The European Library Project (TEL), sponsored by the European Commission, brings together 10 major European national libraries and library organisations to investigate the technical and policy issues involved in sharing digital resources. The objective of TEL is to set up a co-operative framework which will lead to a system for access to the major national and deposit collections in European national libraries. The scope of the project encompasses publisher relations and business models but this paper focuses on aspects of the more technical work in metadata development and the interoperability testbeds. The use of distributed Z39.50 searching in conjunction with HTTP/XML search functionality based on OAI protocol harvesting is outlined. The metadata development activity, which will result in a TEL application profile based on the Dublin Core Library Application Profile together with collection level description, is discussed. The concept of a metadata registry to allow the controlled evolution of the application profile to be inclusive of other cultural heritage institutions is also introduced.