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The theme of this issue of Exploit Interactive is New Services For The New Millennium. The role of the European Union in developing the Information Society in Europe is addressed by the special feature article by Bernard Smith, head of the Cultural Heritage Applications Unit in the European Commission.
A second special feature article has been written by Steve Coffman, Director of FYI, a research service of the County of Los Angeles Public Library.
The new millennium will herald the start of many projects funded under the Fifth Framework Programme. The Fifth Framework provides a programme known as DIGICULT dedicated to the museums, archives and library communities (sometimes referred to as "memory organisations"). In February 2000 a DIGICULT accompanying measure known as CULTIVATE will be launched. CULTIVATE has a similar but wider remit to the EXPLOIT project. CULTIVATE will establish a European Cultural Heritage Network which will raise the awareness of the IST (Information Society Technologies) Programme for the development and the use of cultural heritage applications in memory institutions across Europe. One key component of CULTIVATE will be the establishment of a web magazine, which, we are pleased to announce, will be produced by UKOLN, the publishers of the Exploit Interactive web magazine.
This issue provides regular updates from the Telematics for Libraries Community including reports from the BIBLINK, DIEPER and NEDLIB projects, together with a number of conference reports.
A report is given on the Consolidating the European Library Space event - the final concertation meeting of the European Commission Telematics for Libraries Programme. This event included a presentation by the author on Promoting Your Web Site. The accompanying paper is included in this issue.
We are continuing to make developments behind the scenes to the Exploit Interactive web site. Developments are aimed at improving the service to our readers and to contributors and to help with the management and maintenance of the magazine. As an aid to readers who may be interested in producing their own web magazine, or are interested in the architecture used to provide Exploit Interactive an article provides further information on the workings "behind the web site".
Issue 5 of Exploit Interactive is due to be published in April 2000. So far we have featured articles on the ADVISER, BIBLINK, CASA, CHILIAS, DEBORA, DERAL, DIEPER, ELISE II, EQUINOX, IESERV, LAURIN, LIBERATOR, LISTED, MIRACLE, MURIEL, NEDLIB, PRIDE and VERITY Telematics for Libraries projects. Is it your project's turn? If you would like to provide a report on your Telematics for Libraries project - perhaps news of a recent development (such as a software deliverable or an event) or, if appropriate, a report on the completion of a project, please contact the editor (send email to exploit-editor@ukoln.ac.uk).
We also welcome articles of general interest, which should be relevant to the professional interests of members of the European library and information communities.
Trudi Noordermeer describes BIBLINK (Linking Publishers and National Bibliographic Services) - a project to create a bibliographic link between publishers of electronic resources and national bibliographic agencies.
Project BIBLINK [1] aims to establish a relationship between national bibliographic agencies and publishers of electronic resources, in order to create authoritative bibliographic information that will benefit both sectors. In the digital information environment, the role of national bibliographic agencies will probably become increasingly dependent upon the generation of electronic links between publishers and other agents in the bibliographic chain. The concept of BIBLINK crystallised from the work of the EU concerted action CoBRA. It was recognised that the significant growth in electronic publishing could result in valuable publications being unrecorded as they would by-pass established national bibliographic procedures. Given the nature of the medium it was felt the issues could be most effectively addressed at an international level. Project BIBLINK takes advantage of the bibliographic expertise of five national libraries in Europe, working in conjunction with partners in the publishing sector and higher education, to examine the way in which electronic publications are described for catalogues and other listings and how this information can be transmitted between the two sectors.
BIBLINK is a proof of concept project to assess the feasibility of the direct exchange of data between publishers and national libraries. The overall objective of the project is to produce a demonstration system that will further the improvement of national bibliographic services by establishing a link between the publishers of electronic documents and national bibliographic agencies. This link will allow publishers of various types to transmit bibliographic data about electronic publications to their national bibliographic agency for inclusion in the bibliography. It will also allow for the resulting record to be re-transmittted to the publisher for embedding in the publication if so desired, or for use in other applications, such as sales promotions. These objectives can be detailed as follows:
The project officially started on 15 May 1996 and was divided into two phases, each of eighteen months duration. An extension was needed to the second phase in order to develop the system and to have time to run a meaningful demonstration phase. The end date of the project is now 15 February 2000. The first stage can be described as the research and consensus building phase during which information was gathered and analysed about the various components that contribute to a data generation, transmission and conversion system. The research entailed considerable discussion with publishers and consensus with them as to the most promising technical solutions to implement.
The following decisions were taken and the reports with detailed information are available via the BIBLINK website. The scope of the project is very broad: both on line and off line publications are taken into consideration. Several metadata formats were investigated and it was decided – in 1997! - to add three fields to the Dublin Core metadata set: the BIBLINK core metadata set (see Table 1). Several unique identifiers can be used like ISBN, ISSN, SICI and DOI. During consensus building workshops with the publishers decisions were taken about cooperation. The UNIMARC format was chosen as the central format and conversion is possible to and from several national MARC formats and to BIBLINK Core. For the conversion the USEMARCON software is used. For transmission of data email or a web form can be used. For authentication of publications and corresponding metadata a hash value is calculated. These were the results of the first phase.
In the second stage the demonstration system is being developed and tested and will be implemented. The company Jouve in Paris developed the software together with the project partners. The work began by formalising the User Requirements and producing a detailed Functional Specification and resulted in the demonstration and validation of a prototype system at various test sites. An exploitation plan is being developed to provide a framework for library partners to assess the possibility of incorporating the system in operational procedures.
| BIBLINK data element | Brief description |
| DC.Title | Title of work |
| DC.Creator | Persons or organisations primary responsible for intellectual content |
| DC | Subject Subject keywords, may also contain terms from published subject headings or classification schemes |
| DC.Description | Description of content or abstract |
| DC.Publisher | Agency responsible for producing the publication |
| DC.Contributor | Persons or organisations responsible for content not included under DC.Creator |
| DC.Date | Date of publication |
| DC.Format | Format information |
| DC.Identifier | A unique identifier, e.g. ISBN, SICI or DOI |
| DC.Language | Language of text |
| DC.Rights | Terms and conditions information |
| BIBLINK.Checksum | Hash value or checksum computed for authentication purposes |
| BIBLINK.edition | Number of edition or version |
| BIBLINK.extent | The size of an item – number of files, bytes etc. |
| BIBLINK.Frequency | Frequency of issue if a serial publication |
| BIBLINK.PlacePublication | Geographical location of publisher |
| BIBLINK.Price | Price |
| BIBLINK.Systems | Requirements System Requirements |
Figure 1 shows a model of the BIBLINK Workspace. This is described in more detail in the following section.
