Ref: 031002
1. Change in publishing - Web publishing
Library collection development policy has always aimed at maintaining physically accessible collections that are as extensive and comprehensive as possible. Now the Internet and electronic publishing are revolutionizing the library world to such an extent that the earlier collection development policy and the division of labour agreed within its framework no longer work. We still collect printed materials in our libraries, but they have now been joined by electronic (digital) publications, such as books (with hypertext links), periodicals and databases.
Bibliographic CD-ROM databases have for long been used in libraries either locally or through intranets. Now they can also be accessed via the Internet, as well. The number of electronic journals is growing rapidly. Some of the journals are back issues digitized by the university libraries. Some are published only in the Internet, and they are not at least for the time being considered proper quality journals. Their attractiveness has a lot to do with their multimedia properties, such as hypertext links and 3D images. Their continuity is in doubt, however. The rest of the journals have parallel printed and electronic editions coming out simultaneously. Most of these are refereed journals renowned for their quality. This group is without doubt the most important, since the printed versions are so well-known and frequently used. Among the publishers of the latter type of journal are for example the American Mathematical Society, Academic Press, Springer and the Institute of Physics Publishing. Periodicals are the type of publication that is estimated to grow most quickly in the Internet. In 1995 it was estimated that there were 115 periodicals available on the Internet in the fields of medicine, technology and science (1). Now there are about 2000, according to the information given by the publishers. British Library recently estimated that in five years time approximately half of the currently existing 16000 periodicals in these fields will be published in electronic form (2). In some estimates the rate of growth is expected to be even quicker. According to some estimates the traditional printed journal will disappear altogether and be replaced by its electronic counterpart in 10-20 years (3).
The number of electronic books is growing rapidly due to several digitizing projects around the world (4,5). Such projects in English are for example the Cornell University Projects, Project Gutenberg, the Oxford Text Archive, the Open Book Project, University of Virginia Electronic Text Center and the American Memory Project. The British Library (1996) estimates that there are at least 20 000 books in English already available on the Internet. The Bibliotheque Nationale has (or soon will have) digitized 100 000 works. Smaller publishers are also digitizing books on diskettes. It is estimated that in addition to the printed version publishers will produce parallel electronic editions for the Internet of books, as well.
Some of the material available on the Internet is permanently free of charge, some only for the time being (introductory offers). Some of the leading scientific journals are free to those who subscribe to the printed version, but some are always subject to a charge. Why should we buy expensive electronic journals when recent cuts in library grants and inflation together have made it impossible to buy even the needed printed materials?
The greatest benefit of electronic collections is their excellent availability regardless of space or time. A researcher can browse a scientific journal on his own workstation and print out the articles he wants. The technology also makes it possible to have many concurrent users. Availability in a library is often to a greater extent subject to different kinds of impeding factors; either the journal is in in-house circulation, someone is reading it at the moment or it is missing altogether. It is more than likely that in time researchers will learn to use electronic journals, but since old habits die hard it is necessary to use two overlapping publishing methods for some time to come. As far as CD-ROM databases are concerned, their use via networks has turned out to be technically very difficult to implement and require highly specialized knowledge and skills from the end users. Direct network use through the Internet maintained in collaboration with the vendors has proven considerably easier.
On the other hand a situation where we have collections a) in the library, b) in the university intranet and c) available via the Internet is very demanding both for the user and the library in order for them both to have control of the whole.
From the viewpoint of the library this two-sided situation not only puts more pressure on the funds allocated for the acquisition of new materials, but it also causes additional work in the search, acquisition and organisation of networked materials. The increase of electronic materials available on the Internet means that in addition to the traditional physical collections libraries also maintain virtual or electronic collections which can be accessed via hyperlinks on the libraries' WWW-sites. In addition to the work of individual libraries many countries have nationally funded, large-scale eLib or Electronic Library projects. I will look in detail at the Finnish national electronic library project and briefly at the projects in the United States, England and Denmark.
2. Why to plan a national electronic library ?
The Finnish Ministry of Education appointed in January 1997 a working group to prepare a plan for the development of electronic information services for research and the implementation of a national electronic library as part of the Information Society Programme. The Ministry stated that the goal of the project was to guarantee access to a high-quality, well organised and diversified national and international information resource, and thus improve the conditions for research and education and cater for the needs of trade and industry, as well.
The working group submitted its motion for a national electronic library to the Minister of Education at the end of May (6). The author of this article was a member of the working group.
Why did the Finnish Ministry of Education ask for a group consisting of librarians and computing professionals to prepare a plan for a national electronic library? It can be said that the time was right in many ways. Three factors that have certainly contributed to this are the arrival of the information society, electronic publications and the current situation of the university libraries.
