Brussels (AP): Attention all culture-craving couch potatoes: Cultural riches from over 2,000 years of European civilization are going digital.

It's part of a new European Union online library project that is set to rival Google and aims to create a one-stop-shop to access history, art, literature, cinema and music from across the continent.

Items have been collected from 1,000 museums, national libraries, galleries and archives including the Louvre in Paris and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam so users can scour for books, paintings, audio files, maps, videos and other artifacts in one Web site:www.europeana.eu

Subjects are as varied as the recipe for a French ham and cheese "croque monsieur" to Homer's epics and the life of Mozart.

"You can see all aspects of (Mozart's) life in the works and material that comes from our museums, libraries, audio visual collections and archives across Europe," said Jill Cousins, director of the Europeana project.

She called up nearly 1,000 items related to Mozart in a sample search on the website, which is available in 23 languages including English, French, German and Spanish.

The site has 3 million items now and officials hope to get 10 million items on it by 2010. Even that is just a start, as only one per cent of the historic works, documents and cultural artifacts across Europe have so far been digitized.

"You may download most of what is on there (for free)," Cousins said.

The project, which started two years ago, seems to be Europe's answer to Google's efforts to build a private digital library and is to be launched amid much fanfare by the EU's ministers today.