 Figure 1: Model of the BIBLINK Workspace |
The core of the BIBLINK demonstrator consists of a computer mediated working environment called the BIBLINK Workspace (BW). It can be envisaged as a virtual workspace encompassing a database and functionality that allows, in the first instance, publishers to create records and subsequently give access to participants to retrieve, update and, ultimately, delete those records. The BW converts the data between the formats required by the various parties and provides the mechanisms necessary for the functioning and management of the system. It allows the various parties to view and download the records or elements in the records in different formats at various stages in the development of the record. Users are working in the BW according to a pre-established user profile defining access rights and those aspects of interaction with the BW that are configurable. The NBAs vary in the way they apply the use of the BW to their current procedures and each specified the flow of work within their own organisation. They wanted to configure the actions that the BW carries out in relation to events in the life of the BIBLINK Workspace Records (BWR) according to local practices. For example one NBA may want to be notified about a new record as soon as it is created by a publisher, whereas another will only want to be notified once a specified third party like an ISBN office has added an identifier to a new record. The situation is similar with the publisher participants: one wants to be sent an enhanced BC record as soon as the NBA has updated the original but another wishes only to be notified that an identifier has been added to allow them to retrieve it when they are ready to do so. These preferences are specified in the User Profile established for each participant. To give a picture of how the flow of metadata from publisher to NBA and back is envisaged, an examples of usage scenario is given below.
In this scenario we consider a small Internet publisher Publisher-X, who wishes to supply simple metadata about their publications to the National Bibliographic Agency (NBA) in order that each publication appears in the National Bibliography and so that an enhanced Dublin Core-like bibliographic record can be embedded into the HTML of Publisher-X's Web pages. Publications are made available on the Web prior to notification being sent to the NBA. No formal 'identifier', such as an ISSN or DOI, is required for each publication. The NBA in question has provided a set of conversion tables to allow the minimal BIBLINK UNIMARC record to be converted to and from NatMARC records. Below is a brief description of the flow of metadata between Publisher-X and the NBA using the BIBLINK Workspace (BW).
Other scenarios are also available [2].
At the time of writing (December 1999) the BIBLINK partners are working on the demonstration. In February 2000 approximately 2000 bibliographic records of electronic resources, 400 of each national library, will be available in the BIBLINK Workspace. The national libraries are working on the implementation of BIBLINK in the existing workflow of their national bibliographic agencies. The software is available for UNIX and Windows.
Trudi Noordermeer
Koninklijke Bibliotheek
National Library of the Netherlands
Senior Researcher
Department of Research and Network Information
PO Box 90407
2509 LK Den Haag
The Netherlands
Tel : + 31-70-3140597
Fax : + 31-70-3140424
Email : trudi.noordermeer@konbib.nl
KB website at <http://www.konbib.nl/>
BIBLINK website at <http://hosted.ukoln.ac.uk/biblink/>
Thanos Massias introduces the DIEPER project.
Digitising of existing printed material (retrodigitising) has become a very important
topic in recent years. Advances in the relevant technologies have made the task more
affordable in terms of cost, time and labour intensity. On the other hand the demand for
digitised material is growing rapidly and it is anticipated that this trend will continue.
As a consequence, many initiatives have been undertaken on this field by various parties,
including publishers, libraries and various institutions.
An important fact to note is that there is no standard approach to the digitisation of printed material. This is true not only for the technical aspects (e.g. digitising equipment, output formats, type of storage, methods of access) but also for things like the motivation and objectives, the selection of the original material, the targeted audience, and so on.
Why are users interested in digitised documents? There are a number of reasons:
Why are libraries interested in digitised documents? We can note the following:
It is time to see how DIEPER fits into the picture. The DIEPER partners are convinced that digitising is going to continue at an increasing rate. Especially when it comes to Europe, it should be pointed out that although much hard work is done in this area, the amount of coordination is low. Many different initiatives of varying scales are undertaken by the private and public sector at levels from local to European. Thus the whole effort is not very well coordinated, resulting in overlapping, poor inter-operability and other unwanted effects. This situation is expected to improve in the future. In the meantime there are things which should be done:
Those are exactly the points that DIEPER intends to address. To keep the program as realistic as possible, a hands-on approach was selected. The entire process of digitisation will be explored by focusing on a carefully selected set of European periodicals.
The objectives of the DIEPER project are:
The DIEPER project started in November 1998 and will last 26 months. It is managed and co-ordinated by the State and University Library of Lower Saxony (Goettingen/Germany).
The following partners participate in the DIEPER project:
If you have any comments on this article, please contact the editors (exploit-editor@ukoln.ac.uk).
Thanos Massias
Dipl. Mechanical Engineer
Library & Information Service
University of Patras
Greece
Email: thanos@lis.upatras.gr
Titia van der Werf-Davelaar introduces NEDLIB: Networked European Deposit Library.
Within the broader context of preserving the national cultural heritage, deposit libraries are tasked to ensure that published material, whether in written, printed or electronic form, is preserved for use now and in the future.
Whilst the deposit process for printed publications is well established, this is not the case for electronic publications. Since 1995, deposit libraries are addressing this new challenge and they do so increasingly in collaboration, under the umbrella of the Conference of European National Libraries (CENL) and the Conference of Directors of National Libraries (CDNL). Jointly on an international level and individually on a national level, they are tackling a whole range of issues including, reaching agreements with publishers, establishing legal frameworks, meeting end-user access requirements, re-designing workflow processes and developing the necessary digital infrastructure to support this workflow.
