Hanne Marie Kvaerndrup gives a brief introduction to Denmark's Electronic Research Library. The article describes the vision, concept and main components, the organisation, plans and future challenges.
The Danish national project DEF (which in Danish is the acronym for Denmark's Electronic Research Library) aims to move our libraries from the state of automated, conventional, cooperating individual libraries to the state of one large, coherent, electronic library structure providing integrated information services.
The DEF vision is to offer the end-user:
To turn this vision into reality we have to deal with technical issues such as:
Furthermore we have to deal with management issues such as:
Danish research libraries will be developed during a five year period (1998-2002) to function as one integrated research library: Denmark's Electronic Research Library. In cooperation with the Ministry of Research and the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Culture has decided to invest 200 million DKK in the project which aims to provide researchers, students, business, and other professionals with easier, faster, and more effective access to the latest research information. The project is part of the government’s current initiative for research and IT.
The system of research libraries will form a virtual system, which will transcend the borders of regional and local libraries in a simple, transparent way, and within the given legal and economic framework. It will make the libraries' collective information resources of digital and traditional materials available to users all over the country.
The establishment of Denmark’s Electronic Research Library is based on existing technology. The aim is to provide an efficient national information supply which provides those resources already developed in the research libraries of the country and which makes it possible to incorporate other information centres as a natural part of the virtual information system. The overall effect is achieved by linking the networks of the research libraries and by complying with international standards: for communication, for search support, for registration and indexing, for document description and representation, etc.
Everybody will have access: from home, from the office or from the library. This means the possibility of swift and coordinated searching across several databases based on a combination of many search profiles independent of the physical position of the databases, nationally as well as internationally. It also means a uniform, user-friendly retrieval system with the same user interface, whichever database one is using. And finally it will provide the end-user with an automatically updated list of literature and periodicals chosen according to individual search profiles and criteria, using search robots.
The idea of a 'critical mass' is related to making a great number of resources easily accessible – and therefore attractive for the user. There are three types of materials relevant in establishing DEF to which a high priority is given in the project phase. They are:
High priority is also given to tools that link the virtual library to the physical collection, i.e. retro-conversion of catalogues.
The overall objective is that Denmark should achieve the qualitative and economic advantages of digital and network-based research libraries offering users the ability to acquire the relevant research information directly, regardless of where the information is located.
The vision of DEF includes a platform, where not only the users of the twelve largest research libraries will get access to an extended mass of electronic journals, but maximum benefit from national licenses will be offered to smaller research libraries and libraries at smaller research and educational institutions. In the future development, county libraries should have access via a 'pay per view' model - and in due course any library in Denmark should be connected to DEF.
The vision also includes new services based on individual service profiles of users and the development of intelligent agents.
A special benefit might be that DEF would evolve into making available not only a complete registration of Danish research, but also a full text representation of all Danish research. This idea is closely linked to the publishing policy of universities and researchers in relation to an electronic and institutional publishing codex. A construction like DEF offers the potential for establishing an alternative publishing structure, but this is no doubt a long-term perspective.
In order to turn this concept into reality the Danish project has identified four main components - each of them necessary to achieve the objective.
The four main components of the project are:
The national infrastructure is the IT network and facilities enabling the libraries and the users to communicate efficiently.
The Danish Research Net has been chosen as the IT-network. This IT network has the advantage that a substantial part of the users are already attached to it.
This national infrastructure is, however, more than technology. The overall infrastructure includes creating common guidelines for, in particular, national license agreements, exchange of information, use of international standards, unified user access etc. The regulations for user administration must also be uniform and according to consensus among all the libraries.
To enable each library to become a component in this, virtual library, it should be modernised in a number of ways. Until now it has been acceptable for each library to use its own individual IT systems and organisational procedures. In the virtual research library the technology and a number of organisational issues must be standardised.
Increased cooperation between the research libraries will require overall common management and coordination. Cooperation across ministerial borders should be established, but the local participants must retain their independence in order to preserve the dynamics of the system.
