European digital library site crashes

BRUSSELS - A new digital library of Europe's cultural heritage crashed just hours after it went online and will be out of operation for weeks, the European Commission said yesterday, attributing the embarrassing failure to overwhelming public interest.

Europeana, a website of 2 million documents, images, video, and audio clips, opened on Thursday with international publicity and acclaim from researchers.

But by yesterday, those trying to log on were greeted with a message telling them that the service may not be running again until mid-December, when computer capacity will have been upgraded.

The designers of Europeana had expected a maximum of 5 million hits an hour. But there was as much as three times the predicted traffic, a unique phenomenon for any website associated with the European Union.

Europeana was a "victim of its success," said Martin Selmayr, spokesman for the European commissioner responsible for the project, Viviane Reding.

INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE