Cooperation between Estonian research libraries: integration and resource sharing issues

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Cooperation between Estonian research libraries
integration and resource sharing issues

• Jüri Järs
• Director
• Tallinn University of Technology Library
• Akadeemia tee 7
• 12611 Tallinn, Estonia
• Phone [phone] Fax [phone]
• E-mail jars_at_lib.ttu.ee
• http//www.lib.ttu.ee/

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Topics

• Preconditions and institutions
• Legislation issues
• Coordinated collections development
• Creating common databases
• Joint supply of electronic resources
• About other common projects

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Preconditions

• the object of cooperation
• the will to cooperate
• organisers-coordinators
• the rules of the game(regulations, agreements,
  contracts)
• executors-implementators
• tools and connections for cooperation
• the roof under which the cooperation could be
  realized

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Main institutions

• Estonian Librarians Association, ELA (founded in
  1923, reestablished in 1988) committees of
  bibliography collections development
  education and training classification and
  indexing terminology rare bookssection
  of special libraries working group of distance
  learning roundtable of the directors of research
  libraries

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• Estonian Libraries Network (ELNET) Consortium
  (founded in 1996)working groups of
  MARC-cataloguing analytical description
  authority files retrospective conversion
  music, art and cartographic literature
  periodicals circulation
• technical issues electronic acquisitions
  digital library
• virtual library

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• Council of Research Libraries (formed in 2002 by
  the Ministry of Education and Research)

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About legislation some milestones

• 2000 Development plan of Estonian libraries
• 2001 Organisation of Research Development Act
• 2002 Requirements for a research library

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Requirements for a research library

• the main task (specified in statutes) is to
  collect, to process, to store and to make
  available the information supporting research and
  development activities
• the destination group is research workers
• public access to free of charge basic services
• the availability of the system for selecting
  adequate information and the conditions for
  preserving and using it
• the collections are developed at least in two
  subject areas from the following natural
  sciences, technological sciences, medical
  sciences, agricultural sciences, social sciences,
  humanities
• the collections are described and classified
  according to the international standards which
  are valid in Estonia
• the library carries out research and development
  activities, publishes reports of its activities,
  is engaged in acquainting the research and
  development institutions and researchers, creates
  bibliographical databases
• the collections are reflected in the common
  electronic catalogue of Estonian libraries
  (ESTER)

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About legislation some milestones

• 2000 Development plan of Estonian libraries
• 2001 Organisation of Research Development Act
• 2002 Requirements for a research library

Rules for nominating research libraries First
research libraries nominated
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Nominated research libraries

• Tartu University Library (2002)
• Tallinn Technical University Library (2002)
• Tallinn Pedagogical University Library (2002)
• Estonian Agricultural University Library (2004)

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About legislation some milestones

• 2000 Development plan of Estonian libraries
• 2001 Organisation of Research Development Act
• 2002 Requirements for a research library Rules
  for nominating research libraries First
  research libraries nominated

2003 First funding received according to the Act
2004 The regulation about funding principles
and common acquisition plan
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Coordinated collections development history

• 1960s Union catalogue of foreign
  periodicals Commission of collections at State
  Libr. Committee
• 1970s Union catalogue of foreign books Joint
  study of collections and their use
• 1980s Second joint study of collections and
  their use
• 1990s Committee of collections development at
  ELA
• 1994 Regulations of the Ministry of Culture

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• division of tasks between 15 research and
  special libraries

• common acquisition plan with 57 responsibility
  areas
• three acquisition depth levels specified
• A - as completely as possible B - selected
  items C - few selected items

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Shortcomings

• no additional funding for fulfilling the
  specified tasks
• no online information system available for
  sharing data about the existing collections and
  current orders
• the acquisition levels were library-oriented
• the classification scheme (57 subject areas) was
  too general and complicated to use it in practice

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RLG Conspectus by goals and activities

• assessment of available collections
• specifying acquisition goals and priorities
• coordination of current acquisitions
• preservation and withdrawal of collections
• strategical planning
• guaranteeing necessary funding

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RLG Conspectus acquisition depth indicators

• 0 - out of scope
• 1 - minimal level
• 2 - basic information level
• 3 - study support level
• 4 - research support level
• 5 - comprehensive (maximal) level

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Complete acquisition matrix of research libraries

• By UDC and using three acquisition depth levels
• basic information level
• study support level
• research support level

