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Section of National Libraries

Newsletter of the IFLA Section on National Libraries

December 1998

C o n t e n t s

Chair/Treasurer :
Mr Winston Tabb
Associate Librarian
Library of Congress
Washington, DC 20540-4000
Fax 202 707-6269
E-mail : wtab.@loc.gov

Secretary :
Mrs Marcelle Beaudiquez

Directeur du Développement scientifique et des réseaux
Bibliothèque nationale de France
quai François-Mauriac
75706 Paris cedex 13
fax : (33) 01 53 79 50 45
E-mail : marcelle.beaudiquez@bnf.fr

Note : Readers are invited to submit articles or other items of interest to possible inclusion in this Newsletter.


Officers of the section of National Libraries

Standing Committee 1997 - 1999

Secretary
Mrs Marcelle Beaudiquez
Bibliothèque nationale de France
Director of Scientific Development and Research
Quai François-Mauriac
75706 Paris cedex 13 FRANCE
phone 33 (0)1 53 79 59 01
fax 33 (0)1 53 79 50 45
email marcelle.beaudiquez@bnf.fr

Mrs Fernanda Campos

Biblioteca Nacional, Deputy Director
Campo Grande, 83 1751 Lisbon PORTUGAL
phone 351 798 20 22
fax 351 798 21 40
email fcampos@ibl.pt

Mr. Vladimir Egorov

Russian State Library, Director
3/5 Vozdvizhenka
Moscow 101000 RUSSIA
phone 7 095 222 85 51
fax 7 095 290 60 62

Ms Vilenka Jakac-Bizjak

Slovenian National Library, Director general
SI-61000 Ljubjana SLOVENIA
phone 386 61 12 572 88
fax 386 61 21 3052
email vilenka.jakac-bizjak@nuk.uni-lj.si

Mr. Fariboz Khosravi

National Library of Iran, Deputy Director
PO Box 19395
6573 Tehran IRAN
phone 98 21 87 88 953
fax 98 21 87 88 950

Mr. Steen Bill Larsen

Royal Library, Deputy Director
PO Box 2149 Copenhagen K DENMARK
phone 45 33 47 47 47
fax 45 33 32 98 46
email sbl@kb.dk

Dr Klaus-Dieter Lehmann

Die Deutsche Bibliothek, General Director
Adickesallee 1
D-60322 Frankfurt a.M. GERMANY
phone 49 69 1525-1000
fax 49 69 1525-1010
email lehmann@dbf.ddb.de

Mr. Tomas Lidman

Royal Library, National Librarian
Box 5039
S-10241 Stockholm SWEDEN
phone 46 8 463 40 01
fax 46 8 463 40 04
email tomas.lidman@kb.se

Dr Peter Lor

State Library, Director
PO Box 397
0001 Pretoria SOUTH AFRICA
phone 27 12 321 8931
fax 27 12 325 5984
email pjlor@statelib.pwv.gov.za

Mr Rob Neij

Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Deputy librarian,
PO Box 90 407
2509 LK The Hague NETHERLANDS
email rob.neij@konbib.nl (e.mail erroné)

Mrs Vinyet Panyella Balcells

Biblioteca de Cataluña
Carrer de l'Hospital 56
08001 Barcelona, SPAIN
fax 34 93 270 2304

Mr. Bendik Rugaas

National library of Norway, National librarian
Postboks 2674 Solli
N-0203 Oslo NORWAY
phone 47 22 55 33 70
fax 47 22 55 38 95
email bendik@nbr.no

Mrs Marianne Scott

National Library
395 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1A ON4 CANADA
phone 1 613 996-1623
fax 1 613 996-7941
email mfscott@home.com

Chairman
Mr. Winston Tabb

Library of Congress,Associate Librarian for Library Services
Washington DC 20504-4000 USA
phone 1 202 707-6240
fax 1 202 707-6269
email wtab@loc.gov

Ms Marta Terry

Centro de Informacion para el libro, la lectura y la literatura
Instituto Cubano del Libro, Director,
O'Reilly # 7
Havana Vieja CUBA
tel 53 62 47 89
email prolibro.artsoft@cult.cu (e.mail erroné)

Mr. Gevorg Ter-Vardanyan

National Library, Director
72 Teryan Str.
Yerewan, 375009 ARMENIA
phone 374 2 584 259
fax 374 2 529 711
email gtvardan@acc.am
or email gtvardan@yahoo.com

Mr. Duane Webster

Association of Research Libraries, Executive Director 21 Dupont Circle
Washington DC 20036 USA
phone 1 202 296 2296
fax 1 202 872 0884
email duane@cni.org

Corresponding Member
Mr. W. Huberts Basile

Honiara, SOLOMON ISLANDS

Observers
Ms. M. L. Cabral

1751 Lisbon Portugal


IFLA : NATIONAL LIBRARIES SECTION
Medium-Term Programme / 1998-2001

  1. Scope
  2. The National Libraries Section is concerned with the full range of functions within national libraries. The section also works closely with the Conference of Directors of National Libraries (CDNL).
    National libraries have special responsibilities, often defined in law, within a nation's library and information system. These responsibilities vary from country to country but are likely to include : the collection via legal deposit of the national imprint (both print and electronic) and its cataloguing and preservation ; the provision of central services (e. g., reference, bibliography, lending) to users both directly and trough other library and information centres ; the preservation and promotion of the national cultural heritage ; the promotion of national cultural libraries often serve as a national forum for international programs and projects. They may have a close relationship with national information policies, and may act as a conduit for the views of other sectors of the profession. Occasionally they also serve the information needs of the legislature directly.

  3. Goals
  4. 2.2. Identify the range and nature of tasks of a national library allowing for differing historical, political, economic, cultural and other circumstances.

    2.2. Serve as a forum to share and learn from the experience of the practical problems of national libraries.

    2.3. Promote research in fields of interest to national libraries, and the exchange of ideas and information, in co-operation with the Conference of Directors of National Libraries.

    2.4. Further the Core Programmes of IFLA.

  5. Annex : Action Plan, 1998-1999
  6. In consultation with appropriate IFLA professional groups, particular themes, projects, and meetings include :

    1. Focusing on the development and implementation of strategic plans and business plans for national libraries.

    2. Commercial and money-earning activities of national libraries, including charges for services and publications, and co-operation with commercial bodies.

    3. Development of guidelines for the exploitation and preservation of the national imprint for the benefit of the user (a revision of the Guidelines for Legal Deposit).

    4. Continuing review of the aims and functions of national libraries.

    5. Fostering international and regional national library co-operation, e. g., on the acquisition of foreign imprints.

    6. Survey and make recommendations on national libraries and their relationship to major collections of unpublished manuscripts and archives.

    7. Assessment of the roles of the national library in national programs of library and information research and development.

    8. Examination of the national library as the national bibliographic agency (definition and responsibilities, coordination of nation-wide and regional recording of library materials, coordination of bibliographic projects, terms of the availability of records, etc.).

    9. Provision of national reference services and their relationship to specialised reference collections.

    10. The national collection, preservation and exploitation of audio-visual and electronic media, the involvement of national libraries, and the possible need for changes in legal deposit provisions.


STANDING COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL LIBRARIES
64th General conference, AMSTERDAM
Minutes

1st meeting, August 15th, 1998

Chair treasurer : Winston Tabb, USA
Secretary : Marcelle Beaudiquez, France

  1. The meeting was called to order by chair, Winston Tabb.

      Members present :
      Fernanda CAMPOS, Portugal
      Vladimir EGOROV, Russia
      Vilenka JAKAC-BIZJAK, Slovenia
      Steen Bill LARSEN, Denmark
      Klaus Dieter LEHMANN, Germany
      Thomas LIDMAN, Sweden
      Peter J. LOR, South Africa
      Bendik RUGAAS, Norway
      Marianne SCOTT, Canada

      Observers
      Ms J. FULLERTON, Australia

  2. The agenda was adopted as proposed

  3. Minutes of the Standing Committee's meetings in Copenhagen were published in December 1997 Newsletter and adopted as submitted.

  4. Officer's Report

      Winston Tabb reported briefly on Professional Board Meeting hold yesterday in Amsterdam and raised several points from the agenda :
      • The main point of thought for the PB to day is how to move IFLA from a paper world towards an electronic world ; each section is encouraged to create its own home pages on IFLANET, but the non-INTERNET world has also to be taken into consideration.
      • The ways for evaluating the Copenhagen conference have given good results ; the same ways will be followed this year : an evaluation form put in each conference bag ; participants are strongly requested to answer (free registration for Bangkok conference will be offered).
      • Contributed papers will be suspended for the conference (IFLA professional units are differently organised and the need of this kind of papers is not so strong now than ten years ago) ;
      • A special effort is done towards the new comers ; they are welcomed Sunday morning by a breakfast and an information meeting ; all officers are requested to attempt this meeting.
      • Due to local constraints, the dead line for cheaper registration for Bangkok Conference will be March 15, 1999, and not May 15.
      • The EB working group on IFLA Statutes is prepared to do a deep revision of the organisation and procedures of IFLA ; so the revision will take time and will probably be not available for being submitted to the council vote in 1999.

      As treasurer, Winston Tabb reported that the section's finances are in excellent position for two main reasons : the cost of production and mailing of the December Newsletter has been taken in charge by the Bibliothèque nationale de France ; and The National Library of New Zealand didn't use the project money given by IFLA for Peter Scott's survey on strategic management, and IFLA allow the section to use these 6000 NLG as administrative money.

  5. Review of Programs of the Section at Amsterdam meeting

      5.1. Open forum of the Section : "Strategic Management in National Libraries"
      Marianne Scott, in charge of the preparation announced the following programme :
      1. "Core Competencies" - The National Library of Canada will be giving a presentation on its work in this area in identifying core competencies required by staff for next five to ten years.
      2. "Client needs in the 21st century" - Dr. Christopher Chia, National Library of Singapore, will be giving a presentation on this topic and addressing Singapore's developments relating to their library 2000 initiative.
      3. "Measuring results of programs" - Mr. Ian McGowan, National Library of Scotland, will address this topic and will make a presentation measuring the results of programs, in particular Scotland's experience in performance indicators and how they relate to their Citizens' Charter.
        She apologizes not to be there during the meeting, due to other appointment.

      5.2. Workshop : Winston Tabb in charge of the preparation of the workshop gives the following agenda.
      1. "Legal Deposit of Electronic Materials : Overview of Report prepared for the Conference of Directors of National Libraries" Brian Lang, UK, Chief Executive, British Library
      2. "Deposit of Electronic Works under US Copyright Law : Requirements, Issues and Practical Experience" Marybeth Peters, USA, U.S. Register of Copyrights, Library of Congress
      3. "Handing Electronic Publications : Practices an Projects"
        Johann Steenbakkers, Director of Information Technology and Facility Management, Royal Library of the Netherlands
      4. "The Problems with Web-Archiving : Experiences from the Cultural Heritage Project in Sweden" Tomas Lidman, Director, and Johan Mannerheim, Head, Information Technology Department, Royal Library of Sweden
      5. "Legal Deposit of Electronic Works : The Australian Experience"
        Jan Fullerton, Deputy Director General, National Library of Australia
        He indicates that there are to date 70 registered participants.

  6. Definition of National library

    The question was raised in Copenhagen because Graham Cornish in charge of UAP Programme had some difficulties to manage the directory of National libraries.

    The question was also relevant for the CDNL, for other reasons, and members of the section (Marianne Scott, Winston Tabb and Peter Lor), also members of CDNL, had worked this past year to prepare a proposition of definition for CDNL.

    The discussion of the CDNL will be reported at the second SC meeting.

  7. Section Brochure

    Vilenka Jakac-Bizjak (Slovenia) has prepared a first version which has been printed and will be distributed to CDNL members. SC members are invited to comment and correct the content. Several remarks have been made. The final version will be fixed at the second SC meeting and volunteers for translations will be noted at that time.

  8. Medium Term Program Review

    The chair informs that the new version of the MTP for 1998-2003 contains terms of reference and goals for each section. The action-plans appears only on IFLANET and will have to be updated next year.

  9. National Libraries and the information superhighway

    CDNL created a working group on that point in 1995 but no special action has been undertaken so CDNL suggested that the matter also be considered by the SC as a matter of general consideration. The discussion was fruitful.

    Many of the propositions will be raised during the workshop of the section on legal deposit for electronic documents. So, decisions on that point will be taken at the next meeting.

  10. Public relations and marketing efforts

    B. Rugaas said that we need to share informations about our own achievements in these matters in order to re-use those which have been very successful for a library and have demonstrated that they work, but before that, we need to collect and analyse materials.

    After discussion it appears that the section could create a small section project in order to collect and analyse available materials for publicity (information for readers and large people) and marketing (research of sponsors). Decision will be taken at the next meeting.

  11. IFLA Booth

    As usual, SC members are invited to represent their section at IFLA booth on Tuesday morning ; the president and the secretary are unable to be there due to an other meeting. Bendik Rugaas is volunteer and will represent the section.