NEDLIB was initiated by CoBRA+, a permanent Standing Committee of CENL [1]. The project was launched on January 1, 1998, with funding from the European Commission's Telematics Application Programme, and runs till the end of 2000. Eight national libraries in Europe, one national archive, two ICT organisations and three major publishers are participating in the project. The Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National Library of the Netherlands, leads the project.
NEDLIB, which stands for Networked European Deposit Library, addresses major technical issues confronting national deposit libraries that are in the process of extending their deposit to digital works. The project aims to develop a common architectural framework and basic tools for building deposit systems for electronic publications (DSEP) [2]
The NEDLIB project is reporting regularly to the CENL and CoBRA+ meetings in order to assure feedback on work-in-progress and to address issues arising from this concertation. This proves to be very effective and the relevance of NEDLIB achievements to national libraries has increased because of this.
One important piece of work carried out by the project is the functional specification and overall design of a DSEP. The main objective is to identify functional requirements that are common to all deposit libraries in order to arrive at a "generic" high-level design of a DSEP that can serve as a basis for local implementations by individual deposit libraries.
A common workflow for handling deposited electronic publications was defined and helped to identify common functional requirements. A major step forward in the conceptual design of a DSEP was made in December 1998, when the project consortium agreed to adopt the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) model as a Reference Model [3]. During 1999 a DSEP process model and data flow, based on the OAIS model, has been developed. It is tailored to fit within the broader framework of deposit libraries systems.
In the DSEP model the functions of a deposit system are linked into the digital library environment. Much of the OAIS functionality, such as submission (acquisition), description (cataloguing), creating finding aids (the National Bibliography, the library OPAC, subject guides and other indexes), and providing access, is part of the broader digital library configuration. In other words, OAIS functionality bundled in entities such as Ingest, Data Management and Access overlaps the general functionality of a digital library system (DLS). Consequently, the OAIS functionality is situated partly outside and partly inside the actual limits of a DSEP and in the DSEP model the Ingest, Data-Management and Access modules have much more limited functionality than they have in the OAIS Reference Model. Additionally, the NEDLIB model defines how the DSEP system and the digital library system (DLS) interact. Two interfacing modules have been specified through which all input and output interactions with the DSEP take place. Figure 1 shows the result of this scoping exercise.
For a discussion of the DSEP-model please refer to an article on NEDLIB published in the September issue of D-Lib Magazine [4].
 Figure 1: High-level design of a Deposit System for Electronic Publications (DSEP) |
The DSEP model can serve as a starting point for system design. It emphasises ways of building an extensible system whose modules can easily be evolved or replaced. It provides a high-level design of a prototype deposit system that can provide for the preservation of digital publications. The design still needs to be underpinned with architectural guidelines and translated into an appropriate implementation design. This needs to be done at the local level, by deposit libraries individually, taking account of their local requirements and evolving DLS infrastructures. But the DSEP model is a very good starting point for deposit libraries that are in the process of building such a system. In fact the DSEP model already serves this purpose as increasing numbers of deposit libraries are tendering for such systems and involving the ICT-industry in the process. These libraries have all consulted the DSEP model developed by NEDLIB and it has helped them in their specification of requirements to vendors. The libraries concerned include the Koninklijke Bibliotheek who is tendering for a Deposit System for Dutch Electronic Publications [5], the British Library who, likewise, started a European tender for the procurement of a Digital Library System in 1999 [6] and the National Library of Australia who has undertaken several procurement exercises in the past year, based on digital services requirements documented in their Information Paper [7].
In all cases these libraries are not aiming at turnkey solutions. They want to base the overall system on products and services available or currently becoming available in the marketplace. With this strategy they hope to minimise future systems development and operations costs, taking advantage of market-driven technology improvement. At the same time they realise the disadvantage of commercial solutions that follow short-cyclic and market-driven product development paths and that do not outlive the lifetime of the commercial enterprise who designed the product. The libraries therefore intend to implement this strategy by:
NEDLIB hopes to support this strategy by providing guidelines for technical standards and conventions, scorecards for testing the functionality of tools and better insight in the technicalities of long-term preservation.
The NEDLIB standards document is still in development. It takes the list of OAIS-related standards as a starting point and describes standards and conventions that are relevant for a DSEP. The OAIS standardisation efforts are progressing. At an archival workshop on Ingest, Identification and certification standards (AWIICS) that took place in October 1999, three working groups have been installed to look at standards. NEDLIB is also looking at Ingest and Identification and intends to provide feedback to the AWIICS working groups.
Concerning standards for the submission of electronic publications to the DSEP, deposit libraries need to establish digital deposit procedures with publishers, such as file transfer via FTP, harvesting from the web, postal delivery of off-line publications, etc. These procedures should be based on agreements about access permissions, submission schedules, submission package formats. A submission package typically consists of the electronic publication itself and all sorts of additional files, including installation files, structural metadata providing some indication of the way in which the files are inter-related and organised. Some packages may carry just one dissertation, but others may carry several journal issues or even a snap-shot of an Internet domain.
The issue of standardisation of submission is not one of trying to influence the publishing industry to standardise publishing formats, although from a preservation point of view it is arguable that resources created in certain formats will be easier to preserve than others. Deposit libraries will receive publications in the format they were published in. "Standardisation" in this area is dictated by the market-place. However, deposit libraries can make agreements with publishers concerning the submission package. By defining a generic package format it will be possible to process incoming data from a great variety of publishers in a similar way, making the whole ingest process more scalable.
In other areas, standards such as Z39.50 for searching and HTTP/FTP for delivery, are already in use in Digital Library Systems. DSEP does not require specific standards for search and retrieve, but the related standards and techniques for identifying a digital object and resolving the identifier to its location in a library DSEP-system are crucial. The long-term identification, resolution and access to deposited (networked) electronic publications are issues of major concern to deposit libraries [8]. NEDLIB partners, together with other national library experts, are discussing these issues in a CDNL-working-group on permanent naming. Among the CDNL approved principles, the most challenging and far-reaching one is "that memory organisations (such as national libraries) have a responsibility to provide last-resort resolution services for identifiers of cultural heritage resources."