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Creating common databases

• 1974 Database of foreign books (30 libraries)
• 1980s PC-based not standardized, incompatible
  solutions
• 1990 Database of foreign periodicals (20
  libraries)
• 1992 Working group of library automation at ELA
• 1993 Common principles of library automation
  Information System of Estonian Libraries
• 1996 ELNET Consortium
• 1998 Integrated library system live

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Integrated library system - all in one

• database of Estonian national bibliography
• database of CIP records (books in print)
• union catalogue of participating libraries
• tool for storing and managing the local data
  (acquisitions, patrons, circulations etc) of each
  member library
• centre for distributing bibliographic records
• source for coordinated collections development

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• Shared database (ESTER) contains data about
• books
• periodicals
• sheet music
• maps
• sound recordings
• articles from Estonian journals
• links to selected electronic documents

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Only one bibliographic record for each title to
which participating libraries

• add their unique data (shared MARC21 9XX fields)
• link their item records
• Harmonized rules of the game
• unified cataloguing rules
• Estonian Subject Headings
• UDC numbers

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• Economies in expenses
• man-power

• information technology
• staff training
• Advantages
• quality of the unified database
• end-user can make searches under one constant
  interface either in the catalogue of one
  library or in the union catalogue of ELNET
  libraries

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Supply of electronic resources

• 1998 Trials of paid online databases
• 1999 EBSCO databases jointly purchased by 3
  libraries
• 2000 OSI eIFL project
• 2001 ELNET Consortium as negotiator and
  contractor

2002 Central support 64 000 euros 2003 Central
support 500 000 euros 2004 Central support 800
000 euros
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• ELNET Consortium offers access to
• 8 e-journal packages (more than 10 000 titles)

• 5 abstract databases
• 4 other packages (factographical, dictionaries,
  etc)
• Consortium-wide licenses2 9 participating
  libraries depending on databases
• EBSCO country-wide licensemore than 100
  libraries and institutions have access
• a big deal may be a very good deal

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• Advantages
• the same financial resources enable
  cooperating libraries to buy more because of
  their bigger critical mass

• the negotiations are complicated and there is not
  enough professional competency in each library
• it is more probable to achieve the optimum
  solution in price and performance
• the trials of non-subscribed databases are
  organized centrally

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Standardization joint projects case by case
1990 Translation and adaptation of the CCF
started

• 1991 Estonian Communication Format published
• 1993 Estonian UDC project started
• 1996 Creation of Estonian Subject Headings
  started
• 1999 Estonian UDC published
• 1999 Estonian Subject Headings published

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1999 Permanent working group of
standardization at the National Library

• What do the libraries need?
• Estonian National Standard
• Translated International Standard
• National Library standard
• International Standard is acceptable

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• Established as Estonian National Standards
• Library performance indicators
• International library statistics
• Standard of librarian profession

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• Some performance indicators for university
  libraries
• acquisition expenses per student
• library maintenance expenses per student
• library staff (FTE) per student
• computer-based workplaces per student
• percent of students passing through the
  information retrieval courses

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• Translated international standards
• ISBN, ISSN, country codes
• Dublin Core metadata elements
• Library terminology
• Transliteration from Cyrillic alphabet

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• Web-based defining dictionary with equivalents in
  
• English, Russian, German, Finnish and French
• about 3000 library terms

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• Established as National Library standards
• IFLA ISBDs
• Format for bibliographic databases

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Joint projects of retrospective conversion
Different projects started in 1999 and 2000
thanks to

• Open Estonia FoundationOpen Society Institute
  Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
• Estonian publications - in terminating phase
• 4 mln volumes in electronic catalogue ESTER
• 12 mln volumes in collections of participating
  libraries

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Digitation from microfilms

• The aim of the joint project is
• to make the content of microfilmed documents
  easily available for the end-user in electronic
  form
• 2002 special scanner was obtained, tuned up and
  tested
• technology for saving and desrcibing the
  image files
• 2003 software for indexing image files
• web-based solution for open access
• 2004 15 titles from 1857-1920 of digitized
  Estonian newspapers available for public use

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Creating common information portal

• 2001 2002 concept, basic principles and
  requirements
• The goal is to introduce for end-users an
  information portal which allows
• secure
• single point
• multi-protocol searching against the variety of
  sources
• licensed full-text or citation databases
• local digital collections
• web sites
• search engines
• Z39.50 databases
• library catalogues

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The metasearch software must be able to search in

• Estonian diacritics
• Cyrillic alphabet
• 2003 MetaFind software was tested and evaluated

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