  12. Other business

    • The chairman has been asked by the Section on bibliography to have a joint meeting in Bangkok on the topic : "Electronic publications in the national bibliographies".
    • Peter Lor reports that Section of Serial publications has big difficulties to find SC members and wish that national libraries take these difficulties in consideration when nominated their delegates to IFLA'S standing committees.

  13. Winston Tabb adjourned the meeting at the end of agenda.


2nd Meeting, August 24th, 1998

Members present :
Peter Lor (South Africa)
Marianne Scott (Canada)
Fernanda Campos (Portugal)
Vilenka Jakac-Bizjak (Slovenia)
Marta Terry (Cuba)
Tomas Lidman (Sweden)
Steen Bill Larsen (Denmark)
Bendik Rugaas (Norway)
Winston Tabb (USA), chairman/treasurer
Marcelle Beaudiquez (France), secretary

Observers :
Erland Kolding-Nielsen (Denmark)
Chris Blake (New Zealand)
Christopher Chia (Singapore)
John Aarons (Jamaica)
Anna Planet (Catalognia-Spain) Sookhyeun Lee (Korea)
Marie Paiva (Ethiopia)
Joan de Beer (South Africa)
Dan Erceanu (Romania)

  1. The meeting was called to order by chair, Winston Tabb. He welcomed observers and members of the SC.

  2. The agenda was adopted as proposed but started with a special point raised by K.D. Lehman.

  3. Adoption of resolution

    K.D. Lehman asked the section to support the following resolution.

    Protection of Cultural Heritage in the Case of Armed Conflict

      Background :
        During and after armed conflicts or wars the cultural heritage (library materials) is often affected by damage or reparation. There still are the unsolved problems of restitution of World War II materials and there are new facts at the present time at international level.
      Text :
        Cultural heritage (library collections) should not become a subject of war trophies or war reparation. It is against the international law of our century. IFLA should set up within CLM a working group to collect and disseminate information about this subject and prepare at a multinational level a document based on these facts to promote human rights of cultural and intellectual identity.

    The resolution is adopted and will be presented to the PB "with the support of the section on national libraries".

  4. Programme for the 65th council and General Conference, Bangkok, 1999

    After an open discussion very fruitful, the SC members have chosen the following three themes :

      a. Role of national libraries in assisting public and school libraries.
      Planning committee : Peter Lor and Vilenka Jakac-Bizjak. It could be the open forum of the section, joined with the section on Public libraries.
      b. Electronic publications in national libraries.
      Planning committee : Fernanda Campos, Winston Tabb and Bendik Rugaas. It could be a workshop with Sections of bibliography and of cataloguing.
      c. Role of national libraries in documenting and preserving the record of ethnic minorities.
      Planning committee : Winston Tabb. It could be a satellite meeting in Northern Thailand joint with section on conservation.

    The SC members also want to have an opportunity to discuss, on an informal basis, of the following of the Copenhagen meeting on national bibliographic services, specially for management of electronic publications legal deposit and copyright matters (following also the work of the committee on copyright and other legal affairs).

  5. Future IFLA Conferences

    The chairman asked members for suggestions on the possible themes for the section at the Jerusalem conference in 1999. The section had already retained : security of collections, selectivity of collecting for national libraries. After discussion the following topics have been added :

    • publicity and marketing
    • preservation of electronic publications
    • copyright matters
    • relationship between archives, museums and libraries
    • following of the CDNL statement on national libraries responsabilities relating to search in an electronic environment.

  6. IFLA Statute revision

    The chairman informed members on the main points raised during the CBI meeting to be bring to the attention of the EB group for statute revision :

    • Treat separately terms of mandate of member/officer of a section in order to stay officer even at the end of the second mandate as member of a SC.
    • To remove the need of a second support for a candidate in election as standing committee member.
    • To be more active in the participation to the work of IFLA specially in the assistance to the congress and SC meetings ; it could be up to the chairman of a section to diplomatically transfer somebody who has not participated to a congress for two years and never give any news or mail, from his position of member of the SC to a position of corresponding member (for example in order to leave place in the SC to more active people).
      • the need for candidates for election to SC to provide biographical information to voters so that they can make an informed decision.
      • examine the timing of the SC meetings with a view toward reducing the time and costs required if one attends booth SC meetings
      • stress the fact that "Council" meetings are more like a "General Assembly" open to all (apparently some assume that "council" means a closed session).

    The committee on IFLA Statute will indicate in time which points will be presented for vote to the council in Bangkok but they want to pursue a brainstorming in depth.

  7. Information and communication

    The secretary raised the point of lack of information between officers and members during the past year. She asked members to send her all informations they could have of any interest for all members (news of their library, reviews of books, short reports on relevant meetings…).

    In return, she will prepare a Newsletter for December 98 and May 99 and she hoped to be in position to put all that news on IFLANET with the help of the chairman.

    The first step of improvement is to have papers for Bangkok ready on the 1st of March 1999 (as such they could be published in the printed programme of the conference and charged on IFLANET in time).

  8. Evaluation of Amsterdam Conference

    The chairman thanks Marianne Scott for the preparation of the programme of the open forum of the section and M. Beaudiquez for having chaired it, and thanks B. Rugaas for his presence on IFLA Booth.

    The section's meeting had a big attendance and the papers were interesting. The workshop was also very successful.

    Relating to the whole conference, the feeling is very positive.

  9. Elections 1999

    The chairman said that one member of the SC resigned (Ms Batonyi from Hungary) ; 3 seats are unoccupied and 7 of the members are eligible for re-election.

  10. SC endorsement of conferences

    The section has endorsed (without any financial support) to conferences :

    • The construction of new national libraries : a phenomenon of the end of the 20th century Europe - Riga, Latvia - 23-26 august 1998.
    • National libraries : interpreting the past, shaping the future - Washington USA, Library of Congress - 23-27 october 2000.

    Members of section who will participate to these meetings are invited to send short reports to the secretary.

  11. Other business

      11.1 Definition of National Library (for information)
      Peter Lor reported on the CDNL position.
      No decision has been taken at the last meeting on Wednesday. CDNL decided to create a working group on that point with representatives of NL of Canada, Italy, Russia, United Kingdom, USA and South Africa.

      11.2 Brochure of the section
      Winston Tabb will be responsible for the final English version of the brochure prepared by Vilenka Jakac-Bizjak and for its production ; the brochure will be translated in French (M. Beaudiquez), in German (K-D Lehman) in Spanish (M. Terry) and in Russian (Irina Kozlova). Winston Tabb will send the final English version to the translators.

      11.3 Small project of the section
      The SC decided to endorse a small project on publicity and public relations of the national libraries. Bendik Rugaas will be responsible for that project and will indicate to the chairman the provisional cost of this project before end of October.

  12. Winston Tabb adjourned the meeting at the end of agenda.


General Research Libraries Coordinating Board Minutes

Minutes, CB I - August 14 1998, Amsterdam

Chair: Winston Tabb,USA
Secretary: Jennifer Tanfield, UK

  1. Opening of the meeting The meeting was called to order

    Members present:
    Winston Tabb, National Libraries
    Jennifer Tanfield, Library and Research Services for Parliaments
    Marcelle Beaudiquez, National Libraries
    Alex Bryne, University Libraries
    Jan Keukens, Library and Research Services
    Nick Bannenberg, Information Coordinator, Library and Research Services for Parliaments, attended as an observer

    Member Absent:
    Kirsten Engelstad, University Libraries

  2. Adoption of Agenda. The agenda was adopted

  3. Approval of Minutes.

    The Minutes from the CB's meetings in Copenhagen, as circulated, were approved with a change in the position of one paragraph noted. There were no matters arising from the Minutes

  4. Professional Board Report.

    Points to be passed on to Sections were:

    • The need for those organising/chairing meetings to inform speakers exactly when and where they would be speaking and to make sure that they kept to time and that the meeting ended by the scheduled time.
    • That registration for all speakers was mandatory, however short their stay at IFLA, but Sections could use administrative funds to pay the daily registration fees
    • Sections should be discouraged from creating their own web pages, but should use the IFLA site. Representatives of the Section on Library and Research Services for Parliaments, which had its own web site, explained that the Standing Committee would be asked to approve a move of the web site from its current site to the IFLA site.
    • Sections were reminded of their responsibility to staff the IFLA booth in accordance with the draft schedule
    • As in 1997 evaluation forms would be in the hand-out packs. There would be a draw from the returned forms for free registrations for Bangkok.
    • A session for IFLA newcomers would be held on Sunday morning preceded by a breakfast
      • to get the reduced rate of registration fee for the Bangkok Conference (350 US dollars compared with 450 US dollars) people would have to register by 15 March (compared with 15 May in previous years).
    • Contributed papers would be suspended for one year in 1999 and then further reviewed.
    • At the Bangkok Conference Section Standing Committees would be asked to up-date their Medium Term Plans
    • A committee under the chairmanship of Warren Horton was to review the IFLA Statutes. He had decided that the review should look ahead and seek to provide the organisation with the statutes that would be appropriate for the next 15 years, taking account for instance of the effect of information technology. Small changes might be ready for consideration at the Bangkok Conference but major changes would take longer to formulate.
      It was expected that the Review Committee would consider the position of Regional Officers, Round Tables and Discussion Groups and the Core Programmes. Winston Tabb had urged that the process should be an Open one, with the whole membership being given the opportunity to express views.

  5. Review of Divisional and Sectional Finances.

    It was reported that the design of the financial reporting forms would be reviewed by the new Coordinator of Professional Activities, Sjoerd Koopman. In the meantime forms for the next financial year were distributed.
    Sections were reminded that Administrative funds could be used for expenses connected with Section Newsletters, speakers' day registration fees, etc. On receipt of the application form for administrative funds ILA HQ would send the amount due to the section, less any balance from the proceeding year. Forms should be submitted by the deadline. If they were not submitted money would not be sent out and there would be no reminders. The form should be copied to Winston Tabb, to allow him to report on Division expenditure at the Professional Board. Project money is available for section projects. National Libraries and Section on Library and Research Services for Parliaments reported no new projects. University Libraries has one small project.
    Some money is available to the Division for small projects. Ideas for the use of this money would be discussed at the second CB meeting

  6. Section Plans for Amsterdam

    Library and Research Services for Parliaments reported that it had just held a successful two-day Pre Conference in Brussels, the first day and a half in the European Parliament and the last half day in the Belgian Parliament. A panel discussion on copyright of electronic databases had been one of the most popular sessions. In Amsterdam, in addition to the usual standing committee and open meetings, there would be a full-day Workshop offsite in the Netherlands Parliament, a special meeting on research and the informal meeting for participants to raise and discuss common problems.
    University Libraries reported that their additional meeting would be a Workshop co-sponsored by the Round Table on User Education on «How do Libraries Respond to the Change in Focus from Teaching to Learning?»
    National Libraries will be holding a meeting on strategic management, including presentations on core competencies, client needs and measuring results of programmes, plus a Workshop on «Legal deposit of electronic materials»

  7. IFLA Statutes.

    The CB discussed representations that it would like to make. These included the difficulties which arose as a result of Standing Committee and Officer status being co-terminous. It was suggested that the Review Committee consider unlinking Officers from the Standing Committee, in line with the practice for the Professional Board Chair. The problems of making Standing Committee nominations was raised, and in particular the need for seconders, which it was agreed should be removed. It was also felt that the informal arrangement that there need not be a postal vote of the complete membership if the number of nominees exceeded 20 by a small number should be enshrined in the statues. The rule that non-participating Standing Committee members should be retired should be more strongly enforced.

  8. Review of Section Medium Term Plans Sections were reminded that MTPs had to be updated at the 1999 Conference.

  9. Section Brochures, Newsletters and Information Co-ordinators

    Brochures/Leaflets

      National Libraries reported that they had a brochure available in English which would be translated into all IFLA languages
      University Libraries had a leaflet in English which was being translated.
      Library and Research Services for Parliaments had leaflets in English, French, German, Russian and Spanish. The responsibility for the leaflets had been given to the Information Coordinator.

    Newsletters

      University Libraries had not produced any Newsletter. They hoped to re-establish an electronic Newsletter before the end of the year which would be available only in electronic form.
      Section on Library and Research Services for Parliaments produces two Newsletters per year which are sent out in hard copy but also available on the Section Homepage. The Section Secretary is the editor of the Newsletter. The National Libraries Newsletter was reported to be dying for lack of content. It used to be published twice a year.

    Information Coordinators.

      There was a short discussion on how Information Co-ordinators had been introduced and the varying ways in which sections were meeting IFLA HQ's requirement for Information Coordinators. In some sections the secretary was fulfilling this function. The Information Coordinator for the Section on Library and Research Services for Parliaments was neither the Chairman nor the Secretary. He had taken on the responsibility for creating a Section homepage and for producing the leaflets, as well as replying to requests from The Hague.

  10. Discussion Groups.

    Sections were reminded of their responsibility for any discussion groups which fell under their umbrella.

  11. Freedom of Expression and Access to Information.

    The newly appointed officers visited the meeting and briefly explained the role of FAIFE and the meeting and Guest Lecture which would be held in Amsterdam.

