The LIBERATOR Project: Overview and key areas/challenges

Pedro Isaias describes the LIBERATOR project; pointing out its most relevant key areas/challenges. LIBERATOR stands for Libraries in European Regions Access to Telematics and Other Resources. It is funded by the European Commission's DG XIII Telematics for Libraries Programme.

Introduction

The project involves full partners from England (Gateshead Metropolitan Borough Council Libraries and Arts Service), Portugal (Instituto Superior de Estatística e Gestão de Informação da Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Belgium (Provincie Vlaams-Brabant ("Leuven")), Denmark (Royal School of Library and Information Science) and France (Centre Européen de la Communication). With several associate partners and a sponsoring partner, project participants total 20 in all.

The LIBERATOR Team

Project Aims

The LIBERATOR project aims to establish three Regional Information Services (RIS) in Alentejo (Portugal), Vlaams-Brabant (Belgium) and Aquitaine (France) based on the English RIS [1] experience. The 2-year project started on 1st February 1998 and focuses on networked public library services and regional web sites which co-ordinate all web activity relevant to the needs of the participating regions. Sites will be multifunctional offering mediated gateways to the Internet for citizens, virtual shop windows to stimulate regional economies and new retrieval tools for information mediators. The sites will also address presentation and access by incorporating facilities such as localised searching, filters and security features.

The demonstrators that will be established will be completely web based and fully integrated into the mediation services provided by the participating public libraries. Mediation will take various forms including enquiry handling through electronic mail. The Royal School of Library and Information Science has studied and evaluated the North of England RIS and produced a set of recommendations for the benefit of the other partners. The result of this study was the publication of a Keynote Report entitled 'Regional Information Services - A Key Role for Public Libraries in Europe' [2] which covers the following main themes: RIS visions and policies; RIS maintenance; RIS functionality; Opportunities; and Barriers.

Continued Development of the Regional Information Services

The LIBERATOR consortium will refer to the Keynote Report as they continue to develop their Regional Information Services. Embryonic versions of RIS now exist in each region (please refer to [3] for the Alentejo embryonic RIS and [4] for the Vlaams-Brabant embryonic RIS), demonstrators are being developed and the validation process is to take place soon.

The idea of the consortium is not to produce a sole model for RIS development but four different and region specific systems using common guidelines and based on several key areas/challenges.

Key Areas/Challenges

The most relevant key areas/challenges of the LIBERATOR project are the following:

• Regional development - This is the one of the most important key areas. Regional Information Services will assist regional development as they offer improved access to information for local citizens and act as a virtual shop window for local businesses and each region as a whole. The potential of the Internet in bridging the gap between those who want information and those who provide it is well known and RIS have the potential to increase sales, promotion and support activities.
  
  
• Active role of public libraries in the Information Society - This is one of the most interesting key challenges. LIBERATOR believes that public libraries have the opportunity to assume a leading role in the information society through the provision of Regional Information Services that also allow for local, cultural and linguistic diversity. In fact, through this project, libraries will play an important role in bringing the benefits of the Information Society to local citizens.
  
  
• Access to information -UK public libraries have a long tradition of providing information to the public. However, this tradition does not exist in other European regions involved in the project. Statements like "You ask, we answer" are by no means common. One of the project's very first challenges is to introduce librarians from these regions to this approach. There are also concerns that the rapid growth of the Internet could increase the gap between those who have access to this technology, and the wealth of information it provides, and those who don't. Libraries have a key role to play in helping to bridge this gap.
  
  
• Developing partnerships - As in the North of England, other RIS are expected to follow a distributive model where libraries develop partnerships with specialist web design companies and other information providers and organise the information they have produced on a regional web site. It is not the intention of the project for libraries to follow a nucleated model where they produce their own content. Having said that however, due to a lack of web activity in some regions like the Alentejo and Vlaams-Brabant, librarians are producing content for the web. For this reason both the Portuguese and Belgian RIS will follow a nucleated/distributive model to begin with and will move towards a distributive model as local web activity increases.
  
  
• Effective use of technology in order to increase regional services - Internet technology is rapidly changing. New languages like DHTML and XML must be considered along with new standards and developments in hardware. Several questions like security are still open and must be taken into account or otherwise new opportunities may fall behind.
  
  
• Quality Assurance - One of the most important aspects of any RIS is the quality control procedure involved to guarantee the quality of information provided. Consortium members are considering the use of a digital quality assurance stamp, which could be placed on web sites accepted for inclusion on the RIS. Other quality procedures will be studied.
  
  
• New opportunities - The use of the RIS concept will provide new opportunities for participating regions. For example, it is vital that isolated regions are not left behind as the use of electronic commerce increases. RIS offer an opportunity for these regions to promote themselves and sell their products to a global market.
  
  
• Dissemination and exploitation efforts - A Regional Information Service only has value when it is used widely by the community. With this in mind, Consortium members are establishing dissemination and exploitation activities to promote the use of the RIS within each region and beyond. One of the dissemination activities is the implementation of dissemination sites [5,6,7];
  
  
• RIS concept spread throughout the participating countries and within the European Union (EU) - One of the key challenges for any European funded project consortium is to have its ideas and concepts applied in other projects and situations. This project is seeking to establish various models for RIS development that can be applied to regions throughout Europe.

Bearing these key areas/challenges in mind, the LIBERATOR consortium will pursue RIS development through the use of new concepts and supporting technologies that can benefit its consolidation and further expansion in the future.

Reader Response

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References

Author Details

Pedro Isaias is the local Project Manager at Instituto Superior de Estatstica e Gesto de Informao (ISEGI) da Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal, for projects LIBERATOR and VERITY. He has also been responsible for locally managing the CHILIAS project. He has a Master degree and is now finishing the PhD in Information Management at Universidade Nova de Lisboa.

For citation purposes:
Pedro Isaias, "The LIBERATOR Project: Overview and key areas/challenges," Exploit Interactive, issue 1, 10 April 1999
URL: <http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue1/liberator/>

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