NEDLIB hopes to provide practical guidance to help deposit libraries adhere to this principle: if not direct solutions, at least an extensible list of problems that need to be addressed, such as the necessity to establish rules for usage of identifiers when documents are "processed" for long-time preservation purposes.
Metadata is another area for standards, but again there is much overlap with the broader digital library metadata requirements. NEDLIB does not look into standards for the bibliographic description of electronic publications, which are being developed by established standardisation committees and related projects. NEDLIB addresses metadata in several ways:
NEDLIB is in the process of building a demonstrator system, with tools and software already in use by project partners or developed by NEDLIB, covering all functional aspects of a DSEP. Software and tools are being developed, tested and integrated in functional building blocks of the demonstrator. Existing library systems, such as the online public access catalogue (OPAC) and the library acquisition and cataloguing systems, which are external to, but need to interact with a DSEP, will interface to the demonstrator. During the demonstration stage, which is scheduled for the second half of 2000, the handling of electronic publications from acquisition to access will be demonstrated, with sample material provided by Elsevier Science, Kluwer Academic Publishers and Springer-Verlag.
Titia van der Werf-Davelaar
Koninklijke Bibliotheek
National Library of the Netherlands
Email: titia@python.konbib.nl
This article is based on the Keynote Speech delivered by Bernard Smith, Head of the Cultural Heritage Applications Unit of the European Commission at World E-com in Perth, Australia on 9th November 1999.
It's been over a decade now since the EU launched an ambitious series of R&D programmes to promote the development of information and communication based technologies, services and applications in Europe. The rationale behind this was the belief that these technologies were going to play an increasingly important role in our society, especially as regards quality of life, industrial competitiveness and the creation of new jobs.
But just supporting R&D alone was no guarantee that the benefits of these technologies will be made available to all our citizens and businesses. Thus our R&D effort was partnered by the launch, in 1987, of an ambitious telecoms liberalisation policy. The aim was to free-up private sector innovation and investment power.
By 1994, and following on from the so-called Delor White Paper, we were able to integrate our liberalisation policy and R&D programmes into a comprehensive package which we in Europe call "The Information Society".
The appropriateness and timeliness of this approach has been confirmed in recent years. Let me illustrate this through a few essential facts and trends:
The development of both information and communication technologies has given birth to the Internet. Over the past five years, this has shown itself to be a powerful and open medium for communication and business. The number of Internet users globally is now around 190 million and will reach 250 million by the end of the year 2000. During the recent Telecom99 conference held in Geneva Larry Ellison of Oracle said that they predicted that Europe would overtake the US in Internet access within the next 4 years. His view was that Europe would be the driving force behind the next generation of wireless e-commerce services, and that within 4 years more users will be accessing the Internet through mobile technology than on fixed-lines. In any case we can certainly expect that at least one third of these 250 million Internet users will be European. To these Internet users we can add the 100 million PCs and 400 million wireless devices world-wide forecast for next year. On top of that we can start to think about the one billion mobile phone users and 500 million Internet users some have predicted by 2003. It is clear now that the future will be a multi-network, multi-device environment delivering a quasi-infinite variety of interactive data-based services over IP.
In five years time, the Internet will be used routinely by half of the European population. This does not necessarily mean that there will be a computer in half the homes in Europe, but access will become commonplace as other devices are used to connect to the Internet. Already access is possible through digital TV set-top boxes, digital assistants and mobile phones. Increasingly this will extend to virtually all consumer appliances such as road navigation systems, house alarms, and why not microwave ovens, refrigerators, and so on. This might not be so far fetched since NTT estimates that by 2010 only one-third of their customers will be people, the rest will be cars, bicycles, portable PCs, boats, vending machines, and even pets. Again during Telecom99 Bill Gates announced that Microsoft was changing its mission statement from "a computer on every desk and in every home" to "empowering users with great software any time, any place, with any device". This can certainly be paraphrased as "the Internet in your pocket" and clearly reflects the shift from today's visible stand-alone PC to tomorrows ubiquitous Internet enabled access device.
Today, information and communication technologies and the Internet have become the most significant factors shaping our economies. This will remain the case for the foreseeable future. The world is clearly moving towards the networked economy.
The Information Society is already the fastest growing sector of the EU economy. The underpinning information and communications industries are growing in Europe at more than 5% points faster than other industrial sectors. Overall the Information Society now accounts for 5% of the EU GDP and 15% of total EU economic growth. In the last 3 years the EU telecoms market has increased by one-third, an increase of 38 billion euro. Last year (1998) the EU mobile communication market grew by 21%, whereas the networking services market grew by 14%, and mobile revenues could well overtake fixed-line revenues in the next 5 years. All this despite the fact that tariffs have dropped by more than 40% over the last 3 years.
The Internet is also the driving force for the rapid emergence of electronic-commerce, which is expected to be worth world-wide 200 billion euro in 2000 and up to 850 billion euro by 2005.
It is therefore vital to our future competitiveness and growth that Europe masters this new context.
Furthermore, the take-up of the Internet and associated information and communication technologies is also vital to solving Europe's employment problem. Already over 4 million people in the EU work in Information Society sectors. The Information Society now creates one out of four new jobs and demand largely outpaces supply. It is estimated that there are more that 500,000 unfilled IT-related job vacancies in the EU, and the gap is expected to widen to 1.2 million jobs by 2002. In fact Mr. Wilson, the CEO of Anderson Consulting, at Telecom99 strongly underlined the fact that new PC companies are no longer being created. He pointed out that mobile and data traffic are the key growth sectors today and that IP-centric start-ups are winning substantial market share and are growing 60% faster than incumbent telecoms operators. At a time where high levels of unemployment remain a major challenge for Europe, these expanding areas represents a potential for job creation that cannot be ignored. For example it is estimated that the GSM market sector could create an additional 150,000 jobs in the coming years. Also the European audio-visual sector is predicted to expand by 70% between 1995 and 2005, creating 300,000 new jobs.
