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| Issue 5 Home | Editorial | Features | Regular Columns | News & Events | Misc. | ||
By Leif Andresen - October 2001
Leif Andresen introduces bibliotek.dk, the user-focused entry point for general public access to the Danish National Union Catalogue. bibliotek.dk provides information on what has been published in Denmark, and what is currently available in all Danish public libraries.
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Since late 2000 bibliotek.dk [1] has been giving the general public access to the Danish National Union Catalogue. The Danish National Union Catalogue includes holdings information from nearly all Danish Public Libraries and most of the publicly available research libraries. Users now have direct access free of charge and the ability to send off requests to most Danish libraries.
In order to provide every citizen in Denmark with equal opportunity for searching, finding and gaining access to information, the libraries’ shared catalogue of holdings was made available to everyone. It is now possible to request books, articles and other media to be collected from the user’s own library.
Right from the beginning of the site it was decided that only moderate change to the old system would be necessary. There are many perspectives in a common database with general access, but the intention has always been that the project should be a realistic one and go into operation as quickly as possible. The development of many new, exciting facilities takes time and would certainly have postponed the opening for quite a while.
In the development of bibliotek.dk, attention was always focused on the end user. The marketing of libraries is an important aspect of bibliotek.dk, but the presentation of the site is not aimed primarily at promoting the libraries, but rather at providing the users with collective access to all the libraries.
The User interface, as well as the content, was always intended to live up to the requirements and expectations of the user. From the beginning it was decided to develop the user interface on the assumption that the user had a minimum of knowledge of how to use PC and Internet and a minimum of knowledge of libraries. On the basis of this, user panels were selected, partly to outline the requirements for user interface and search facilities. The panels consisted of people of different ages, people in employment, unemployed people, pensioners, women and men. The end user’s - and not the professional user’s (the librarian’s) - wishes and demands in relation to the system have therefore been the most important aspect.
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| The bibliotek.dk simple search screen |
The fundamental idea has always been that bibliotek.dk must be accessible to everyone. The Web pages have also been tested for accessibility for the visually impaired in mind and a user interface in English has also been developed [2].
The bibliotek.dk concept stresses the fact that it is the individual user who chooses the material he/she wants and also the place of collection, i.e. the library where the user wants to pick up the actual, ordered material. But the user doesn’t choose the library to deliver the material. It is the library system which makes sure, in the most rational and economical way, that the material ordered is procured for the place of collection, in most cases the library chosen as place of collection does not itself hold the material in question.
Each library determines its own service profile within the frames of the library act. This means for example that music materials, CD-ROMs etc. belong to the group of obligatory material, which will not be compulsory or included in the interlibrary loan co-operation until after 1 January 2003. Video format is not obligatory material for public libraries either, so a library can decide not to loan this material to inhabitants of other municipalities. Each research library has their primary users and a lot of the libraries have different rules for different groups of users.
It also means that the each library in bibliotek.dk has described in precise terms their service, which is offered to the user. Questions about searching and description of books, periodicals, music etc. as well as assistance in using bibliotek.dk must therefore be directed at the individual user’s local library. Questions about the individual requisition must be directed at the library which the user has chosen as place of collection.
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| The bibliotek.dk search results screen |
A number of Danish libraries have both individually and in teams developed a number of net services. The services, which are of a national character, are included with the list of links on the front page of bibliotek.dk. A few examples of these net services include:
Users can search on bibliotek.dk on three levels: simple search, advanced search and a blank CCL-screen. After choosing a title, the user must choose a library to collect the material from. The user doesn’t have to select a library to get the material from – only where to collect it.
This means that one can search on all registered books, articles, CDROMs and other materials, acquired in Danish libraries. There is in total more than 7 million titles, covering several million types of materials.
In the development of bibliotek.dk no particular technological demands were placed on the participating libraries. Existing library systems were therefore, supposed to be able to be used without further immediate technological requirements and subsequent economic consequences.
The libraries receive requisitions from bibliotek.dk in the form of an e-mail (with human-readable text or structured information) and in a Web based database. Each library chooses its own mode of receipt, which might be different for requisitions from the library’s own holdings and potential interlibrary loan requisitions.
From the Web based database a user’s requisition is then processed by a single click, the service is a very efficient tool. The requisition is then moved to the lending library via a mailbox.
In late March and April 2001 an information campaign promoting library services was carried out. A major part of the campaign concentrated on bibliotek.dk. The campaign consisted of:
At the same time it became possible to send your comments to the site, and many people responded very quickly even though the mechanism was not highly promoted. Some messages were passed on to the local library, while others just expressed how pleased they were with the new system. Overall we have received several hundred comments of praise from users and only a few negative comments. Here are a few examples:
“I have been wondering for a long time whether it wouldn’t be possible to search in a common library database, and now it is – and you can even order the materials at the same time.”
“Great!!! I haven’t tried to order any books yet, but if you keep your promises, well then this is a truly brilliant tool. I have tried a couple of different searches, and am impressed. It works very well!”
“It is simply PERFECT!”
As anticipated the number of requisitions made when bibliotek.dk first opened was not very impressive. The figures for the entire period since bibliotek.dk opened in late 2000 until the end of August 2001 is nearly 200,000 requests from users of public libraries and about 30,000 requests from users of research libraries.
In April 2001 simultaneous with the campaign there was a total of about 38,500 requisitions, the distribution was just over 33,000 from public libraries and just under 5,000 from research libraries.
By far the majority of requisitions are in fact for interlibrary loans. This has been established partly from bibliotek.dk statistics and partly from the fact that a number of the larger research libraries have experienced a marked increase in the number of requisitions from the public libraries. A major part of English-language literature has in fact only just become visible to the man in the street, and this has quite clearly resulted in a growing demand.
Without a doubt bibliotek.dk has increased the number of requisitions in the libraries –this is particularly true in the case of the public libraries. What the result will be as regards for example an increase in loans and interlibrary loans we can only say for certain when we have the statistical figures for 2001.
But one thing is absolutely certain – the traditional materials such as books, periodicals etc. will remain central for many years to come. During the further development of bibliotek.dk the emphasis will therefore be on processing and executing so-called user initiated interlibrary loan requisitions as rationally and economically as possible.
Since the launching of bibliotek.dk a number of improvements have taken place and an extensive action plan is now available which includes several functionality developments. Improved services for the user is the key and all development initiatives will be based on this premise.
In the case of some libraries requests for materials owned by the library itself have been transferred to the local library system. The request is re-directed from bibliotek.dk to the local system for direct checking in the local system’s stock whereupon the local procedure for requests moves into operation. It is also possible to re-direct from local system for an immediate search in bibliotek.dk without having to key in again.
It is now possible for the user to save his borrower’s identification etc. so that it won’t be necessary to key this in at each request.
A well-known problem with National Union Catalogues is that one cannot make a complete matching so that the same edition of the same title is always gathered into one registration. With access for everyone this problem has become even more topical. The Danish Bibliographic Centre has been working on this and by doing a new match run in March 2001 it was able to remove 1,1 million duplicates from the system and combine them with other records in the database. Another matching will be done later this year, which is expected to remove at least another 100,000 duplicates.
The continuous development of bibliotek.dk is carried out with a view to improve the possibilities for the user of bibliotek.dk. We maintain that a simple user interface is most important and very advanced facilities, which cannot be used by the ordinary user, are not on the cards.
The purpose of developing bibliotek.dk can be divided into:
Some headlines of the newest version of the development plan of late June 2001 are discussed below.
A so-called ‘work presentation’ is under preparation. It is based on IFLA’s [9] Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records to collect several editions of the same work and present them together to the user – both in the search and presentation phase. If a title, for example, has several editions, the user is supposed to only experience one hit and one inclusive presentation. He can then view directly the division into editions or click his way to view detailed information.
Subject retrieval has been given high priority in bibliotek.dk. Unfortunately quite a lot of older titles have no subject headings attached and have therefore ‘disappeared’ from many users. These titles often have one or more classification codes, but this is not really the kind of information which is most useful to the end user. So the job is to generate subject headings from classifications in order to create more subject access points to the records in the database.
Another way of using the classification system as a subject access point is to create an alphabetical browser hierarchy based on the Danish decimal classification system DK-5. The idea is to use the verbal description of a subject group for representations on the screen, starting by presenting the 10 main groups. By selecting one of these, the appropriate sub-groups will be shown. The final design has not been worked out yet, but the emphasis is not going to be on a formal rendering of the system.
In the early autumn 2001 the Danish Bibliographic Centre will make a proposal for an import format based on Dublin Core with some extensions to manage ownership, changes etc. of the records.
As an extra service to the users it will be possible to view holdings registrations using Z39.50 from any library. Information about whether the material is on loan is particularly useful and you will also be told the expected time of delivery if the material is not on the shelves.
The improved match and development of ‘work presentation’ mentioned above would also mean a rationalisation of the libraries’ work. At the moment quite a lot of time is spent on sorting through potential interlibrary loan requests in order to provide another edition, which is actually available in the library in question.
From the libraries’ point of view, one of the weak points is that at the moment it is not possible to check before accepting a request whether the local library knows the user. The only validation available is checking whether a personal identification number meets the formal requirements. The development of borrower check from bibliotek.dk to local system is therefore high on the agenda.
Today requests to another library generated from bibliotek.dk are sent via the DanBib mailbox. As there actually is a library system which is just about ready to receive ILL requests carried via Z39.50 in XML format, bibliotek.dk will soon be able to send information in this way. The great advantage is that the local library system will be updated automatically and the requesting library will be told automatically whether the material is available. It would facilitate the manual process when receiving requests from other libraries considerably.
The primary objective with bibliotek.dk is of course to present the libraries’ service to the citizens. But this should not be perceived as a ‘straitjacket’. There are several areas where the information in bibliotek.dk can be used as the basis for development of a further number of services to the user. It does not really matter whether the libraries are the suppliers – the all-important thing is that the citizen is given a better service.
Central in this context is the so-called ”Available for sale” button. It is up to the user to decide whether he wants to order a title from the library or whether he would prefer to buy it. When the user has indicated that he wants a certain title, he will be offered the choice between ordering or buying, if there are booksellers who have the title in stock. If the user wants to buy, s/he is shown a list of possible suppliers with prices and terms of delivery. S/he then chooses the relevant supplier and is transferred to the appropriate Web site.
The supplier must deliver a file with data of the titles available from him. The plan is that via a robot up to date information will be collected each night from each supplier. It will be a simple file format with ISBN, price and terms of delivery. We expect to be able to provide this function during the autumn/winter 2001.
Initially it will be possible to buy books, but other types of material will follow later, music CDs probably being first in line.
Improvements and rationalisations for the libraries will obviously be high on the agenda. Both in bibliotek.dk and in DanBib, which is still the professional tool of library staff.
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Leif Andresen
Library Advisory Officer
Danish National Library Authority
Nyhavn 31 E, DK-1051 Copenhagen K
Denmark
Phone: +45 3373 3354
Fax: +45 3373 3372
Leif Andresen's responsibilities at the Danish National Library Authority include the National Union Catalogue, National Bibliography and standardisation e.g. metadata and Z39.50.
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For citation purposes:
Andresen, L. "bibliotek.dk - a New Route to Danish Libraries", Cultivate Interactive, issue
5, 1 October 2001
URL: <http://www.cultivate-int.org/issue5/danish/>
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