The Ministry of Education has purposefully and systematically built a foundation for a Finnish information society. It has built an effective data communications network especially for universities and research institutes, and schools, universities and libraries have been equipped with modern hardware. It can be said that during the past few years a solid information technology infrastructure has been built for research and education institutions. As the physical framework is now in reasonably good shape, all that is needed is the actual content of the information networks and the information society. With regard to content, the national electronic library could be one of the mainstays of the information society.
Another factor is probably the rapid increase of the number of electronic parallel versions of important scientific journals, which I already described above. Contractual practices with scientific publishers are changing, enabling the creation of a national electronic library. Previously each library purchased a separate site license but now many large publishers are prepared to negotiate over joint nationwide licenses.
A third factor that is certain to have influenced the assignment by the Ministry of Education is the gradual decline of the standard of foreign collections in Finnish university libraries. The financial resources of universities have been cut, which has caused a decrease in the acquisition of new literature. The universities have repeatedly reminded the Ministry of Education of the decline of this resource which is essential for research. The national electronic library could significantly improve the supply of literature required by research and education, as a nationwide license would buy materials that one university alone could not afford.
In addition to the reasons mentioned above and a lot of goodwill, we shall need money, as well. The time is also right in this respect, and this could be one of the reasons for the assignment by the Ministry of Education. The Finnish state is privatising its property, and some of the wealth accumulated from this will be used to improve the conditions of research and education, i.e. libraries and information networks. Examples set in other countries where electronic libraries have been built have naturally had an influence on attitudes. However, the Finnish national library plan is not a copy of any of the above projects.
3. Finnish national electronic library (FeLib)
A committee was appointed to draw up a plan for the outlines of the development of electronic information services for science and research and for the structure of a national electronic library. A national electronic library demands reliable and quick network connections for data transmission and communication between members of the academic community. The main function of the electronic library is to ensure that well organized national and international information meeting customers needs are accessible over networks and other technical information infrastructure.
An electronic library offers many economic, technical and social benefits. It is global and accessible regardless of place, space or opening hours. It speeds up communication and enables purposeful, resource-saving cooperation. Joint purchases of electronic materials can raise the degree of self-sufficiency with regard to information resources in Finland. In the ideal situation the end user is able to access the versatile, decentralized services via a unified and easily accessible virtual library.
3.1. Services of the national electronic library
The main idea of the working group was that the electronic library should form
part of an electronic campus of the universities, which is typified by
electronic publishing and effective use of networks. The national electronic
library will in the future be complemented by various kinds of personal virtual
libraries, which can be customized to suit the needs of each user so that only
the most relevant materials are retrieved from national and international
information resources.
The resources of FeLib consist of both national and international materials, for example special and reference databases, electronic documents available on the Internet, multimedia, electronic educational materials and other networked materials.
All electronic materials must be searchable via an integrated, easy-to-use interface, enabling easy access and use of all the above networked resources. Searchability and personal control of information resources will be facilitated through the use of WWW-indices, program agents, subject catalogues etc.
The goal is to make at least some of the articles and monographies available in full-text form via hyperlinks in reference databases. Thus they can be transferred to the user's own workstation or printed straight away. If the desired materials are not available in electronic form, the user is directed to interlibrary lending services or the collections of other libraries. The system can be used to retrieve all kinds of information materials, which means that the search results may be in the form of hyperlinks to WWW-documents, to various special databases and the data they contain, to reference, multimedia or full text materials.
3.2. Recommendations for the development of the electronic library
The following measures are needed to improve the electronic library:
A. The amount of information available in electronic form is considerably
increased by:
- buying and acquiring usage licenses for free electronic materials and
recording and making them available for the public
- increasing the volume
of electronic publishing in universities
- digitizing materials
B. The availability of both networked and library materials is improved.
- by directing resources to the improvement of retrieval methods, equipment and
standards
C. The national electronic library and its operation is organized
- by naming the organs responsible for its development and implementation
- by determining the guidelines for the future funding of the project
Recommendations for the acquisition of electronic materials
1. Electronic materials for university libraries are acquired under joint
nationwide contracts. Such contracts are made on electronic journals published
by the most important scientific publishers and other electronic primary
materials, on reference databases and on the use of foreign joint catalogues
and national bibliographies.
2. Long-term storage of electronic publications and their future usability is
looked into.
3. The core materials from the national resources are chosen for
digitization.
4. All of the most important national reference databases must be accessible
via the national electronic library.
5. The research databases of universities and research institutes are part of
the national electronic library.
Recommendations for electronic publishing
6. The working group recommends that universities issue their publication
series and theses in electronic form. The publications should conform to open
standards.
7. Universities should use the print-on-demand system and principles and
guidelines for its use should be developed. The objective must be to use
existing hardware and software as efficiently as possible.
8. In future the Ministry of Education will publish its own publications also
in electronic form. To make the publications easier to retrieve their
bibliographic and classification information will be recorded. Standards that
are in common use in state administration will be used.