Since I have mentioned several times the Telecom99 conference perhaps it is useful for us to look at some of the key trends seen there. I think most observers would agree that the dominant trend was one of convergence between Internet and mobile communications, or in the words of Mr. Ollila, the CEO of Nokia, "the mobile information society". If wireless Internet access was the major trend then certainly the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) was the most attractive technology. Whilst WAP was holding the centre of the stage I think it is also worthwhile mentioning another trend that confirmed itself at Geneva. That is the open-source software model. This is quite a change in the fundamental philosophy of marketplaces. Internet has underlined the importance of openness, with some impressive examples such as Apache, Java and Linux. We are now seeing the effect of this in the way companies are starting to build partnership networks, and finally understanding that no single company can do it all. You will see later in my talk how important this new model is to the research objectives in electronic commerce in the IST programme.
One final observation from Telecom99 was the relative absence of multimedia content providers. They had been very present during Telecom95, and their absence was noted by many in this year's conference. Some speakers, including Bill Gates, predicted that Telecom2003 will be dominated by interactive services and content. Larry Ellison predicted that the explosion of mobile services in Europe would create a major demand for multi-lingual and multi-cultural content. The focus for the future will certainly be on connecting people and not just devices, and on location-sensitive services which by definition will integrate both global and local content. That is to say services with unique cultural and linguistic characteristics. It is sufficient here to note that multimedia content also plays a key role in the IST Programme.
With these observations in mind, I would like to present an overview of our information society policy.
The Information Society concept is about the optimal use of information and communication technologies in all of our activities. As I have already pointed out, our policy aim is to improve Europe's performance in the global economy, as well as to increase the efficiency of public services, leading to greater economic growth, the creation of new jobs and a substantial improvement in the quality of life.
To achieve this, the EU has based its approach on a series of guiding principles:
a) Firstly, creating a favourable legislative environment for businesses and citizens, and:
b) Secondly, supporting research, development and innovation in information and communication technologies.
A cornerstone in this desire for dialogue was the 1997 (6-8 July) Bonn Ministerial Conference. This provided a very valuable final Declaration listing eight key principles to guide Governments action with respect to global information networks:
In that same year the Commission issued a Framework Communication entitled "A European Initiative in Electronic Commerce". The priorities identified in this Communication included those related to liberalisation, regulation and R&D, but added a fourth priority, namely "creating a favourable, open and competitive business environment". Let us look a little more closely at this last priority before returning to the others. The Communication identified four key themes which touch directly on the business environment, namely:
A number of key issues have already been addressed such as data protection, electronic signatures, and so on. The real issue here is consumer confidence in e-commerce processes. "Hard trust" issues are certainly at the heart of many of the actions in the Commissions R&D programmes that I will describe later. Yet this needs to be complimented by softer form of "psychological trust". On this issue much has already been achieved with European industry, trade and consumer associations, but much more is still to be done. The Commissions ISPO Web site is an excellent source of information concerning our awareness building activities. The promotion of e-commerce is also an important task in our R&D programme which I will touch on later.
Experts estimate that, in the US alone, business-to-business e-commerce over the Web will grow from $43 billion in 1998 to $1.3 trillion in 2003. Global e-commerce could reach anything from $3.2 to $5 trillion by 2003, which amounts to between 5% and 7.2% of total world trade. This is dependent upon the creation of complex webs of commercial activities, transacted between a large number of participants, using global open networks. The focus for Europe must thus be on the rapid adoption of e-commerce processes by a large number of small businesses. Programmes such as Commerce 2000 and the G7 project on SMEs have helped to create substantial awareness concerning e-commerce options. Again the ISPO Web site is an excellent source of information on these activities.
It is generally estimated that Europe lags behind the US consumer marketplace by about 18 months. In contrast, in business-to-business applications Europe is already well positioned, and this is where the real marketplace for e-commerce is today. Europe is the worlds leading exporter and is particularly strong in areas such as automotive, aeronautics, tourism, and so on. However, studies have shown that EU companies move into e-commerce to protect their market positions and retain their customers, rather than as a strategic move to capture new markets and consumers. More than 40% of EU companies are influenced by competitors, and they tend to see e-commerce as an add-on activity and are not prepared to commit themselves to the process re-engineering often needed to fully benefit from the available technologies. Many experts feel that it is not so much the cost or technical complexity that is a barrier, nor is it a lack of understanding of the opportunities provided by the technologies, but it is a lack of European specific success stories and "role models". Therefore one key issue here is the creation and showcasing of best practice pilots. Given that individual small companies hesitate to try out new applications, widely publicised pilot projects with detailed business models can be very valuable. Again the Commission's R&D programme has a specific action dedicated to this issue.
The public sector also has an important part to play in the promotion of e-commerce. Interaction with public administrations forms part of the day-today activities of small businesses. In Europe about 70% of the data handled by public administrations has its origins in industry, this covers customs and taxes, social security, employment services, public registry and public procurement. In addition, more than 50% of EU GDP is still generated by governments, local and regional administrations, utilities and public owned companies. Already the IDA programme has focused on the networking interoperability of Europe's public administrations, and the Commission is working to encourage electronic procurement in national administrations. A recent Communication on Access to Public Information also contributes to this debate in offering options for the commercial re-exploitation of publicly held information. The present R&D programme includes a focus on administrations both as providers of services for the citizen, and as enablers and facilitators in business-driven e-commerce processes.
The Commission is very conscious of the fact that European citizens are not yet fully equipped to deal with many of the new technologies on offer. The Information Society Forum clearly placed the emphasis on improving education and network literacy, with a focus on new models for life-long learning. It is clear that the basis for such skills must be laid in primary and secondary schools. Numerous European programmes are already attacking this problem, notably the Socrates and Leonardo programmes for vocational (re-)training, and the structural and regional development funds to promote greater understanding of e-commerce issues by small enterprises. The present R&D programme has a substantial section devoted to education and training and the 2000 work programme will specifically look at the school of tomorrow and the individual learner in society.
Access to the Information Society still remains closely linked to wealth, education and employment. Price is still a significant barrier to entry, and household computer ownership in Europe is still too low. For many people the main route of access in the EU is still the workplace. There is a lack of awareness with those who have the most to gain, notably the elderly, the unemployed, and the handicapped and disabled. Regional disparities are still very marked within the EU, and public access points - for example in libraries, schools and community-based knowledge resource centres - will be central to building an inclusive European Information Society.
