Rosemary Russell reports on this year's ELAG seminar in Slovenia.
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The European Library Automation Group (ELAG) [1] 1999 seminar was held this year in Bled, Slovenia, from 21-23 April. It was organised by the National and University Library, Ljubljana, where the event was originally to be held (it was moved to Bled due to limited availability of meeting space). However the stunning lakeside location, surrounded by mountains, more than made up for the non-library environment. |
This was ELAG's 23rd annual meeting, presided over by Paula Goossens of the Royal Library Belgium, the driving force behind ELAG. It is a rather idiosyncratic invitational event, composed largely of European librarians and systems managers and attracts an interesting group of participants, some of whom are regulars and others new. Given the location, there were more people from East European countries this year, although the total number of participants was lower than usual - around 60 (it seemed that some were nervous about the proximity to Kosovo...). The topical meeting theme was ‘Managing Multimedia Collections’[2].
There was a range of papers on the theme, as well as a couple of presentations on local issues. Local papers included retrospective conversion, in fact a widely-shared problem. Theme papers included a metadata update by Juha Hakala (University of Helsinki). Metadata is urgently needed to improve resource discovery on the Internet, but not many web search engines support Dublin Core fully - this undermines much of the indexing effort being undertaken. Most people using DC so far are probably cataloguers, even though it is specifically designed to be applicable to the lay person. Updates on DC development included proposals to reduce the number of elements in DC 2.0 by combining several elements, although some opposing views are held. Discussions on core qualifiers also continue; efficiency in indexing is the primary aim. An interesting initiative in Finland is the introduction of a Word macro to enable ‘non-voluntary’ DC metadata creation; staff cannot create a Word document until they complete a basic metadata form.
The author presented a paper on the Agora project [3], with some background on eLib and the phase 3 programme. Agora is developing a ‘hybrid library’ system to provide managed, integrated access to distributed heterogeneous information services. The project is based on concepts which emerged from the MODELS project [4], MOving to Distributed Environments for Library Services, which is continuing to work in parallel. The central part of the Agora framework is a layer of broker services or middleware based on open standards, which shields the user from the complex and repetitive tasks involved in interacting with individual services. Collection level descriptions are being implemented to help direct users to relevant resources.
Poul Henrik Jorgensen (DBC - Danish Library Centre [5]) spoke about the Matilda system - ‘a three-tier electronic materials selection system based on distributed Active/X Objects, Z39.50, RDF and the IFLA Entity-Relationship Model’. The three layer design is broadly similar to the MODELS Information Architecture (MIA) model. Matilda is a test bed for a new version of the DBC online system; it therefore searches an existing centralised catalogue, not distributed databases. The system has an EDI gateway for requesting and uses XML in EDI messages to suppliers (i.e.: instead of EDIFACT, although conversion to EDIFACT is possible). There is a trend to replace community-specific solutions such as EDI with XML.
A feature of ELAG is the large amount of time devoted to the in-depth workshops, with participants attending several sessions of the same workshop over two days. Johan van Halm (manager of the German Digibib project [6]) and the author co-chaired a workshop on the topic of access to heterogeneous information sources. A Digibib demonstration (which is broadly similar to a regional hybrid library) helped to visualise the type of system which is needed to manage and integrate hybrid resources; it also includes elements such as consortial agreements on full text journal access.
Other workshops included digital preservation; XML (XML browsers are badly needed, as well as standard templates and more authoring tools); metadata (recommendations included enhancing library systems to handle Dublin Core and the translation of DC into local languages); physical and virtual union catalogues (‘real’ and virtual union catalogues can and will co-exist and complement each other).
The theme of next year’s ELAG meeting (to be held in Paris) is ‘archives, libraries and museums convergence: issues and challenges’ - so should be interesting.
Slovenia appears to be a well-kept secret for travellers in the know, so it would be a mistake to elaborate further on the post-seminar weekend of stunning scenery, good food, minimal tourists...
If you have any comments on this article, please contact the editors (exploit-editor@ukoln.ac.uk).
Rosemary Russell
MODELS Project Manager
UKOLN: UK Office for Library and Information Networking
ULCC
20 Guilford Street
London, WC1N 1DZ, UK
Tel: +44 (0)171 692 1302
Fax: +44 (0)171 692 1234
Email: r.russell@ukoln.ac.uk
URL: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/dlis/models/
For citation purposes:
Rosemary Russell, "ELAG 99: The European Library Automation Group",
Exploit Interactive, issue 2, 20 July 1999
URL:
<http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue2/elag99/>
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