  12. The meeting was adjourned.


Minutes, CB II - August 21 1998, Amsterdam

Chair: Winston Tabb,USA
Secretary: Jennifer Tanfield, UK

  1. Opening of the meeting

    The meeting was called to order

      Members present:
      Winston Tabb, National Libraries
      Jennifer Tanfield, Library and Research Services for Parliaments
      Marcelle Beaudiquez, National Libraries
      Alex Bryne, University Libraries
      Kirsten Engelstad, University Libraries Jan Keukens, Library and Research Services Nick Bannenberg, Information Coordinator, Library and Research Services for Parliaments, attended as an observer

  2. Plans for Future Conference

    Bangkok
    It was noted that the Thai liaison for our division is

      Mrs Vipa Goyosookho
      Director, Library and Information Center, Mahidol University,
      25/25 Phutthamonthon 4, Salaya, Nakhom Pathom 73170 tel: 662 441 9741 or 441-9581
      fax: 662 441 9580
      email: directli@mahidol.ac.th

    It was reported that Sections were being encouraged to think in terms of joint or co-sponsored meetings, partly in the interest of room space. University Libraries plan a Discussion Group on performance measures at which there would be both speakers and country reports and at which the Cost Analysis Handbook would be launched. There would be a Workshop on "Life-long Learning in an electronic environment" and an Open Session on "Alternative Structures for financing delivery of services"
    National Libraries' programme would include the role of National Libraries in the development of public and school libraries. A follow up of the 1998 Workshop to deal with electronic publications in the national bibliography might be a joint session with the Section on Bibliography and possibly also the Section on Cataloguing. The question of the role of National Libraries in documenting ethnic minorities would also be discussed (the interest of FAIFE in this topic was noted).
    Parliamentary Libraries hoped to hold a one-day Pre-Conference in the Thai Parliament as well as a Workshop in the Parliament. It had been suggested that the Workshop should be devoted to aspects of library management and should be organised in small working groups. The Section would be seeking to repeat its special meeting on Research and its Informal Meeting.

    Jerusalem
    A professional resolution on how national libraries handle "war bounty" was likely to be sponsored by the National Libraries. They were thinking of including Conference sessions on security, promotion and possibly copyright again.
    University Libraries planned to discuss the preservation of electronic materials.
    Parliamentary Libraries had not yet formed any detailed plans.

  3. Small Project money

    Parliamentary Libraries said that they were anxious to assist the parliamentary libraries of Africa to hold regional meetings. It was agreed that this was outside the small project remit and should be discussed with Sjoerd Koopman.
    University Libraries had projects to translate Guidelines for Performance Measures for University Libraries into French and to up-date and translate their brochure into all languages, but these would be financed from Section funds. They proposed two small projects; to extend into Spanish the work on resources for teaching for literacy, and to produce Guidelines on Performance Measures in Russian.
    National Libraries had a project to review public relations materials that already exist (eg videos) and a clearing house proposal.
    It was agreed that the Division would seek to share the funds between the University Libraries' Russian project and the National Libraries PR review, but it was recognised that the Professional Board would have the final say.

  4. Evaluation of Amsterdam

    Problems which were raised included lack of facilities for posting documentation back, the high cost of day registration, the timing of Discussion Groups, lack of paper distribution for non-attenders/ availability of photocopies of papers not in the booklets, lack of information about the content of the cultural evening, The National Libraries had discussed paper handling - whether pre-printing should be abolished in favour of a CD Rom and printing on demand at the booth. Marcelle Beaudiquez pointed to possible problems of loss of translation of papers.
    It was agreed that the Conference Centre was well staffed by technically competent people.

  5. Medium Term Plan

    Sections were reminded again of the 1999 update and the need to collect ideas in advance.

  6. Statutes

    It was suggested that non-attending members of Section Standing Committees should be transferred to "Corresponding Members" rather than being expelled.

  7. Financial Returns

    Winston Tabb reminded Treasurers to send returns direct to him by 30 September as well as to IFLA HQ

  8. The meeting was adjourned.


OPEN SESSION OF THE SECTION ON NATIONAL LIBRARIES

Amsterdam

"Strategic Management in National Libraries"

Chair :
Marcelle BEAUDIQUEZ, director of scientific development, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, and secretary of the section

As some of you will recall, strategic management in National Libraries has been of considerable interest to the national library community for a number of years. In 1996, the National Library of New Zealand distributed a questionnaire on strategic management to eleven National Libraries. The final report was distributed in August 1997, and the key findings were discussed briefly at last year's Standing Committee meeting. It was agreed that this work should continue, focusing on those aspects of strategic management which the National Libraries participating in the survey identified as being high priority. Today's session will discuss three of these areas.

  1. "Core Competencies"

    The National Library of Canada will be giving a presentation on its work in this area in identifying core competencies required by staff for the next five to ten years.

    Speaker :
    Ms Gwynneth Evans is Director General for National and International Programs at the National Library of Canada. Trained originally as a language teacher, Ms Evans has held positions in reference and information services in two federal government libraries and in communications, publishing and marketing at the National Library. Her present position, which is a component of the Library's strategic planning function, benefits from the fact that she acted as Executive Secretary to the National Library's Advisory Board from 1984 to 1994.

    Introduction
    For many years, institutions in both the public and private sectors have recognised that their most valuable resource is their people -the staff who create products and deliver services to citizens and consumers. As the world has moved inexorably towards a knowledge-based economy and an information society, the need to ensure that staff at all levels have the necessary skills and abilities to enable our organisations to fulfill their missions has become even more pressing. The core competencies model has recently emerged as a popular and effective approach to staff development, and I would like to share with you today the National Library of Canada's experience over the last two years with defining and implementing core competencies among our own staff.
    It will be talking about the background to the National Library's decision to adopt a core competencies approach, our objectives in defining core competencies, the methodology we used to identify our set of competencies, the results we obtained, and our progress to date in implementing core competencies in the National Library of Canada. I will conclude with a description of the next steps we foresee in the process, including how we are sharing our findings with other interested libraries.

    Background
    As part of an action plan developed at our strategic planning session in February 1996, the National Library of Canada held later that Spring a two-part meeting of our senior managers and key specialists from among our staff, at which we brainstormed what we thought the National Library would look like in the year 2 001, in terms of who our clients could be and the services we would be offering them, and how we would achieve that vision. Key among the strategies identified for realising "Workplace 2 001" was the development of staff expertise : we felt that the Library had to identify systematically those skills that our staff would need to possess in order for the National Library to be a vibrant provider of information services in the 21st century. Discussions at this planning session focused especially on what we termed "soft" skills, as compared to the traditional skills and knowledge that have long been recognised as central to library work, such as cataloguing, reference, and the use of computer technology to organise and provide access to information. Examples of what we meant by "soft" skills include : marketing, negotiation, forming partnerships, maintaining ongoing communications with clients and stakeholders, team-building, advocacy, project management, the preparation of business cases to justify new services, and (may be a little reluctantly !) fundraising.
    The National Library felt that the challenge of defining the skills that our people would require in the future was important enough to warrant the dedication of a group of staff to investigate and present recommendations for implementing a program of core competencies. Accordingly, in September 1996, the Library created a Core Competencies Committee, with a charge to produce the following deliverables :

    • Core Competency Profile for the National Library ;
    • Training Plan, to develop the identified competencies in our staff ;
    • Skills Inventory, in which staff can rate the skills required in their jobs, both now and 5 years in the future, and compare these to the skills they currently possess.

    Methodology
    Our Core Competencies Committee was chaired by Rhonda Macinnes, the leader of our in-house Training Team which, since 1988, has provided courses in management and workplace skills to our staff. Several members of the Core Competencies Committee were also in-house trainers ; the Committee had representatives from all functional areas of the National Library, and reflected a variety of occupational groups and levels, from senior managers to support staff. The Committee used as background material the findings from the Library's two-day planning session that I mentioned earlier, as well as work on core competencies carried out by a number of Canadian government departments and other libraries in North America.

    Definition
    The Core Competencies Committee's first task was to agree upon a definition of the term competencies. After some deliberation, the definition that the National Library worked with was :

      "Competencies are observable and applied skills and behaviours that are essential for personal performance and the success of the organisation".

    There are two points about this definition that merit special attention. First, in defining competencies that are required for the future, the Library is seeking a balance between staff members' duties as employees of an organisation, on the one hand, and their own personal and professional development on the other. The Committee felt that if Core Competencies program were to succeed, staff must be able to see that there was something in it for them as individuals concerned about growth and development, as well as in their roles as public servants.
    Second, in focusing on skills and behaviours, the definition deliberately omits any mention of knowledge. Because many jobs in the National Library of Canada, as in any national library or indeed in any library, have very specific knowledge qualifications, the Committee determined that the exclusion of knowledge would enable a clearer concept of competencies, especially core competencies, to emerge. The Committee acknowledged that all jobs in the National Library of Canada do have a knowledge component, and that the ability to apply required knowledge is critical to job and personal success.
    The Committee defined core competencies as those competencies that have a broad application across the organisation, and that relate directly or indirectly to the realisation of the National Library of Canada's mission and strategic objectives.

    Process
    To elicit suggestions and discussion of candidate competencies, the Core Competencies Committee conducted a series of 4 focus groups in late 1996 and early 1997. These focus groups involved 39 staff, from all areas of the Library and covering the spectrum of occupational groups and levels. It soon became apparent that the Committee would need to definite separate sub-profiles of competencies for certain activities, which, while not "core" in the sense of large numbers of staff across the Library requiring these skills, were significant enough in terms of providing support to the Library's mandate to warrant their own profiles. These activities included :

    • Service to the Public ;
    • Management ;
    • Information Technology Support.

    The Committee ran an additional 3 focus groups, involving 16 staff, to identify competencies in these specialised areas.
    When the focus groups were completed, the Core Competencies Committee analyses their deliberations and drafted a profile of core competencies, that apply to all National Library staff, and three sub-profiles competencies for staff performing the specialised activities. The draft profiles were circulated to all focus group participants for verification. The Committee then drafted the Training Plan and the Skills Inventory, basing these on the verified competencies profiles.
    The National Library's Executive Committee approved the final report and recommendations of the Core Competencies Committee in June 1997.

    Results
    Competencies Profile

      The focus groups run by the Core Competencies Committee identified a total of 55 competencies that will be required on the part of staff in order for the National Library function effectively through the 2 001. In order to make the Profile easier to consult and more helpful as a training and development tool, the Committee organised the competencies into twelve sections. The first eight sections present the core competencies that pertain to all National Library staff :
      1. Communications
      2. Information Technology
      3. Dealing with Change
      4. Organizational
      5. Problem - Solving
      6. Teamwork
      7. Self - Management
      8. Corporate
        Sections nine through twelve present those competencies required under the specialised activities :
      9. Service
      10. Management : People Skills
      11. Management : Process and Organizational Skills
      12. Systems and Information Technology Support

      I would like to describe, briefly, the scope of each of the categories of core competencies, and to give some examples. I would be happy to provide you with copies of the sub-profiles that describe the specific competencies we have identified for our specialised areas.

      Communication may seem to be self-explanatory, but as I am sure you will agree, effective communication is critical to everything we do as librarians. It is no accident that we have listed Communication first among our groupings of competencies - this was the single most frequently cited skill in our planning session back in 1996. In the context of core competencies at the National Library of Canada, communication involves understanding, and being understood by, individuals and groups, at all levels, within and outside the National Library. The individual competencies we have identified under Communication include listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

      Information Technology competencies, as a core competency, refers to the effective use of technical equipment to accomplish work, on the part of all staff, not juste those who are IT specialists. Specific competencies under Information Technology include :

      • computer literacy, e. g. using a keyboard and mouse ; using standard National Library software such as AMICUS and work processing ;
      • electronic communication, such e-mail and the National Library's Web-based intranet ;
      • the ability to adapt to new technology as this is introduced into the Library.
      The competencies under Dealing With Change pertain to the capability to adjust one's behaviour to meet the demands of a changing work environment. Specific skills in this area include : adaptability to change ; willingness to learn new skills ; and demonstrating flexibility (for example : working effectively in a variety of situations, with different individuals and groups ; and the ability to deal with ambiguity).

      Organizational competencies include the ability to plan and execute work in order to achieve desired results. Specific "organisational" skills include :

      • planning and managing work : for example, setting goals ;
      • managing time and setting priorities ;
      • meeting deadlines ;
      • getting the job done.

      We have defined Problem-solving as the ability to facilitate an effective, timely outcome to a workplace situation. Specific competencies include :

      • analytic skills ;
      • creative skills ;
      • applying one's cognitive abilities ;
      • committing to action : for example, taking initiative ; taking sensible risks.

      Teamwork involves the ability to work co-operatively with others to achieve common organisational goals and objectives. Specific competencies include :

      • interpersonal skills ;
      • working effectively with others ;
      • encouraging teamwork.