The entry into force, on 1 January 1998, of an EU-wide liberalised regulatory framework for telecoms set the essential conditions for the expansion of the communications sector:
Today, the EU telecoms market is a dynamic and rapidly evolving market worth 148 billion euro. It is regarded as the single most important contributor to economic growth in the EU:
In parallel, the telecoms industry is undergoing a major restructuring process:
Overall the EU policy framework is functioning well. However, improvements are necessary. This is the object of a review of the telecoms framework that will be carried out before the end of 1999. The Telecoms Review will cover four key issues:
Let us have a look at some of the problems involved. A good example is licensing. Licensing can work as an obstacle to the development of competition as it can be used to block market entry. Today we have a situation where authorisation regimes differ, so the same operator must adapt its request for authorisation to fifteen different regimes.
In some Member States an operator can start providing services immediately. In others he must seek an individual licence from the regulator. The conditions attached to these licences vary. Such differences constitute obstacles to service provisions by pan-European providers such as satellite operators. This is one reason why most operators remain focused on operating in national markets, rather than seeking to pursue pan-European strategies.
In some cases the regulatory regime is conditioning how an operator provides the service. This can not be right. This is the tail wagging the dog. We need to reduce the red tape so operators are free to innovate. We need to make changes to the framework to encourage more effective competition. In doing so we need also to continue to protect consumers and to guarantee a minimum level of service to the disadvantaged in society.
As I have already said the European Commission will soon issue a policy document that will suggest options to address these shortcomings. Our intention is to hear the views of the national authorities, market players and user associations. In the light of their reactions we will make proposals for a new regulatory framework.>
I hope it is evident that the European Union not only welcomes global competition, but also has now created one of the most open market in the world. If Europe is to be an effective competitor and to have a first-class communications infrastructure then an open market is essential. With the regulatory review the aim will be to create markets that will be even more open.
At the same time as the new telecommunications framework was being implemented in the 15 Member States, the Commission was also undertaking to consolidate the Internal Market for e-commerce, a task which is to be completed in the year 2000.
Very recently the Commission has tabled an amended proposal for a coherent legal framework for electronic commerce in the Single Market. The amendments touch on the definitions of the types of Information Society services and their respective consumers, the link between e-commerce and existing consumer protection and data protection Directives, the treatment of unsolicited commercial communications via e-mail and the determination of the moment when an online contract is concluded. The Commission has kept the proposal to limit the liability of online service providers who act as intermediaries.
All the required Directives have now been tabled and some have already entered into force, for instance those regarding the legal protection of databases and the protection of personal data. Other key Directives concern:
Policy initiatives must reflect the global nature of the Internet and e-commerce. This also calls for globally agreed rules and principles. However this ideal is difficult to achieve for several reasons, primarily:
A new approach at the international level was needed to overcome these difficulties. The Commission's contribution to this new approach was an initiative launched in February 1998:
The GBDe's main aim is to develop business consensus on those priority issues where swift global action is needed. For example, authentication and security; consumer confidence; content; information infrastructure and market access; intellectual property rights; jurisdiction; liability; protection of personal data; taxes and tariffs.
On this basis, recommendations to governments, parliaments and international organisations were tabled by the GBDe at its first conference held in Paris in September 1999:
Given the theme of this conference I think it appropriate to look more closely at some of the more important issues facing Europe. Today we have six problems that need global solutions, namely:
One of the main aspects concerning liability is that of intermediary service providers. The amended EU Electronic Commerce Directive clearly defines four issues, namely:
Protection of privacy is considered a fundamental right and there is already in place a European Directive concerning the protection of personal data. Today the Commission is monitoring its implementation in all Member States. More recently it has been agreed to extend the implementation of the Directive without modification to personal data on the Internet. Concerning the processing of personal data on the Internet the following recommendations have recently been made:
There is an on-going discussion between the EU and the US concerning the ways that complaints from people who have had personal data transferred from the EU should be treated. The EU favours an independent public body or third party organisations for this purpose, and is in discussion with the US concerning the "safe harbour principles" and the role and nature of the associated FAQ.
In May (21 May 1999) of this year an amended proposal for harmonising certain aspects of copyright and related rights was presented. The proposed Directive would establish a level playing field for copyright protection in the new environment. This covers reproduction rights, the communication to the public right, distribution rights, and the legal protection of anti-copying and rights management systems. Throughout the legislative process, the Commission has paid particular attention to ensuring a fair balance between all the rights and interests involved. The amended proposal incorporates fully or partially 44 of the 56 amendments sought by the European Parliament in its 10 February 1999 Opinion. However the Commission did not incorporate the Parliament's suggestion that certain technical acts of reproduction (such as 'cache' copies) should only benefit from an exception to the reproduction right subject to prior authorisation by right-holders to putting their protected material on the networks. This is because such a requirement would have seriously hindered the effective operation of the Internet and upset the balance of interests in the original proposal.
The proposal meets the main requirements of the new international treaties on the protection of authors, performers and phonogram producers agreed in December 1996 by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). This will allow ratification of these treaties by both the European Community as such and the individual Member States, as well as by all countries associated with the EU (including European Economic Area members and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe).>
Concerning taxation and tariffs no official EU position has yet been formulated, however, the issue was discussed at the WTO (GATS, GATT, TRIPS). A product ordered though the Internet and shipped though conventional means is subject to the normal customs regime. The actual method of ordering should not make a difference. The tariffs on a product ordered and delivered through the Internet (for example software) is a complicated question and in May 1998 the World Trade Organisation (WTO) approved an agreement to temporarily refrain from imposing customs duties on electronic transmissions. There are ongoing discussions on the classification of goods that can be delivered both electronically and in a physical form (again the example of software comes to mind).
Whatever the outcome of these on-going discussions it is evident that the solutions must be technologically neutral, efficient to implement, simple to understand and promotes certainty and trust in the minds of all.