Recommendations for educational materials
9. The electronic library and electronic learning environments are closely connected. They will support and complement each other through the use of hyperlinks.
Recommendations for information retrieval
10. Retrieval of information from the Internet is made easier by developing
new, compatible subject indices that cover all the most important disciplines
from Finland's point of view. Information retrieval from the indices and their
maintenance is facilitated. Applications developed in similar projects abroad
can be utilized.
11. The national WWW-index maintained by CSC (Center for Scientific Computing)
is developed further so that it will complement global WWW-indices such as Alta
Vista.
12. The Ministry of Education facilitates end users' access to public
information resources in its own field and furthers the development of a
service similar to GILS (Government Information Locator) in Finland by starting
a similar project in its own field of administration.
Recommendations for the library system
15. The use of a uniform library system in all university libraries is a unique
advantage, which must be maintained. In order to improve the ease of use and
searchability of the OPACs the present VTLS-94 applications will be upgraded to
new generation versions.
16. The usability of joint databases in Finland and abroad is improved by using
a program based on the information retrieval standard used on the Internet
(Z39.50).
17. Inter-library lending is rendered more effective by using programs that
conform to the international interlibrary lending standard (ISO ILL).
In addition to the above the working group suggested that the Finnish Free Deposit Act should be modified to cover electronic materials, as well. With regard to copyright legislation it was suggested that libraries
- should have the possibility to store electronic materials, as well
-
should facilitate the use of materials bound by copyright both in the library
and via networks
- should provide facilities for the copying of electronic
materials in the library both for personal use and for research purposes.
The National Library has the responsibility for the practical implementation of the operations that require cooperation between several organizations. In technical matters it shares the responsibility with CSC. A separate working group plans and coordinates the information resources and draws up the development plans. Maintenance of the most heavily used document servers is centred as far as possible in Finland, in which case the maintainer could be the Center for Scientific Computing, the National Library or one of the computing centres. The maintenance of special databases in different disciplines will be decentralized should the need arise.
The working group proposed for 1997-1999 budgets of 18, 20 and 22 million Fmk, respectively (approx. 5 million USD per year).
4. Other eLib-projects
One of the most interesting projects is the English eLib (7): " In 1993, an investigation into how to deal with the pressures on library resources caused by the rapid expansions of student numbers and the world-wide explosion in academic knowledge and information was undertaken by the Joint Funding Council's Libraries Review Group, chaired by Sir Brian Follett. This investigation resulted in the famous Follett Repport. One of the key conclusions of this report was that the exploitation if IT is essential to create the effective library service of the future. As a consequence, The Higher Education Funding Bodies in the UK invited proposals for projects which would transform the use and storage of knowledge in higher education institutions. [[sterling]]15 milj. was allocated to the "Electronic Libraries Porgramme", managed by the Joint Electronic Systems Committee on behalf of the funding bodies."
Of several hundred proposals 30 were initially announced in July 1995, lasting up to 3 years in duration. Since then, several other projects have been approved and currently 60 projects are being funded. They are working on the 11 subfields: Access to network resources; Digitisation; Electronic document delivery; Electronic Journal; Electronic short loans; Images; On demand publishing; Pre-prints; Quality assurance; Supporting studies and Training and awareness. The projects have standars to follow and the full day officer and the leading group.
Many relevant scenarios are done too in Denmark. One of these is Info-samfundet år 2000: rapport fra udvalget om Informationssamfundet år 2000 (8), published by Danmark's government (1994). Next year was published Fra vision till handling (9), from the vision to the practice. Following these guidelines there are now in Denmark over 50 organizations including libraries, archieves and museums in the Kulturnet Danmark-project managed by Det Konglige Bibliotek (10). They are bringing a lot of electronic material for citizens to the Internet.
In the USA there is no one leading scenario like in Finland, England and Denmark which to follow. The government of President Clinton published in 1993 the raport "National Information Infrastructure: agenda for action" (11). The importance of electronic libraries are evaluated to be very high: "The ability of digital libraries to store and share knowlegde, history, and culture will be central to the success of the NII" (12). A lot of electronic library projects are going on managed mostly by university libraries. The Library of Congress has a very big American Memory project. Maybe the biggest of eLib-projects in the States is the Digital Library Initiative-project (13). It has six subprojects getting funding for 4 years each 1 million dollars. These projects are very technical, managed by university libraries and funded through a joint initiative of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defency Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Why are all these efforst done in so many countries? Maybe the answer is said in the last mentioned project: "The projects' focus is to dramatically advance the means to collect, store, and organize innformation in digital forms, and make it vailable for searching, retrieval, and processing via comminication networks - all in user-friendly ways." Librarians move the focus away from the library as a physical space to the virtual library with netservices.
References:
Copyright EUNIS 1997 Y.E.