The European IBD Library is a project initiated by EFCCA in order to compile all the information available on IBD in one central place.

EFCCA's 26 national IBD associations are expert at producing high-quality, patient centric information for people with IBD. As the knowledge of people with IBD increases, their fear and anxieties about the disease often decrease, and their empowerment and choice often increases. Those who have access to this high quality information can benefit from it, but often, the existance of this high quality information is not known between the 25 associations, or by individual association members.

EFCCA aims to tackle this problem, by gathering all the best information for patients on IBD from across Europe, and providing one central website resource where this information can be found. The website will include all the details of the information, together with a link to the information in its original location (EFCCA will not copy the information itself but provide a link to association sources).

EFCCA will establish an 'editorial steering group', who will make sure that the information included in the library is of a high-quality, up-to-date, trustable, available for free, and available online. This is the basic criteria for including entries in the library - quality and availability. 

EFCCA will host the library on www.efcca.org. It will be available free of charge and information will be presented in a stylish and easy-to-use web portal. 

Furthermore, in phase two of the project, EFCCA will include key information for healthcare professionals, from what is known as the 'top of the clinical knowledge hierarchy' - key clinical guidelines and systematic reviews related to IBD.

The aim of this is to provide more detailed information for 'expert patients', highly skilled information professionals working for IBD associations, IBD association directors and staff, and even healthcare professionals themselves.

The same criteria for quality and availability of information apply. Not everyone with IBD has the same information need - newly diagnosed patients would often like simple, clear, and definitive summaries, whilst people who have lived with IBD for many years might be interested in detailed summaries of new treatments, or clinical guidelines or standards. EFCCA aims to cater for this variety. 

To summarize, EFCCA realizes the power of the internet in making information accessible. EFCCA wishes to make the best patient information on IBD in Europe, which is from its associations, highly visible so that people with IBD can benefit from it. EFCCA understands requirements for quality and availability of information.