Its starting point was in 1997 when the GABRIEL (Gateway and Bridge to Europe's National Libraries) project set out to establish a joint web portal of European national libraries.

The European Library exists to open up the universe of knowledge, information and cultures of all Europe's national libraries.GABRIEL was followed by the TEL (The European Library) project, which ran from 2001 to 2004 and created a framework for access to key national and deposit collections within Europe.

The project also focused on multilingualism, undertook the first steps towards a European Metadata Registry and created a roadmap for potential digitization efforts in the national libraries.

The European Library (TEL) provided much of the organization and support required to launch Europeana – a European Commission initiative that makes millions of digital objects from libraries, museums and archives accessible to the public via the Europeana website.

These exhibitions unite geographically disparate objects in a single online space, offering Pan-European sources on the topic.