An important contribution to the issue of indirect taxation is the 1998 Commission Communication on electronic commerce and indirect taxation. Some of the principles outlined in the communication are:
There is a European Directive on a framework for electronic signatures, which covers considerable ground concerning market access issues, legal implications, liability, data protection and international aspects. The core considerations involve:
Whilst encryption and the specific issue of digital signatures are still treated differently by different Member States in the EU it is now evident that market forces are pushing all parties to adopt similar approaches. It is notable that France, who until recently only permitted a 40-bit encryption technology, recently authorised the use of 128-bit technology. In addition France has announced it intention to lift all restriction and also remove the obligation to deposit encryption keys with Trusted Third Parties. This is seen as being critical in encouraging electronic commerce and Internet usage.
Concerning illegal content the Commission is implementing an Action Plan to promote the safer use of the Internet and to combat illegal and harmful content on global networks. This Plan recognises that, whilst aiming at a high level of protection, any action taken to deal with atypical use for illegal and harmful content should not have a disproportionate impact on Internet users and the industry as a whole. What is fundamentally illegal in the real world is illegal on the Internet. Information on the Internet should be allowed the same free flow as paper-based information. Any restrictions should respect fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and the right to privacy. Responsibility for prosecuting and punishing those responsible for illegal content remains with the national law-enforcement authorities assisted by structures such as EUROPOL and INTERPOL. Industry has a responsibility to remove illegal content from their systems, and can be assisted by self-regulatory bodies. Users should also be able to report illegal content through hotlines. Filtering software and rating systems can help users to avoid harmful contents.
Concerning ongoing actions the EU is working on four initiatives:
On a final issue concerning child pornography a recent international conference in Vienna made some important recommendations, namely:
Another important issue relates to consumer protection. The EU has always maintained that consumer protection should be based upon a small number of basic principles, namely:
Governments, consumer organisations and business representatives all want electronic commerce to flourish. But the technology issues mentioned above concerning service provision, electronic signatures, data protection, and so on, are not enough. For electronic commerce to develop you need at least three things: technology, a suppliers offering goods and services online, and consumers willing to buy goods and services online. Focusing on the last requirement, namely the demand side of the market, it is certain that the key to consumer participation in electronic commerce is consumer confidence. And let us face reality. Consumer confidence in electronic commerce still leaves much to be desired.
The European Commission is guided by a small set of simple rules:
While the previous programme for R&D had been extremely successful, it also showed some shortcomings in the face of the digital revolution. The new Information Society Technologies (IST) Programme has to reflect the political, technological and industrial changes that have taken place since the launch of the previous programme, back in 1994.
Our aim in developing the Fifth Framework Programme was to keep better pace with the changing technological context and take better account of Europe's socio-economic needs. The overall aim of the programme remains intact, and that is to foster collaborative R&D that will help maintenance Europe's position as a leading technological and economic player in the 21st century.
As the frontier between the telecoms, IT and media sectors fades away, the maintenance of three separate programmes focusing on different technologies and sectors was no longer tenable.
Convergence is thus one of the main driving forces behind the integration of all EU IST-related R&D activities into a single programme.
The pace of technological change has increased tremendously over the last years. While the life span of an EU programme is "only" five years, this is already too long to foresee at the outset new challenges that may arise almost overnight.
In order to respond to these challenges in a timely manner, the IST Programme operate on the basis of a rolling work plan, updated annually. Furthermore there will be frequent calls for proposals - two or three each year. New actions can therefore be easily and quickly launched as and when required, while existing actions can be more easily reoriented to reflect new developments.
Because the technological landscape is changing so rapidly today we have decided not to create a too narrow or deterministic techno-centric focus for the programme. The IST Programme thus has as a focus the substantial and measurable improvement of key system functionalities, namely accessibility, affordability, usability, dependability, and interoperability.
In addition, very recently a high-level advisory group has provided a long-term vision for the IST Programme. This vision is based upon the model of an intelligence landscape of seamlessly interwoven services and applications. The practical focus is on large test-beds and open source software, developing non-trivial aspects of user friendliness, and a world-class network infrastructure. What should emerge is a future environment that is embedded, personalised, adaptive and anticipatory.
At the end of the day, R&D activities should lead to new products and services. R&D must contribute to strengthen all sectors of EUindustry and in particular our infrastructure of small and medium sized enterprises. The key indicators of success are market share, global competitiveness and the number of new jobs created.
The IST Programme will therefore place strong emphasis on the take-up of EU R&D results. This includes, in particular, actions supporting the development and diffusion of new methods, techniques and the associated skills required, such as first-user and best-practice actions).
This will be accompanied by consensus-building and standardisation activities, which have proved extremely successful in the past, for instance for GSM and digital TV.
The IST Programme must also reflect economic globalisation. Hence the importance devoted to the international dimension of EU research. It is useful here to mention the role of international co-operation in the IST Programme. At this moment in time the programme is completely open to the 15 Member States, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Israel and 11 accession states including most the Central and Eastern European countries. Switzerland will also become a full participant in 2001. In addition there are Science & Technology Agreements with USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and so on. Finally all the RTD programmes are now open to international co-operation on a project-by-project basis.
Finally - and this is in fact an underlying element of the previous points I have just made - EU research must be more closely related to EU policy goals. To achieve this is even more important today than it was in the past, given the fast and widespread penetration of technologies in all aspects of human life.
In practical terms, it means that the research objectives of the IST Programme reflect the political priorities of both Information Society policy and other key EU policies, for instance employment, education and training, health, environment, transport, cohesion or sustainable development.
The new IST Programme has a budget of 3.6 billion euro until 2002, and the budget for 1999 is around 800 million euro. It is focused on four key actions and two horizontal activities:
Key Action I - "Systems and services for the citizen"
Key Action II - "New methods of work and electronic commerce"
Key Action III - "Multimedia content and tools"
Key Action IV - "Essential technologies and infrastructures"
Horizontal Action 1 - "Future and emerging technologies"
Horizontal Action 2 - "Research networking"
Realising the vision behind the IST Programme presents many technical challenges and standardisation problems. The overall aim is the development and application of new technologies in competitive products and services. The Work Programme for 2000 is focussed on these challenges and in particular:
From the technology perspective:
From the application and services perspective:
In addition, these priorities are complemented by policy oriented objectives, essentially:
In terms of electronic commerce the core activities in the IST programme are found in the Key Action entitled "New Methods of Work and Electronic Commerce". I would like here to focus on two specific issues, action promoting the adoption of e-commerce technologies and practices, and R&D on security and confidence building technologies.