      Self-management is centred around an inner sense of purpose and a willingness to take responsibility for one's actions. Competencies in this category include :

      • self-motivation ;
      • initiative ;
      • managing one's own learning ;
      • ethical behaviour : for example, honesty and sincerity, and following through on commitments made.

      Finally "Corporate" competencies are those which support the mission and mandate on the organisation. For the National Library of Canada, these include :

      • a client orientation :
      • marketing and promotion (this refers to understanding the basic concepts of marketing and promotion as they relate to an individual's job) ;
      • "working within the system" : what we mean by this is understanding organisational culture and structure, and identifying with the goals and values of the institution ;
      • using organisational know-how ;
      • environmental sensitivity - that is, understanding the impact on the National Library of political, economic, social and technological changes in the external environment.

    Training Plan
    The National Library's Core Competencies training plan consists of five elements :

    • the Training Grid, which matches identified competencies with available training and other resources ;
    • a copy of our in-house Training Team's calendar of courses ;
    • a copy of the Library's User Computing Support Service's schedule for in-house technical training;
    • a list of external training consultants and courses for those competencies that are not addressed by in-house resources ;
    • a Competencies resource list, selected from the World Wide Web, the National Library's in-house training collection, and the Library's general collection.

    The training plan is designed to serve as an ongoing resource for National Library managers and staff, to support staff development for current and future job responsibilities. We update the plan on an annual basis.

    Skills Inventory
    The Skills Inventory is intended to be a developmental tool that will allow individual staff to rate their jobs and themselves in terms of required competencies. Once acquired, this knowledge will help staff identify areas where they need to upgrade their skills now, and where they might be interested in developing skills for the future. For each competency in the profile, staff will assess, on a scale of one to five, the level to which they feel they possess this competency at the current time. They will also assess, in separate columns, the degree to which each competency is required in their job, both now and five years in the future.
    I would like to emphasise that the National Library is not using the skills inventory as part of the staff performance review process. Rather, we view it as staff development instrument, for both individuals and the organisation as a whole. All responses to the Inventory will be treated confidentially, we will be tabulating and analysing responses at the corporate level only, to develop long-term training plans, not at the individual respondent level.

    Progress To date, the National Library has distributed the Core Competencies Profile and sub-profiles and the Training Plan to all staff, for information and reference. We are now ready to administer the Skills Inventory, but staff turnover and other priorities have unfortunately forced us to delay this step. Once the Skills Inventory has been distributed and our staff has responded, the Core Competencies Committee will tabulate and analyse the results. We expect that the responses to the Inventory will uncover gaps that exist between the competencies staff feel they currently possess and those competencies that will be required in their job five years from now. We will then conduct a "gap analysis", for the purpose of developing a strategic, 5-year training plan that will ensure that our staff have the skills required for the Library to deliver its services to clients as the turn of the century.
    At the present time, we are going to conduct a quick review of our existing set of competencies profiles, to ensure that all the skills that will be required for the Library to function in the emerging digital information environment are defined and included in our Training Plan.
    The National Library has met with representatives from some Canadian federal government libraries to discuss the extension of our core competencies work to their institutions.

    Conclusion
    As we move through the digital 1990's towards the 21st century, libraries are recognising and acknowledging that our professional and support staff are as important to our ability to fulfill our mandates as are the collections we have required, organised and preserved over decades and centuries, and that without skilled, knowledgeable and forward-looking people, we will be unable to sustain the access services we have painstakingly constructed to the world's information resources. The National Library of Canada fells that the work we have done in identifying staff competencies that are core to our mission, and in developing a training plan to ensure that these skills are in place, is an important first step in moving towards becoming a learning organisation, a library with knowledgeable, committed, and forward-looking staff who will ensure that we remain in touch with our client's ever-evolving demands for service, and that we are able to respond effectively to these demands.

  2. "Clients needs in the 21st Century"

    Dr. Christopher Chia, National Library of Singapore, will be giving a presentation on this topic and addressing Singapore's developments relating to their library 2 000 initiative;

    Speaker
    Dr Christopher Chia has been the Chief Executive of the National Library Board of Singapore since September 1995. He has the responsibility to transform the Singapore public library system that encourages lifelong learning through the use of different information media. From 1983 to 1994, Dr Chia worked in the National Computer Board where he took on several appointments, including that of the Director of the Information Technology Institute, the Deputy Directorship of the Information Communication Institute of Singapore. Finally, he was also the Deputy Director of the IT Manpower Department that planned for the development of IT manpower for Singapore.

    (no written version available)

  3. "Measuring results of programs"

    Mr Ian McGowan, National Library of Scotland, will address this topic and will make a presentation measuring the results of programs, in particular Scotland's experience in performance indicators and how they relate to their Citizens's Charter.

    Speaker
    Mr Ian McGowan, joined the staff of the National Library of Scotland in 1971 as an Assistant Keeper with responsibility for Slavonic and East European printed collections. He became the Library's Keeper of Catalogues and Automation in 1978, and took over as Head of Administration with responsibility for finance, personnel, preservation and buildings in 1988. He was appointed Director of the Library in 1990. He is currently President of the Scottish Library Association.

Summary

  1. National Library of Scotland
    • Founded 1689 (NLS from 1925)
    • Board of Trustees
    • Funded by Government
    • Sponsor Department - Scottish Office Education and industry Department
    • From 2 000 - responsibility of the Scottish Parliament
    • Legal deposit library for UK and Ireland
    • 5 buildings in Edinburgh
    • 400 reader places en 5 reading rooms
    • 6 millions books
    • 270 staff
    • £ 11.7 million (1998-99)
    • Web site : http://www.nls.uk

  2. NLS Corporate Plan
    • General aims and objectives
    • Progress made towards objectives in past year
    • Specific objectives for Plan year 1
    • Longer term objectives
    • Planned income and expenditure
    • Bids for additional expenditure
    • Key performance targets and performance indicators

  3. Performance measurement
    • Statistics
    • Indicators
    • Measures
    • Targets
    3.1. Early Plans
    • Number of users
    • Number of items acquired
    • Items audited
    • Items catalogued
    • Items issued
    • Unit cost of cataloguing
    3.2. Current Plan : Key Targets
    • Completion of building projects
    • Retrospective conversion of general catalogue of printed books
    • Review of staff grading structure
    • Training and professional development programme
    • Access and use
    • Collection management
    • Building management
    • Financial management
    • Human resource management

  4. Access and Use
    • Reader visits
    • Items issued
    • ILL requests
    • Telephone, mail enquiries
    • Database accesses
    • Shop customers
    • Expenditure per user
    • Reading Room availability
    • Exhibition programme targets

  5. Collection management
    • Items acquired
    • Items audited
    • Items catalogued
    • Items conserved

  6. Building Management
    • Major projects : time and cost vs plan
    • Ratio of planned to unplanned maintenance
    • Compliance with fire standards
    • Accident levels

  7. Financial Management
    • Increase in self-generated income
    • Ratio of self-generated income to grant-in-aid
    • Staff costs as percentage of running costs

  8. Human Resource Management
    • Training days as % of total days
    • Managerial skills training as % of all training
    • Training budget as % of grant-in-aid

  9. Strategic review Key objectives 1995-2000
    • Building programme
    • Service levels
    • Information Technology
    • Staff training and professional development
    • Co-operation and collaboration
    • Adapt to changing environment

  10. Citizen's Charter
    • Who can use the Library ?
    • What can you expect from us ?
    • How can you find out what we can do for you ?
    • How can you tell us what you think ?
    • What to do when things go wrong
    • Published service standards


WORKSHOP OF THE SECTION ON NATIONAL LIBRARIES

Amsterdam

"Legal deposit of electronic publications"

Chair : Winston TABB, USA, Associate Librarian for Library services, Library of Congress

Though different in their aims and activities according to countries, national libraries have something in common : legal deposit and they are all thinking to date to the management of deposit for electronic publications both on line and off line. This is why this theme has been chosen for this workshop.

1. "Legal deposit of Electronic Materials" (introduction) :

Overview of report prepared for the Conference of Directors of National Libraries.

Speaker :
Brian Lang, UK, Chief Executive, British Library

    The speaker reminded that two years ago, a working group of the CDNL prepared a report on legal deposit of electronic publications. To date, the situation has changed, though changes are not so quick than expected. Two main points raise :

    • publishers are destabilized by the development of electronic publishing ;
    • national libraries have, at least, the responsibility of guarantying long term access to these publications.

    CDNL is convinced of the necessity for libraries and publishers to work together as soon as possible. At this moment, relationships are getting better : for example, through CDNL and CoBRA they are partners of the NEDLIB project.

    Concerning legal deposit, the voluntary system has some limits ; some sort of law seems necessary which indicates what has to be deposit and which allows libraries to decide of the use which is done of the electronic product on site (access, reproduction …)

2. "Deposit of Electronic Works under US Copyright Law :
Requirements, Issues and Practical experience"

Speaker :
Marybeth Peters, USA, US Register of Copyrights, Library of Congress

    Deposit has been part of the United States copyright system since its inception. The very first copyright law (1790) provided for deposit of published works ; however, the copies were sent to the Department of State. It wasn't until 1846 that a copy of each work was to be sent to the Library of Congress. From the beginning all types of copyrighted works were covered : however, protection under the Federal law, as opposed to the law of the various states, was limited to certain enumerated categories. In 1790 only books, maps and charts were covered. By 1846, prints and music had been added. Through the years various categories were added : for example, dramatic works, photographs, works of art, motion pictures, sound recordings, and computer programs. The latest category, architectural works, was added in 1990.

    The legal deposit system, however, did not become truly effective until 1870 when the copyright system (registration and deposit) was centralized in the Library of Congress. In 1909 the law was changed to require the copyright owner to deposit promptly after publication "two complete copies of the best edition" of a work. Unfortunately, promptly was interpreted to mean any time within the copyright term, which was 28 years, measured from the date of publication.

    The deposit provisions of the U.S. copyright law have formed the backbone of the Library's Americana collections and benefit the Congress and the nation as a whole. Last year the value of the material transferred from the Copyright Office to the Library was estimated at 25 millions dollars.

    Provisions of the present copyright law

    A new copyright law, enacted in 1976 and effective on January 1, 1978, shifted the philosophical basis for protection of authors' rights in the United States and changed the entire legal framework through which that protection is achieved. This law also greatly strengthened the provisions for mandatory deposit of copies and recordings for the Library of Congress.

    Section 407 of our law, known as the mandatory deposit provision, requires that "owner of copyright or of the exclusive right of publication" shall within three months of publication in the United States send "two complete copies of the best edition" to the Copyright Office for the use of the Library of Congress in its collections or its exchange programs. "Best edition" is the "edition, published at any time before the date of deposit, that the Library of Congress determines to be most suitable for its purposes". The Library has issued a policy statement on what constitutes such a "best edition", and this is referred to in the Office's implementing regulations. See 37 C.F.R. 202.19(b)(1). Since the law applies to all works published in the United States, it includes foreign work which are distributed in the U.S.

    The Register of Copyrights is given authority to issue regulations exempting categories of materials from the mandatory deposit requirement, reducing the number of copies required to one, or, in the case of certain pictorial, graphic or sculptural works, providing for exemptions or alternative forms of deposit. Examples of materials exempted include three-dimensional sculptural works, textiles and other fabrics and packaging material. Examples of works for which one copy suffices include : motion pictures, multimedia works and globes and relief maps.

    The law envisions a voluntary deposit system. However, to ensure compliance, the Register of Copyright may make a written demand for the required deposit at any time after publication. If the required deposit is not made within three months of the demand, there is the possibility of a fine of not more than $250 for each work plus the retail price of the copies. If the refusal to comply is willful or repeated, an added fine of $2,500 may be imposed.

    The constitutionality of the mandatory deposit provision of the copyright law was challenged by Law and Technology Press, publisher of the periodical, the Scott Report. The then Register issued a demand notice ; Law and Technology Press refused to comply and suggested that if the Library wanted the periodical it should become a paid subscriber. The Register referred the case to the Department of Justice who filed suit on behalf of the Register. The publisher's arguments were rejected in Ladd v. Law & Technology Press. 762 F.2nd 809 (9th Cir. 1985) cert. denied. 475 U.S. 1045 (1986).

    Practical experience

    In 1978 about the only electronic works subject to copyright protection were computer programs. They had been registered in the Copyright Office since 1964 despite some doubt as to whether they fell within the statute. Between 1964 and 1978 deposits included printouts, punched cards and magnetic tapes.

    Nineteen seventy-eight was a main frame environment ; personal computers (PCs) were not on the horizon. Machine-readable copies were not generally marketed to the public. The Library of Congress recommended exempting computer programs and all other works published only in machine-readable copies from the mandatory deposit provisions of the law, and the Copyright Office regulations exempted them from deposit. For purposes of registration of copyright claims in computer programs, the Office required the deposit of "identifying portions of the program" which was defined as the first and last 25 pages or their equivalent in the form of a printout of code. Registration based on a machine readable copy was not considered because the authorship of the computer programmer is best embodied in the source code, not the machine readable object code.