For traditional 'non-digital' materials the most important issue is the catalogue, but also digitisation of some parts of various collections is under consideration. For the 'new' materials - originally delivered in digital form - the challenges are:
National principles and a strategy for digitisation have just been worked out by the DEF's Steering Committee. It concerns standards, methods, and competence centres - and a plan for selection of collections to be digitised.
National License agreements are negotiated and signed by The National Library Authority on behalf of DEF. A national license is defined not in respect of number of users, but in relation to governmental financial support. Any library can cooperate with another library or institution, form a consortium and negotiate licenses. The consortium can apply for financial backing from DEF thereby making sure that all relevant institutions are invited to share the license.
For the digital library user facilities will be a major issue, especially an economic issue. It will be crucial to provide the user with sufficient facilities and electronic services.
The project was defined in September 1996 by a project description by the three ministries involved.
A governmental agency, UNI-C, and the management consulting firm Ernst and Young then conducted a study, which resulted in the publishing of a report in early Spring 1997.
The following project organisation was devised for the implementation of Denmark's Electronic Research Library:
The Steering Committee represents various competencies: library management, research and IT.
The role of The Danish National Library Authority will be to execute the decisions of the Steering Committee in general. The Authority will be the formal holder of national licenses.
Right now the Steering Committee is discussing the future organisation of the research libraries. The strategy behind the five year project is to accelerate the inevitable change of paradigm. The extra money obviously helps to upgrade systems and give access to electronic journals. If that is all, what will happen after the five years is a demand for a new project to support a never-ending need for upgrading. A change that can cope with other priorities than today’s will be necessary.
We see an organisational parallel in the credit card business. In the first place each bank had its own card with a low number of transactions and a high level of operating expenses. The perspective in the credit card technology was - as we now know - a global card that might be used by all banks. The conditions for such a card had to be technical standards and standards for use and an ethical code. From this platform the Visa Card quickly became global, the speed of increase and development escalated even if the card was and is administered by a very small organisation.
A national digital library can be organised along very simple rules:
Cornerstones in the model are global IT, networking models of the kind you find in Silicon Valley and the Danish tradition for cooperative organisations.
The crucial point for the project Denmark’s Electronic Research Library is within the project period to obtain a markedly improved service for the users, which will in turn entice the libraries to continue the service and the cooperation.
The status of DEF at December 1999 is given below:
Denmark's Electronic Research Library is a project running for five years (1998-2002) and funded by the three Danish Ministries of Culture, Research and Education respectively with a total budget of 200 million DKK. The aim of the project is like that of other electronic library projects, namely primarily to offer users the chance to obtain relevant research information directly, regardless of where the information is located. The electronic research library will consist of data from many different sources. It will provide the user with access to a huge number of international on-line articles as well as data on the existing collections in the country's research libraries - all linked together in one system. Three different kinds of access will probably be available at the end of the project period: free access for everybody to catalogue facilities, metadata etc. Free access for researchers and students to licensed information and a pay per view or similar access to non-institutional users. There are two remarkable aspects of this project. The first is that it is defined as a national project which aims to establish a national virtual library service involving national policies for infrastructure, national licenses to full text databases, digitising of printed material and retro-conversion of catalogues etc. The second point is that the project has some service goals certainly, but has as yet not clearly defined the desired organisational end result. It is an open project of the kind that has never before been carried out in the Danish library world. It will affect the priorities of every single participating library, it will change the service profile, it will create a new cooperation between the institutions, it may affect the publishing structure as well as the registration and marketing of research results. But first and foremost, of course, it will mean round-the-clock access to important research information from any connected computer.
Hanne Marie Kvaerndrup
Library Advisory Officer
The Danish National Library Authority
Tel: +45 33 73 33 73
Email: hmk@bs.dk
URL: <http://www.deff.dk/>
or <http://www.deflink.dk/>
For citation purposes:
Kvaerndrup, H. M.,"DEF - Denmark's Electronic Research Library: A Project Changing Concepts, Values And Priorities", Exploit Interactive issue 4, January 2000
<URL: http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue4/def/>
Like to find out more about the DEF project. Why not search the project web site?
Search the DEF web site (in Danish):
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