TheeBooks-on-Demand (EOD) network gathered at the Moravian Library in Brno, Czechia, on the 8th–9th October 2026 for the first meeting of EOD4ECCCH, a new project supported through the ECHOES Cascading Grants Programme. The meeting explored how libraries can unlock the potential of digitised collections and connect them with the European Collaborative Cloud for Cultural Heritage (ECCCH).
Kick-off meeting participants
The EOD network brings together 35 libraries with millions of digitised pages spanning five centuries and several languages. EOD4ECCCH builds on this shared resource, shifting the focus from digitisation to the discovery, enrichment and reuse of digital texts for research, education and public engagement.
The project builds on two decades of experience in digitisation and optical character recognition (OCR), as well as the results of the Creative Europe-funded EODOPEN project in resolving copyright questions, creating accessible formats and involving communities. Its next step is to help libraries use the tools, knowledge and opportunities for cooperation offered by ECHOES and the Cultural Heritage Cloud.
The Brno programme combined an introduction to EOD4ECCCH with practical demonstrations and discussions about new technologies for library collections. Participants explored AI-powered tools for page cropping and metadata extraction, recent developments in text recognition, and the conversion of historical card catalogues into searchable digital records. Sessions also considered how library collections can support digital humanities and language research, and what a digital library designed around today’s AI capabilities might look like.
Over 24 months, EOD4ECCCH will organise three international workshops and regional outreach events hosted by its partners. Topics will include automated text recognition, legal challenges, language diversity, collaborative transcription and enrichment, and research-ready data. These activities will share tools and practices from ECHOES and related initiatives, with particular attention to the needs of small and medium-sized cultural heritage institutions.
By sharing expertise across the EOD network and beyond, the project aims to make Europe’s textual heritage easier to find, access and reuse. EOD4ECCCH began on 1 September 2026 and brings together 11 partners coordinated by the University of Innsbruck.