    Since the time that these policies were adopted, great changes occurred. The PC became popular, and computer programs and databases were widely marketed to the public. The Library responded to the public's desire for access to such works by establishing a Machine Readable Collection Reading Room and asking the Copyright Office to revoke the exemptions for machine readable works from mandatory deposit. Databases available only online would continue to be exempt.

    In 1988 the Copyright Office proposed these changes ; in response, a number of trade associations voiced their opposition and urged reliance on a voluntary system. They also expressed a number of concerns. They asked whether licensing restrictions would be respected and urged that restrictions on copying be included in any regulations. They also asked that the deposit requirements for registration be made the same as the deposit requirements for mandatory deposit.

    In 1989 computer programs and "data" published in machine-readable copies became subject to mandatory deposit ; thus, CD-ROMs were to be deposited. With respect to computer programs, the best edition statement of the Library made it clear that only works published in IBM and Macintosh formats needed to be deposit because these were the only machines available in the reading room.

    With respect to the concerns about uses, the final rule stated that : 1/ to utilize the machine-readable collections, researchers must register and be interviewed ; 2/ all materials would be stored in a secured area ; 3/ only staff members would handle the disks ; 4/ researchers would not be allowed to insert their own disks into the disk drives ; 5/ disk drives would be locked ; 6/ photocopying of computer manuals would not be allowed, and 7/ all applicable licenses would be kept with the materials and would be available for review to inform researchers of user . Additionally, such materials would not be lent.

    On September 19, 1991, the Copyright Office issued a new deposit regulation for registration of works fixed in CD ROM format. For any such work, the required deposit became the CD ROM even if published in another format, e. g., print. Specifically, "one copy of the complete CD ROM package", including the ROM disk, accompanying software,

    [ . . . . . . . . . . ]

    The agreements are complicated, and each contains multiple options. Key features for publishers are :

    1. the ability to preclude downloading of allow downloading of insubstantial amounts if researchers sign a downloading agreement ; and
    2. the ability to prohibit the exchange, sale, loan, gift or other transfer of all or any part of the deposit copy or accompanying software, or to prohibit such event for five years. After five years such exchange, etc. would be limited to a nonprofit library or other nonprofit person, subject to such library or person agreeing to the terms and conditions in the publisher agreement.

    The patron downloading agreement for "Deposit CD ROM Works" must be completed if the publisher makes this a condition of his agreement with the Library. In the Library Policy Statement on the "Use of Copyright CD ROM Deposits", the Library agrees to clearly designate deposits, agrees that only Library staff, etc. may handle the deposits, limits access to CD ROMs to the library facilities in metropolitan Washington, D.C. prohibits downloading of installation and search and operating software, posts in reading rooms statements regarding the proper use of copyrighted materials and makes depositor agreements available to staff and researchers.

    These voluntary CD ROM agreements were hailed by the Association of American Publishers "as a model of cooperation between government and the private sector, as together we face the challenges and promises of new information technologies …" and the Information Industry Association which stated that "conclusion of these model agreements marks a milestone in adapting provisions of the Copyright Act to an age of electronic information … These agreements give publishers a range of options which will help them preserve their intellectual property rights while fully complying with their deposit obligations".

    Not everyone was happy, however. The American Library Association writing on behalf of many libraries expressed concern about the possible implications on other libraries of the terms and conditions in these agreements. The Copyright Office replied that it believed that these agreements did not set a precedent for other libraries, noting the unique nature of mandatory deposit -where publishers must provide expensive CD ROMS free to the Library and accompanying license agreements limiting use are not binding on the Library.

    The deposit of online works is being addressed through the Copyright Office's electronic registration and deposit system, known as CORDS. This system will allow applicants to complete an application online and send it with a deposit electronically through the Internet to the Copyright Office. The CORDS system, currently moving from a test phase to an operational mode, will provide a secure repository for deposits of copyrighted works, and these works will be made available to the Library for use in accordance with the requirements of the law and terms and conditions of copyright owners.

    The Copyright Office and the Library are considering how this system could be expanded to include mandatory deposit. An internal working group has made a number of recommendations including a publisher registration process with its name and address as well as contact information and a special form with appropriate metadata. An appropriate interface with the Library's Integrated Library System will need to be developed so that the Library will be able to select, store, service and dispose of online works received through mandatory deposit.

    There are, however, a number of significant legal and policy issues that must be resolved before mandatory deposit can be applied to online works.

    ISSUES

    The Definition of Publication

    The largest issue centers on the definition of publication since only published works are subject to mandatory deposit. Publication is defined in the copyright law as "the distribution of copies or phonorecords of a work by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending. "The law also states that the offering to distribute copies or phonorecords to a group of persons for purposes of further distribution, public performance, or public display, does constitute publication. A public performance or display of a work does not of itself constitute publication.

    The focus of the law is on copies-making copies of works available to the public. In an online environments copies aren't really distributed. However, from a practical point of view, the end result is the same. Members of the public have copies of the work. On one case they were purchased from a bookstore ; in other the copies are made available through the transmission of electronic signals with copies being produced in the receiver's computer. It would seem that as long as a copy of the complete work is available for downloading by the public, publication could be deemed to take place.

    What about instances where the entire work may not be downloaded either because it's prohibited (e. g., databases that only allow copy of insubstantial amounts) or because it's too large ? What if a work is made available for purposes of display or performance but not downloading ? In these cases a copy of a work is stored in the random access memory of the computer but the copy is a temporary copy since it is deleted when the computer is turned off.

    What if there are restrictions as to the persons entitled to receive the work and the material is supplied for a limited purpose, without the right of reproduction, distribution or sale ? In the United States, such a distribution is considered a "limited publication" which means that for the purpose of the copyright law, the work is considered unpublished.

    With respect to registration of claims to copyright, the Copyright Office has registered a number of online works as published ; it also has registered such works as unpublished. The applicant makes the decision. Moreover, the Office has not taken a definitive position on what constitutes publication in an online world.

    Place of Publication

    When a work is made available online, where is it published ? Where is it first or simultaneously published ? This determination has critical significance. The place of first or simultaneous publication determines what countries a work may be protected in. For mandatory deposit, the work must be published in the United States. How does this system function when the work is instantaneously made available throughout the world ? Is a work considered published in any country where copies are available ? Or, do we need a new notion of place of publication ?

    In December, 1996 delegates to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) Diplomatic Conference on the WIPO Copyright Treaty considered proposed language on "the notion and place of publication". The proposed language was that the location of the source of the work be considered as the place of publication ; the language used in the draft treaty was "the place where the necessary arrangements have been made" for making the work available to the public. The WIPO specifically rejected the notion that the place of publication would be where copies are available to the public.

    The proposed article on notion and place of publication was not included in the final treaty. Thus, the issue of the place of publication is left for a later day.

    What constitutes the complete copyright work ?

    Works that are made available on the Web often are divided into component parts and contain hyperlinks to other publication. The question is : what is the work ? Where does the work begin ? Where does it end ? What do you do about hyperlinks ? What about websites ?

    How do you handle frequently updated works ? What if the updates are note copyrightable ?

    What constitutes the best edition ?

    How will "best edition" and "complete copy" be defined ? Are we ready to specify HTML rather that ASCII ? If a work is available in MSWord and WordPerfect, what do you require ? What if a work is limited to one platform, DOS, or if it is available in several - DOS, UNIX, etc ?

    What if the work is encrypted or otherwise copy protected ? Can the Library demand an unencrypted version when such a version has not been published ?

    What works should be exempted from deposit ?

    If all works that are made available online to the public are published and subject to deposit, what should the Library exempt so that it won't be overwhelmed with e-mails, chat room messages, advertisements, websites, etc ?

    How should works that are available in qualified repositories be treated ?

    What if the publisher says the work is available in a qualified repository and he will provide access to the library ? This clearly doesn't constitute deposit by access may be desirable if it is backed up with an agreement to provide the work in hard copy form e. g., CD ROM or microform when the work is no longer accessible ?

    What uses will be made of these works ?

    The use of online works allowed by the copyright law itself is limited ; licensing seems inevitable. Policies for acceptable use, codes of practice, standard contracts and efficient licensing mechanisms need to be developed.

    CONCLUSION

    There is much work to be done.

3. "The problems with web-archiving : "experiences from the Cultural Heritage Project in Sweden"

Speakers :
Tomas Lidman, Director (see 3. 1.) and Johan Mannerheim, Head of the Information Technology Department, Royal Library of Sweden (see 3. 2.)

    3.1. The background of the Swedish web archiving project

    Since 1661 the Royal Library, the National Library of Sweden, has collected all Swedish printed publications. The legal deposit law of that year is one of the oldest in the world, which means that the Royal Library today has one of the most comprehensive collections of a single nations imprints. It grows with more than 380 000 units and 1 400 shelf-meters per year.

    In the 19th Century the library also started collecting printed material which world-wide not is considered as an important part of the national printed cultural heritage, that means posters, postcards, advertising matters, price-lists etc. The result are that the collections of these materials today extend 10 000 shelf-meters. We have more than 500 000 posters. 500 000 postcards, and every year we get another 170 000 items.

    It is worth mentioning that the first task the prominent Swedish author August Strindberg got, when he entered his career as a librarian at the National library in 1874, was to sort this material out.

    The last five years or so has dramatically changed the acquisition situation. So far, most of the journals, newspapers, books and scientific reports still is published the usual way, and we get them through the legal deposit law. But the situation is under deep change and we have - as many others - difficulties with the electronic publications. And precisely there, you find a lot of the pamphlets, journals, posters and of the more peripheral and "simple" material we usually have tried to collect. We are indeed very afraid of that the long history of collection development of these special collections will be broken, if we just sit on our chairs and nothing radically happens.

    The Kulturarw3 Heritage Projects which started in 1996 is therefore a very important and strategic project, and it will help us to define different methods and processes to handle the publications on Internet. The project is just right now in a fascinating phase. It has been working in close contact with the committee set down by the Minister of Education 1997 to investigate a new legal deposit law for electronic publications.

    The present legal deposit law is from 1993 but it is already out of date. It just regulates the supply of fixed electronic publications such as CD-ROMs, other optic discs etc, but does not cover publications on Internet.

    The proposal by the new committee, which just is official, stresses the importance of collecting and storing electronic materials and publications on the Internet. It urges the Government to present a law which states this new obligation for the National library. But the access will be very limited, which is very unsatisfactory. The publishers are interested in putting their situation forward and to get more money out of the market. It is rather easy to limit the access to the electronic publications to those who can pay, which in the long run is a big threat to the open democratic society. But the last word has not been said yet.

    3.2. Problems and opportunities of Web Archiving

    This paper is dedicated to the tremendous task of archiving web publications. Much thought and many discussions and papers have been given to the question of web archiving during the last years, while most of the documents on the Internet have disappeared and cannot be retrieved again. I will discuss different possible approaches to some of the problems of web archiving, towards the background of experiences from the Kulturarw3 Project of the Royal Library, National Library of Sweden, "http://kulturarw3 kb.se", and other ongoing web archiving projects.

      The Kulturarw3 Project

      The Kulturarw3 Project started in September 1996, when the Royal Library hired an engineer, Johan Palmkvist, and I was made part time project leader. It was initially financed by a government grant of 3 million SEK (Swedish crowns) to test methods of collecting, preserving and providing access to Swedish electronic documents.

      The name Kulturarw3 means Cultural Heritage in Swedish but is properly spelled with a "v" at the end. The "w" has the same sound value in our language and we have indexed it to point out that the WWW or WorldWideWeb not only is something new and modern, but also part of our cultural heritage.

      The project has made three comprehensive harvests of the Swedish web since January 1997, two in 1997 and one this year, which was finished in June. A harvesting robot is used to search and retrieve Swedish web pages within the domains ".se", ".com", "net", ".org" and ".nu". A flow chart shows how it works (fig.1).

      The current number of Swedish web pages on the Internet is about 5 million from 31 000 web sites (25 000 of which are ".se" and more than 6 000 registered in other domains). Including pictures, sound etc. there are 9.7 million files. The total size is under 200 GB. Our collection so far comprises about 25 million files and half a terabyte or 25 DLT-tapes. So the big problem is not the size of the archive but to handle the large number of files.

      The project has got a special grant on 5 million SEK from the Wallenberg Foundation for archiving equipment. A tape robot storage system will be installed in the beginning of 1999, serving also other projects of digital preservation.

      There are at least a hundred different file formats in the collection, some of them standard or relatively standard as HTML and the picture formats JPEG and GIF, other proprietary and probably of shorter life length like Adobe's PDF and different versions of MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint. HTML, JPEG, GIF and text plain are together 95% of the files. It is among the other 5% of the files, we will find the more immediate problems. Migration, that is conversion to readable formats, will probably be the normal method to keep old documents readable.

