EU's major associations of libraries, archives, museums, audiovisual archives and cultural institutions. Europeana is hosted by the Dutch national library.