      Access to the Kulturarw3 documents is as a rule not allowed till the legal framework is created, mainly by an ongoing revision of the Swedish deposit law. Kulturarw3 co-operates with another later Royal Library project called Svesök (meaning something like Swesearch in English), which is creating access tools to the current Swedish web. (For more information see "http://www.svesok kb.se/info/".). Svesök gets text files from Kulturarw3, adds descriptions in Dublin Core format to a selection of home pages and puts them into a subject tree structure. This selection is the electronic publication part of the Swedish National Bibliography. The rest of the pages are automatically indexed. A search robot is provided which lists described pages first. Kulturarw3 intends to find ways to save the efforts of Svesök cataloguing into the historic web archive.

      At present the staff of Kulturarw3 consists of two persons, Allan Arvidson and Krister Persson. A third will be hired this autumn.

      The focus of this paper will now move from a description of one way of doing it, the Swedish project as it is today, to a discussion of some possible approaches to the challenges of collecting, preserving and giving access to web publications.

      Collecting

        What?

        The first thing to decide is what to collect. In today's projects you will find two main approaches.

        The comprehensive one is represented by the Kulturarw3 Project, by Brewster Kahle's Internet Archive and more recently by the Finnish EVA Project. The scope is to get everything published on the Internet. They are collecting millions of documents. The selective approach is represented by the PANDORA Project of the National Library of Australia and EPPP (Electronic Publications Pilot Project) of the National Library of Canada. The scope is to get important publications which can be made accessible at once. They are "only" collecting thousands of documents. ~,

        An argument for being selective is, that you should not spend your limited resources on preserving lots of trash. However, doing an intelligent selection is difficult and researchers in the future will criticise our choices. Even if we try our very best, important digital information will get lost.

        Computer storage is getting cheaper and cheaper, while the cost of personnel does not. It might seem a paradox, but it is a fact that the selective projects use more staff than the comprehensive ones.

        If selection is done in the indexing process, not in the collecting process, we have at least saved the publications and mistakes in selection for cataloguing and indexing can be corrected in the future.

        Who?

        Who should preserve the digital publications? There are at least three approaches to this problem. One is to put the responsibility on publishers and other institutions as advocated in USA by the Task Force on Digital Archiving. The second is the national approach exemplified by Denmark and by the Australian, Canadian, Finnish and Swedish projects. The third is the international one represented by Internet Archive.

        Long-term preservation calls for long-term institutions with stable financing, that lasts for hundreds of years. To give the task to a national library in each country, widening its responsibility from printed publications to digital, based on rewriting the deposit law, seems to be a good solution for many countries. Collection and preservation is best done at one institution with good resources, while indexing and selection might be done in co-operation with other institutions.

        The institutional approach is not so stable and combines badly with automatic, comprehensive collecting of web publications.

        The interactive character of the web pages with links to other pages, regardless of national boundaries, speaks for the international approach. But there seems to be a long road to go to create an international institution for web archiving with long-term stable financing. It seems more realistic to start co-operation between national web archives not only to exchange experience and give support to each other, but raising questions of standards, exchange formats, communication between the archives etc.

        How?

        The usual way to collect web documents is by harvesting, that is using a robot software, which searches documents on the Internet and retrieves them by downloading a copy. Another way is to let the publisher deliver it by tape, magneto-optic disk or via Internet. The harvesting approach is of course the only possible one for comprehensive web collecting. Dealing with, as in Sweden's case, the owners of more than 30 000 web sites would be a night mare. But most selective projects also seem to take the harvesting approach, as it is simple and practical. However for some of the sites, protected by user accounts and passwords, delivery might be used.

        The short life length is a special characteristic of web publications, which makes them different from printed publications and electronic publications on CD-ROM and other carriers. It is so cheap and easy to change a web page. The average life length of publications on the web (or rather of editions and issues of web publications) is about two months. You must take this into account when you decide between the snapshot approach and the continuous approach.

        The snapshot approach is to take two, four, six or another number of snapshots of the web each year and let that represent the web publications of that year. It is an attractive way to select automatically and reduce the size of the web archive. The main problem with the snapshot is that you will lose information like newspaper and journal issues and other important pages, which have a short life. This means that you have to give certain web publications special treatment, which will raise staff time and costs. This is for instance done by the Australian Pandora project.

        The continuous approach is not in practical use today. The idea would be to collect as many editions and issues as possible. To do that you need a harvesting robot that collects information about the frequency of change of each URL, and uses that information for its collecting strategy. According to expertise it would not be too difficult to construct such a robot software.

      Preservation

      The next set of problems concerns the long term preservation and access of the web publications. The difficult problem is not the life-length of tapes and other carriers of the information, as it is easy to copy the 1s and 0s the digital information consists of and the copy is identical with the original. The difficulty is the short life-length of the software and hardware environment. You need a new computer every third year and have problems to read documents older than ten years, because today's software can only import a limited selection of file formats.

      The question is: how are our successors going to read the digits we have preserved for them. There are at least three approaches to this problem, the technological museum, the migration and the emulation approaches. The first approach would be to create a technological museum with old computers and software. But this would be only a temporary solution as you soon will run out of spare parts and the cost to uphold the knowledge of how to run the systems and software will rise tremendously.

      The migration approach means successive conversions of the files to current formats, when the old are outdated. That means a maintenance cost for the archive, but a cost that can be controlled. A drawback by migration is that it is inevitable, that you sometimes will lose some information or functionality of a document, when it is converted from one software to another. Even if the textual contents will be correct and complete, some of the authenticity of the document will get lost. So you need a good strategy, trying to use standards and as few conversions as possible.

      The emulation approach means reading old files by writing new software in your current computer environment emulating the old programs or at least the reading part of them. In a way this is the most comfortable approach. You save the information in the original format and rely on future generations' ability-to create reading software for their use.

      In my opinion a combination of the migration and emulation approaches is the best way to go.

      In this early stage of web archiving it is natural to regard web preservation issues as a special problem concerning the WorldWideWeb only and to treat them apart from other preservation issues. This could be called the web only approach as opposed to the digital information approach to preservation. Many national libraries are engaged in large digitisation projects and are also generating and sometimes collecting digital archival records. These materials are facing the same problems of preservation and readability in the future as the web archives do. The digital information approach would be to seek a common solution for the preservation of all digital information. The tape archive we are building in the Royal Library is intended to be such a common preservation resource.

      Access

      If you search for a tree on the Internet today, you will get the whole forest as an answer. In the long list presented you are lucky if you find a relevant hit on page seven. This problem will not be less in a historic web archive. Cataloguing, even if it is done at a minimum level, can hardly be accomplished for more than some per mille of the web pages. (5 000 is one per mille in Sweden's case.) Therefore it is important to promote the use of metadata, to help the producers to make their own cataloguing and put that onto the page. A possible development is illustrated by figure 2.

      After years of discussion it seems that the Internet community rallies around the metadata format Dublin Core. The Royal Library promotes metadata by meetings and by information on the web, by having a template for Dublin Core creation at Svesök and by encouraging other actors also to have Dublin Core templates.

      Cooperation

      In 1997 Kulturarw3 initiated an informal group of technical co-operation within the Nordic countries, called Nordic Web Archive. It has met four times and for instance had deep-going discussions on harvesting robot specifications for web archiving. The Royal Library is also downloading web pages for seven Central American countries, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.

      In conjunction with the WWW7 Conference in Brisbane, Australia, this spring there was a joint meeting on web archiving in Canberra with representatives of the National Libraries of Sweden, Australia and The Netherlands. The need for an international platform for web archiving news and discussions was acknowledged and the task was given to me. Kulturarw3 has in August 1998, just in time for IFLA, created such a platform on the Internet, PREWEB, Preserving the WorldWideWeb, at "http://kulturarw3.kb.se/html/proweb.html". It consists of a link collection and a discussion list. Everything is preliminary, even the name, and will be revised by the initiating group.

      There is certainly need for much more co-operation in the future. Then, just to take one example, it will, perhaps, be possible to follow an old link on a web page in one national web archive to the proper document from the same time in another.

      Figure 1 : Flow chart of the Kulturarw archival robot. (click here to view figure : 51k)

      Figure 2 : Web retreivability (click here to view figure : 29 k)

4. "Handling Electronic Publications ; : Practices and Projects"

Speaker :
Johan Steenbakkers, Director of Information Technology and Facility Management, Royal Library of Netherlands

    These days the 'Koninklijke Bibliotheek' (KB) celebrates its bicentenary. You might have noticed that earlier this week as part of the festivities a large and comprehensive exhibition has been opened in the presence of her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands. The exhibition shows the many aspects of the task, the collection and the work of a National Library nowadays.

    Focusing on one of the main tasks of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, namely the Depository Library of Dutch Publications and Dutch Bibliography I have to confess that this task only date back 25 years. It was on January 2, 1974 that the KB acquired its role as depository library. And though the deposit has always been based on voluntary contributions, a recent analysis has shown that today the KB receives over 96 percent of all publications having an ISBN.

    So the Depository Library of Dutch Publications seems well established nowadays and the Dutch Bibliography is rather comprehensive and up to date. That is if we take into account the printed publications. But besides the printed publications, more and more electronic publications are being produced.

    In any bookshop it is visible that more and more shelves are being used for the exhibition of multimedia publications. And bookshops are not the only places where CD Rom's are being sold; only 14 percent of th CD Rom's are being sold by bookshops. A study by the NVPI (Dutch Society of Producers and Importers of Multimedia products) was mentioned in the edition of "Boekblad"', July 1998. This study shows that the multimedia market in the Netherlands has expanded in 1997 with no less that 60% compared with 1996. (110 million - 165 million).

    A market survey done in 1996 by a group of experts at TNO-STB already predicted this fast growth. More than 250 Dutch publishers responded to a questionnaire. The result was that around 12,000 electronic publications were to be expected to be published in that year and the expectation was that this amount would grow to around 26,000 electronic publications in the year 2000, which would be eligible for inclusion in the deposit.

    In response to the appearance of electronic publications several National Libraries started to investigate the inclusion of electronic publications in their deposit collection. In this attempt they had and still have to deal with a range of matters ; juridical, organisational, financial and technological. In the year report of 1994 the KB for the first time mentioned activities undertaken to collect electronic publications, so to start the Deposit for Dutch Electronic Publications. And so a start has been made, though we have to realise there is still a long way to go before the deposit of electronic publications (EP's) will be fully established as such that EP's are collected as comprehensive as printed publications and will also be kept available for the long term.

    Many preparatory steps had and still have to be taken in order to make the deposit of EP's -initiated in 1994- possible. What I want to talk about today is the process in whish a 200 year old library is learning to handle EP's and the process in which the library is developing a deposit for EP's.

    I will give you a brief overview of the actual situation of the handling of EP's by the KB. Then I will focus on the opportunities by which the necessary conditions were reached. And finally I will discuss some management issues connected with the process.

    But first I will present some background information about the KB. Facts and figures :

      The Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB)

        Function : National Library of the Netherlands
        Founded : 1798
        Budget : NLG 46 million (of which NLG 22 million personnel)
        Staff : 230 full equivalents (325 employees)
        Holding : 3 million items ; 15,000 current periodicals
        Organisation :
        • Board of governors
        • Directors : Chief executive, Deputy Director, Director IT & FM
          • 4 main divisions :
            • Union Catalogue (26 fte)
            • Collections & Research (57 fte)
            • Acquisitions of Processing (64 fte)
            • Public Services (43 fte)
          • 7 staff divisions
        • ICT facilities :
          • Computerroom
            • 30 systems
            • SURFnet Node Internet backbase (1994)
            • Testlab for project activities (1998)
              • Server + 5 workstations
          • Advanced Information Workstation (1993-1997)
            • 40 AIW in reading room
          • Local Area Network (integrated for data & telephone (1995-1997))

    After drafting a rough sketch of the KB I want to introduce you to the actual situation of the handling of EP's in our library. Doing so I will discuss both the aspects of access and of storage to EP's. Or to put it in another way : both the front office and the back-office of handling EP's.

    In my general overview of these aspects I will mention practice and projects which address the challenge of handling Ep's. EP's might be offline (e. g. CD Rom's) as well as online EP (through a network).

    Discussing the topic of managing, storing and access of offline EP's, I will focus on published EP's eligible for the deposit collection. So I will not consider neither the digitisation activities in our library, nor the practice and project concerning the access, managing and storing of digitised versions of items from our own collection.

    Years ago already some publishers did spontaneously send offline EP's (mainly floppy disks) to the KB, often as annex to a printed book (e. g. a manual).

    • A provisional agreement with the Dutch Union of Publishers in 1996 subsequently promoted the deposition of the offline EP's. From this moment onwards the offline EP's have been described in the "National Bibliography of the Netherlands" (Brinkman) and titles have been published as a separate category in the list of publications appearing in the weekly journal for the book trade : 'Boekblad'.
    • Stored in bookstacks
    • Access on request in reading room on stand alone PC = CD Rom reader
    • In 1997 : 370 offline publications deposited
    • CD ROM, CD-I and floppy disk
    • Up to 300 MB
    • No management system for preserving
    • Tracking of ageing
    • File corruption, etc.
    • No specific preservation measures
    • In 1998 formal rules for depositing of EP's were agreed upon with the publishers.

    So after a period during which there were only spontaneously delivered offline EP's arriving, gradually an active acquisition was started by stimulating the publishers to deliver their EP's.

    Besides this practice also a number of projects have been carried out to support the handling of offline EP's. A major project was the DNEP-IWL. DNEP stand for Deposit of Dutch EP's. IWI is the Steering Group of Innovation of Information Supply, founded by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, and by the Dutch Universities, the Royal Dutch Society of Sciences and the Dutch Organisation for Research. The aim of the project (which was carried out in 1996-1997) was to define a workflow model for EP's and to study the changes that will affect the organisation of the library as a result of the move towards electronic publishing. All workflow aspects were taken into account : production, selection, acquisition, registration, installation, bibliographic description, de-installation, technical description, migration, storage handling, indexing, retrieval and access. A test was done with 100 EP's of which 50 were offline and 50 were online publications. A detailed description of the project has been published by Drs Trudy C. Noordermeer in 'Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries'. As a result of the project, criteria have been defined for the selection of material for the deposit. The format for the bibliographical description has been modified and a first functional specification for the storage system has been made. And last but not least the Division Acquisition &Processing, that was heavily involved in the project, gained the necessary knowledge and skills to handle the EP's deposited at the KB.

    The problems of preserving EP's for the future, however, had not been dealt with.

    For the purpose COBRA+ initiated the NEDLIB-project. Last week I gave a brief overview of this project and its aims during the IFLA pre-seminar Convergence in the Digital Age : Challenge for Libraries, Museums and Archives' as a contribution to the session about "The Future of the Digital Present' NEDLIB focuses on :

    • Technical dates control
    • Document capture and handling
    • Mass storage
    • Long term preservation

    More information about NEDLIB can be found at the KB website : http://www.konbib.nl.nedlib/

    NEDLIB has started only this year and we are about to address the topic of long term preservation.

    Also on the juridical aspects the KB has recently taken steps to reach long term preservation of EP's. A study was commissioned by the KB to the Institute for Information Law in Amsterdam -co- financed by IWI- for the 'Copyright Aspects of the Preservation of Electronic Publications'. Kamiel J. Koelman and Babiche N. Westerbrink, under the supervision of Dr P. Bernt Hugenholtz have carried out the study. I will briefly mention some of the conclusions and recommendations of the study. Dutch law implies that the KB has an obligation to preserve electronic publications. Current preservation methods entail copying, which may infringe the rights enjoyed by the publications. A publisher's license authorising preservation is not always adequate. An exemption specifically created for the KB in order to enable the preservation of the national cultural heritage will be necessary. Such a provision should apply types of works (also in combination) and relate to copyright, neighbouring rights and database protection.

    After presenting activities on managing and storing of offline EP's I will now turn to the online EP's, and especially the electronic journals.

    From 1995 onwards, alongside research projects on national digital deposit issues, the KB has followed a course of practical implementation. As part of this strategy, the KB has contact with IT-vendors such as AT&T and IBM for joint research and development work on electronic storage management systems. Experiments with large amount of electronic journals are being carried out within the deposit framework. The KB has reached an agreement with three major publishers of scientific journals and government publications concerning the deposit of their products to the national library. These are Elsevier Science, Kluwer Academic and SDY Uitgevers. Elsevier Science publishes printed scientific journals of worldwide importance, most of that are now also available in electronic form. At this moment approximately 400 journals with a Dutch imprint are stored and handled using the IBM Digital Library System.

    As a result the KB has gained technical expertise on the electronic handling of large digital collections and has been asked by an University Library and a publisher jointly to act on a experimental basis as a technology provider for the library. The visitors of the library access the E-journals stored at the KB through the research network.

    In January 1998 the IBM Digital Library System for storing and handling electronic journals was made operational at the KB. It was implemented in March 1997 and an immense joint effort was required of specialists from IBM and the KB to successfully finish the operation. The configuration implemented at the KB consists of IBM Digital Library version 2 software developed by Bell laboratories which was implemented in 1996 and has been running successfully until 1997. Because Right Pages was withdrawn from the market, an alternative system was required. In the selection process two software packages, ICL Commands and Orion's Science Server, were implemented and tested for several months. Finally, the IBM Digital Library was selected and put into operation at the KB. The Digital Library System offer functionality for loading, storing and retrieving large amount of electronic documents. Advanced search capabilities are also offered. At his moment the content database contains 90 BG, storing about 170 000 journal articles from 350 electronic journals from Elsevier Science from November 1995 onwards. Every week about 1,400 articles are being added (about 800 MB). We are actually in the process of loading also the publications of Kluwer Academic and SDU. The problem is that for each publisher a separate loader has to be defined. In the coming months the BM-Dl environment at the KB will be expanded with a RS/6000 SP configuration. The result will be a separate environment for production. By production I mean the process of regular loading and giving access to the electronic journals.

    Access to the electronic journals is provided to visitors of the reading room of the KB. And staffmembers are also using it to deliver prints from Elsevier journals in reply to interlibrary loan request. A special arrangement has been agreed upon to experiment in this way with the use of the database as a digital stack in the interlibrary loan process.

    At this moment visitors of the University of Delft can also access 36 of the journals. The consideration to make the database available for third parties is that economy of scale can be achieved if the advanced technical infrastructure the KB maintains for its core responsibilities, can be more widely used. This might, according to the KB strategic plan (1998-2001), involve taking on the archival responsibility for publishers. In addition the KB can offer -as a technology provider (host) and in proper consultation with publishers- facilities for the storage and management of files, such as electronic journals, for other research libraries. A charge will be made for this but in the end it will cost the libraries less than doing their own stage and management.

    KB Network Information Services

    In 1993 the KB started a project to develop a user-friendly facility for the networked environment to find and retrieve publications in- and outside the KB. With substantial financial support of the Dutch Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) the Advanced Information Workstation (AIW) was developed and installed in 1996 to replace the OPAC terminals in the library. In the beginning of the project the KB was struggling with no less five network protocol until the appearance of the Work Wide Web. From that moment onwards we have tried to standardise as much as possible on the HTTP protocol.

    The AIW is a functionally integrated tool for library users. So it supports functions for every phase of their research :

    • searching               -       services
    • acquiring                -       offers various retrieval facilities
    • processing             -       serves as a personal desktop
    • communication       -       serves as a virtual address
    • publishing               -       serves as a media provider for authors

    During the same period, the KB also developed an Internet information service named 'Alexicon'. Whereas the AIW started from within the library aiming at presenting information present within the library, 'Alexicon' started as a service to bring information from the outside world (Internet) into the library to the user. From the moment the HTTP protocol was chosen it became clear in 1966 that it would be a great advantage to merge both services into one KB Network Information Services. At the same time the organisational support structures and procedures could be developed and validated. This was inevitable as it was no longer a project but an operational service, serving as main entrance on the Internet into the KB and as user environment in the readingroom. And so various new tasks has to be carried out on a permanent basis, such as the selection and cataloguing of electronic information sources, system maintenance, user support onsite and helpdesk for remote users. Close co-operation between different departments is required to keep the KB Network Information Services updated and running.

    In the coming period, more workstations will be installed in the reading room and also the functionality will be further developed. The major changes are the customisation of the electronic user environment and better access and control mechanisms.

    After having presented a brief overview of the handling of EP's at the KB I would like to discuss the opportunities which made it possible to reach this situation. Also I will focus on the problems which had to be solved underway.

    1986
    It might sound odd but a real opportunity was the reorganisation of the KB in the period 1986 till 1991. In order to achieve greater efficiency, in combination with a 10 percent reduction in staff imposed by the government on ministerial institutions, the organisation had to be completely changed. During this process coherence of the organisation was be strongly improved but also some new departments were created, which proved in the end to be crucial for developing the capability for handling EP's. These are the department for Information Technology and Automation and the department for Library Research and Documentation and also the sub-department for Networkservices.

    Before the ICT department was created, the automation, supporting only the traditional library procedures, was developed and maintained by Pica. The systems present in the KB in 1986 were very much out of date, the efficiency was inadequate and there was a lack of coherence. So new functional requirements were defined by the KB which eventually have led to the development of a complete new library system by Pica, which has been implemented in the period 1989-1993.

    1989
    This was done with a substantial financial support from the Ministry of Education and Science. So the KB was provided with completely renewed automation facilities.

    1992
    In 1992 the KB and SURFnet teamed up to improve access to networked information in general and to the SURFnet information server in particular. This co-operation has led to the development of InfoServices for SURFnet maintained by the KB among which is the NL-menu. NL-menu is a guide to relevant websites in the Netherlands. Already over 10,000 websites has been registered and classified according to subject. These activities eventually have led to the creation of a small but highly relevant department for the development and maintenance of KB's network services.
    I would now like to conclude by describing some of the management issues, which played during the process towards handling of EP's.

    1995
    Introducing a new kind of publications like EP's in the library and implementing a workflow handling them, can be done in two ways. Either a separate division is created responsible for the complete workflow or all divisions are transformed in order to cope with EP's in addition to printed publications in so using the existing organisation structure and workflow. It is the last solution mentioned which we have chosen.
    Transforming the existing workflow to integrate EP's, has the advantage that experts for each step in the workflow of the library are involved in developing the procedures and conditions necessary.
    At the same time this means that a greater part of the library staff has to be trained to handle EP's.

    A major effort was to get the management of the several divisions involved and motivated of the difficult transition of their library skills to the new fields of EP's.
    At management level now and then people threatened to become uncertain because of lack of overview of what was happening and what the connections were or should be between those activities. To cope with this documentation and progress reports on all relevant projects and activities were widely made available. Also two umbrella Steering Groups were formed, each chaired by a director, one for the deposit of electronics publications (so the back office activities) and one for the user environment and KB information network services (the front office activities).

    It appears that there is no blueprint available or no blueprint can even be drafted for the handling of EP's within National Libraries. Management has to accept this fact. But what can and should be done, is to set out a cruse and try to obtain that each step that is taken, each project that is done, actually means a step forward in the chosen direction. This implies also the management should cope with a certain amount of uncertainty about the future situation, but at the same time not be paralyzed by this uncertainty, neither be discouraged by the complicated and continuously changing setting. This all has to do with the reality of our society now a days in which we, as national libraries, operate.

5. "Developing national collections of electronic publications : issues to be considered and recommendations for future collaborative actions"

Speaker :
Jan Fullerton, deputy director general, National Library of Australia

    This paper seeks to identify areas of common interest where national libraries can work together to progress the issues surrounding the management of electronic publications. These are discussed in this paper under the following headings :

    • Collection building
    • Description and control
    • Managing a collection of digital publications
    • Preservation
    • Metadata
    • Organisation and cooperation

    Background

    Fundamental to the idea of national libraries is the notion that they should take responsibility for collecting, recording, providing access to, and preserving their own national imprint. The extension of publishing beyond the realm of print into a variety of media forms including online electronic publications adds complexity to, but does not change the fundamental role and responsibilities of national libraries.

    While national libraries may have different roles and responsibilities, and in some cases a different emphasis or focus on their electronic activities, there is much common ground. National libraries are considering similar issues, and designing or building similar systems for the handling of electronic publications. The National Library of Australia believes that there is value in national libraries which are developing digital collections sharing information, discussing issues and researching specific questions through such means as discussion lists and working groups.

    At present, handling digital resources is relatively new for most libraries and raises a number of problematic issues. A brief description of the work in this area currently being undertaken by the National Library of Australia is provided in Appendix 1. [Nota bene : not printed here] One option for sharing information would be to publish this and similar summary reports from other national libraries on the PADI (Preserving Access to Digital Information) site managed by the National Library of Australia (http://www.nla.gov.au/padi).

    Recommendation 1 :
    That national libraries interested in designing and building systems for the handling of electronic publications provide a summary report of their work in this area for publication on the National library of Australia's PADI site

    Collection building
    National libraries have a well-defined role in collection building and this role extends to collecting and preserving the electronic publishing output of their nation. With physical-format electronic publications, the collection issues are not dissimilar to those pertaining to printed materials. In the online electronic environment the concept of collecting differs from that applied to publications which exist in physical form. Collecting becomes the discovery and registration of an electronic resource and the implementation of processes to ensure that a copy is preserved for future access.

    For online electronic publications the way in which this is done may vary greatly. It will depend on the type of material considered within scope for collecting by a given country, the format and general accessibility of the publication and the extent to which publishers are involved in the discovery and registration process. Online capture offers one means of obtaining preservation copies of electronic publications. In some countries, this may extend to capture of an entire domain. However, deposit by publishers will also play an important role The traditional pattern of a national library being the repository for all national publications may also change, with the emergence of more distributed models.

    To achieve their collecting objectives in the digital environment it is advantageous for national libraries have clear statements or policies on the collecting of electronic publications, and to publicise and promote them. For some national libraries legal deposit is an important element in collection building, and an essential element in ensuring the survival of cultural material. In a number of countries legal deposit currently extends only to printed and not to electronic materiel.

    Human Resource Management

    • Training days as % of total days
    • Managerial skills training as % of all training
    • Training budget as % of grant-in-aid

    The ease with which electronic publications may by reproduced and distributed has tended towards a climate in which publishers are less inclined to concede any kind of fair use to the public and in which there is suspicion of the principle of legal deposit. There is a need for libraries particularly deposit libraries, to strongly reaffirm the value of, and necessity for, the legal deposit of materials in the digital environment.

    It would be useful for those national libraries that have legal deposit status to share information on the extension of legal deposit to electronic publications. In the print world publications are deposited or otherwise acquired. Legal requirements may involve the issuing of receipts. In the online environment a crucial question is what is the equivalent of receival and receipt ? This is an area where national libraries might profitably exchange information. One mechanism for achieving this might be the promotion of policies and practice via the PADI site.

    Recommendation 2 :
    That national libraries with legal deposit obligations exchange information on the implementation of legal deposit for electronic publications for publication via the PADI site

    Recommendation 3 :
    That national libraries with legal deposit obligations analyse and document the range of models which would need to be supported for electronic legal deposit, and that the National Library of Australia coordinate discussion on this issue through a discussion list.

    Description and control
    National libraries are generally responsible for the cataloguing of the printed publications of their country and the production of the national bibliography. Because electronic publications form part of each country's national imprint, they should be included in the national bibliography (in the widest sense), described in the same way as printed publications and integrated with the print collections.

    Describing digital objects has so far presented few problems in terms of traditional cataloguing. Cataloguing rules and MARC formats have demonstrated an evolving responsiveness to the descriptive requirements of the new carriers. A number of standards such as the International Standard Bibliography Description for Electronic Resources ISBD (ER), AACR2, and the ALA Guidelines for Bibliographic Description of Interactive Multimedia are widely used.

    National libraries may also have a role to play in encouraging creators, publishers and distributors of networked electronic publications to include standard descriptive elements in their publications. The Dublin Core metadata set is becoming an accepted approach for registering and describing electronic material requiring a lower level of bibliographic control. As part of this process, there is a need for national libraries to consider appropriate models for providing integrated access to print and electronic publications and for providing improved access to the content of publications. The role of traditional national bibliographic services and indexing and abstracting services needs to be redefined in the context of new electronic services such as web indexes, subject gateways and metadata repositories

    Even more urgent and pressing for libraries and their users is the provision of a reliable system of permanent naming for on-line electronic publications. This is needed to overcome access problems associated with broken links. Currently the National Library of Australia is using a PURL Resolver Service to assign permanent names to its own archived copies, but this is seen only as an interim solution. There is a need for national libraries to agree on suitable long-term permanent naming systems. The National Library of Australia would support the establishment of a working group of representatives from the national libraries to examine the issues and recommend on appropriate and compatible naming systems.

    The National Library of Australia favours Universal Resource Numbers (URNs) in line with the Finnish model, and based on the work done by Juha Hakala in Finland. The Library believes that the Finnish model has many attractive advantages as a solution, and recommends that other national libraries consider supporting it.

    Recommendation 4 :
    That national libraries endorse the principle that electronic publications are part of the national bibliography and consequently part of their national responsibility.

    Recommendation 5 :
    that, as part of the task to analyse and document the range of models which would need to be supported for electronic legal deposit, national libraries consider models for providing integrated access to print and electronic publications and for improving access to the content of publications

    Recommendation 6 :
    That national libraries establish a working group to recommend on suitable permanent naming solutions

    Managing a collection of digital publications
    National libraries may be called upon to advise, lead, coordinate or establish national systems or national infrastructures for managing national collections of electronic publications. In Australia, the state libraries have indicated that the National Library should take the initiative in developing a framework for ensuring that the widest possible number of digital publications are described, made available and preserved in a co-operative manner.

    The national framework or infrastructure in which the establishment of a national collection of electronic publications takes place is important. It is generally recognised that the task of building and maintaining such a national collection is great and may be beyond the capacity of a single institution to sustain. Co-operative national models in which stakeholders other than national libraries play a role have been suggested as an answer. How this is best organised, the management of such a decentralised process, the costs and the most effective ways of streamlining work-flows in such an environment remain to be explored.

    For national libraries developing a national collection of electronic publications and seeking to manage an archive, the authentication of archived documents will be a major issue. A second matter of interest will be the form that the digital object management system takes.

    Providing an accurate record of a nation's documentary heritage will involve issues of version control and authentication. This is particularly important for digital publishing where the archived work must remain unchanged and true to the original. Because authentication and the techniques relating to authentication such as encryption, time stamping, watermarking and digital signatures are also of vital concern to business interests, it may be that solutions for library archives will emerge from the commercial sector.

    The technical framework for any management system handling a collection of national electronic publications is crucial to national libraries seeking to archive electronic publications for long-term access and preservation. Management systems will need at least some of the following requirements:

    • Searching mechanisms
    • End user interfaces
    • Access controls
    • Intellectual property rights management components
    • Robust hardware platforms and software to underpin the operation of the archive

    Archives of electronic publications will have a need for long-term user access to the archive. The question of access raises issues of copyright and intellectual property.

    The National Library of Australia expects that there would be significant advantages in sharing information and co-operatively seeking solutions to the various problems that confront libraries in each of these areas.

    Recommendation 7 :
    That those national libraries concerned with developing technical infrastructures or specifications share, compare or comment on each other's documents as appropriate

    Recommendation 8 :
    That those national libraries interested in the issue nominate representatives to be on a discussion group to explore issues of authentication of content, and that a group leader for this task be appointed.

    Preservation
    The steps involved in identifying, capturing controlling and managing digital publications in an archive all play a critical role in making preservation possible, but of themselves they are insufficient to ensure long term accessibility. There will be a range of threats to digital archives, needing to be addressed routinely and at recurring intervals. National libraries need to develop and commit to realistic pathways that address the threats in cost-effective ways.

    Many preservation measures should be included in standard IT practice such as the use and safe storage of backups and development of counter-disaster plans. However the certainty of future changes in technology will demand other responses that still need to be developed and tested.

    It is not possible to guarantee that the preservation pathways currently being developed will deliver long term accessibility. However, national libraries need to keep exploring the potential for migration, emulation and other approaches, and what would be needed to support them.

    Recommendation 9 :
    That a working group be set up to discuss what would be required to support these approaches and to test their potential, taking account of work already known to be happening in these area.

    Metadata
    The activities of collecting, recording, providing access to, and preserving electronic publications each have data requirements that will need to be supported by any robust technical solution. Apart from metadata to assist resource registration, description and discovery, information will need to be recorded to support :

    • Selection of candidates for legal deposit (in a selective model)
    • Negotiation with publishers
    • Capture regimes,
    • Migration history and/ or emulation requirements
    • Digital object authentication
    • Rights management and access control.

    While the preliminary findings of the Research Libraries Group's Working Group on the Preservation Issues of Metadata work have now been published in the form of 16 preservation data elements, there is still much to do to align data requirements and specifications. This work will be a dependency on ensuring interoperability between systems and modules from different suppliers and the ability to transfer responsibilities for archival custody from one agency to another.

    Recommendation 10 :
    That national libraries concerned with developing technical infrastructures or specifications work together to identify and/or develop data standards relevant to preservation of and access to electronic publications.

    Organisation and co-operation
    As well as playing a role through established national and international standards bodies on issues such as metadata, permanent naming conventions and preservation it is important for libraries to develop relationships with creators and publishers of electronic resources. Many national libraries assume leadership roles within their library communities in the area of standards development and the promotion of intelligent publishing conventions, as for example in the Netherlands where Dutch libraries have been working closely with major publishers. Further development of national library-publisher relationships would be beneficial in addressing issues connected with developing national collections of electronic publications.

    National libraries will also need to work with other national libraries and international agencies taking responsibility for the archival custody of electronic publications. There could be a requirement for this at two levels. One national library could depend on another to preserve material published in the second country that dealt with the first. Where a publication of one country contained a link to a publication in another country, protocols could be set in place to make sure the link was transferred to the archived copy when the link to the publisher's copy was no longer current.

    While national libraries are natural partners in resolution of the issues described in this paper, there are also other agencies closely involved in infrastructure development in relation to the preservation of electronic publications. The CPA/RLG Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information remains a seminal document in raising issues related to digital preservation. It will be important for national libraries to continue to share information with and learn from the experience of agencies such as the Research Libraries Group and the Digital Library Federation in the United States and the Arts and Humanities Data Service and the CEDARS Project in the U.K.

    There is a need for the work being done by national libraries in relation to the preservation of electronic publications to be brought to the attention of the general Internet community. Issues being addressed by national libraries in this area need to be seen as part of the scope of work of organisations such as W3C, not as an area of specialisation only of concern to libraries.

    Recommendation 11:
    That national libraries provide information about relationships they have with publishers as part of their general report for the PADI site.

    Recommendation 12 :
    That national libraries work on protocols that will provide access between the national digital archives,

    Recommendation 13 :
    That other key agencies involved in infrastructure development in relation for the preservation of electronic documents be invited to participate in the national library discussion groups.

    Recommendation 14 :
    That national libraries seek to raise awareness in the general Internet community of the preservation and other issues which affect libraries in developing national collections of electronic publications.


65th Conference and Council

Bangkok, 1999

As far as we know at this time, the standing committee will meet on Saturday, August 21st and Friday, August 27th. The secretary will inform members as to specific dates and times when this information becomes available.


Elections 1999

1999 is an election year. The following list shows the present standing committee members and their terms of office :

    1995-1999 : second term

    none

    1997-2001 : second term

    K. D. Lehmann, Germany
    M. Scott, Canada
    W. Tabb, USA

    1995-1999 : first term

    M. Beaudiquez, France
    V. Jakac-Bizjak, Slovenia
    F. Khosravi, Iran
    V. Panyella Balcells, Spain
    B. Rugaas, Norway
    M. Terry, Cuba
    D. E. Webster, USA

    1997-2001 : first term

    F. M. Campos, Portugal
    V. Egorov, Russian Federation
    S. B. Larsen, Denmark
    T. Lidman, Sweden
    P. Lor, South Africa
    R. Neij, Netherlands
    G. Ter-Vardanyan, Armenia

According to the statutes and rules of procedure of the Federation, nobody will be standing down next-year but the seven members whose first four-year term ends in 1999 will need to seek re-election if they wish to continue for a second term. There are ten remaining members, so another ten names are required to reach the maximum of twenty for the Committee.

All information needed is given by IFLA Handbook as follows :

  1. In the fall of each even numbered year, nominations are sought for members of Standing Committees of the IFLA Sections. Only institutions or associations that are members of specific IFLA Sections may submit names for those Sections. IFLA Headquarters initiates this process by sending the nomination forms to IFLA Association and Institutional Members. IFLA Headquarters also includes instructions for providing information about the nomination as well as the expectations that each nominee should meet.

  2. Standing Committee members serve a four-year term and are eligible to serve for a second continuous four-year term on the same Standing Committee. Once elected, these Standing Committee members play an important role in shaping IFLA's professional agenda and activities. As wide a geographical distribution as possible on a Standing Committee is highly desired.

  3. The deadline of 1 March for submitting the names of nominations will be applied strictly. After that date, the situation for each Section will be analysed. There is a limit of 20 members on each Standing Committee. When nominations exceed the number of available seats on a given Standing Committee, a postal ballot will be conducted.

  4. A nominee does not have to be an IFLA Member, nor does s/he have to work for an institution with an IFLA membership to be nominated for a position on a Standing Committee. A nominee must receive the support of one IFLA Association or two IFLA Institutions in order for the nomination to be valid. IFLA encourages the widest possible participation in these nominations, both to open up its professional groups to the world's leading experts, but also to strengthen links to non-IFLA institutions as part of a membership development effort.

  5. Once elected, a Standing Committee member's term begins with the IFLA Conference immediately following the appointment (in uneven numbered years). New IFLA appointees are eligible to vote for the SC officers and are strongly encouraged to attend this conference.

  6. Standing Committee members are expected :
    • to be fluent in at least one of the official IFLA languages (English, French, German, Russian, Spanish) ;
    • to attend, at no expense IFLA, at least 3 of the 4 annual conferences during their four years term if at all possible ;
    • to contribute actively to ideas for projects and programme meetings ;
    • to be prepared to join fully in the work of the Section (e.g. undertaking projects, organising workshops, preparing translations, etc.) ;
    • to observe strictly deadlines for reporting financial and other information about projects which they are undertaking with IFLA funding to the Financial Officer of the Section ;
    • to be available to respond to requests from IFLA Headquarters for advice, representation at non-IFLA meetings, etc. ;
    • to assist in the publication of a regular newsletter, a publicity leaflet, or dissemination information about Section activities ;
    • to arrange for the translation of the newsletter publicity leaflet, or papers for Conference programmes into as many of the IFLA languages as possible ;
    • to help to broaden regional participation in the Section by encouraging new standing committee or corresponding members ;
    • to assist in the allocation of responsibilities ('porfolios') to each individual member (e.g. editing the newsletter, broadening Section membership, organising translations)."


This Newsletter is duplicated and ciculated by
the Bibliothèque nationale de France, as a matter of courtesy

December 1998

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