The 2000 work programme is likely to have a strong focus on activities promoting adoption and exploitation of e-commerce technologies and practices. The aim will be to foster the rapid exploitation of research results by providing funds for "trials" and "test-beds". The objective here is to strengthen Europe's technology base for the digital economy by validating and customising novel solutions in very practical situations so that the marketplace can quickly adopt them. An additional action will focus on "best practice" activities aimed at showcasing the benefits of new solutions and facilitating their deployment within small enterprises.
Turning to the challenge to develop novel IST-based solutions and practices is to ensure trust and confidence both at the level of individual solutions as well as at the level of the infrastructures supporting these solutions. The focus is on:
A particular action is focused on large-scale trust test-beds which examine generic solutions for global interoperability and supporting a broad array of transactions (for example, e-purses and e-money), applications and business processes.
This last point was just to demonstrate that today the Commissions RTD programme is not only highly focused on key technological challenges but also on ones that have global relevance. It is for this reason that the IST Programme is an excellent tool for a modern policy in international co-operation.
In conclusion, the development and effective uptake of Information Society Technologies will be one of the key issues for the European economy in the coming years.
The European Commission, through an extensive and integrated policy, aims to foster the emergence of the Information Society in Europe. The Information Society industries have become one of biggest and fastest growing sectors in the EU. They are creating new jobs, new business opportunities, new products and services, but this is only the beginning. We can expect that these industries will grow in importance, and that the pace of change will continue to accelerate and challenge existing structures and institutions.
In addition to telecoms deregulation and the development of an appropriate regulatory framework, e-commerce is one of the lynchpins of the Commission's strategy in the IST programme. The EU is well placed to exploit the opportunities on offer. We have the largest single market in the world, the single currency, a liberalised telecoms infrastructure, a well structured regulatory framework, and a diverse, creative and innovative pool of talent.
More specifically by fostering collaborative R&D projects, the IST programme helps to bring together Europe's brightest researchers to develop new technologies for the next generation of e-commerce products and services.
Today our problems are global, so it is important that our programmes are as open as possible to collaboration with non-EU partners. We are making progress in this area, but there is still much to do. I would incite you all to consider or re-consider your options, and come and talk to us about future co-operation.
Thank you
Bernard Smith
Head of Unit
Cultural Heritage Applications INFSO/D
Directorate General - Information Society
European Commission
Steve Coffman, Director of FYI at the County of Los Angeles Public Library gives a European perspective on his ideas for Building Earth's Largest Library.
In March of last year I wrote an article for Searcher Magazine called “Building Earth's Largest Library.” (for full text see [1] and a follow-up piece at [2]). The basic premise of the piece was to apply the business model of Amazon.com, the bellwether of the new e-commerce revolution, to the library world. For example, what if we scrapped our limited local online public access catalogs (OPACs) that list only books in our own collections? What if, instead, we adopted a catalog like Amazon's, one that would show our patrons not only all the books we had, but also all of those we could get — either through interlibrary loan or in-print titles we could purchase for our patrons, if demand warranted it?
Suppose that when a patron searched this new catalog, they received a list of all the books available along with some indication of how long it would take to get them — just as they do in Amazon. And what if, like Amazon, we provided our patrons with rich bibliographic records showing cover art, tables of contents, synopses, excerpts, author biographies, reviews, etc., instead of forcing them to make do with the skimpy little, uninformative MARC records that make up our current catalogs? And suppose we allowed our patrons to order any book they wanted out of this catalog right on the Web, and have it delivered to their local library or directly to their home or office, from anywhere in the world, just like Amazon?
If we could accomplish all of that, we would have created the single largest library that has ever existed on the face of the earth — a library containing over 43 million titles (assuming a catalog equivalent to a combination of OCLC's Worldcat database plus the current Bowker Books In Print), almost ten times the collection of the 4.5 million titles listed in Amazon's own catalog of Earth's Biggest Bookstore. Such a library would make us the center of book information on the Web, and prove, once and for all, that when it comes to books, nobody, but nobody can beat the library.
Or at least that is what I said in the article. And judging from the large and generally enthusiastic response the piece has received in the United States, there are many who love the idea and can't wait to get started building it.
However, the vote was not unanimous. A number of people — particularly from your side of the Atlantic — suggested that a more accurate title for the article would have been “Building America's Largest Library” because while the model I laid out might have worked alright in the U.S., it would do little to help a patron in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, or almost anywhere outside the U.S. Others complained that it was unrealistic to assume that libraries from different countries could cooperate sufficiently to develop a single union catalog of their works, when experience in Europe had shown that they could not even agree on a common set of cataloging conventions. Some of you pointed out that interlibrary lending policies and procedures differed from country to country in Europe, and that even if you could make a catalog that could show a patron in Germany titles held by libraries in Italy or the U.S., it still would not be easy to request them. Others noted that I had totally ignored the language problem. Finally, several suggested that Amazon itself was a uniquely American creation, and questioned whether European customers would really want to adopt the same approach.
To each of these charges, save one, I plead guilty. I did write the article from a decidedly U.S. perspective. I built the model around tools like OCLC's WorldCat and Bowker Books In Print, that only work well in the U.S. (OCLC does offer some European coverage, but it is hardly comprehensive). And even though, I called it Earth's Largest Library I'm afraid the model I proposed for the U.S. might prove of little use to patrons in Frankfurt, Bath, Venice, Orleans, or Warsaw.
Having made that confession, however, I still disagree with those who claim that Earth's Largest Library or the Amazon model in general somehow could not apply to Europe. After all, Amazon itself has created two very popular sites directed exclusively at European audiences in the UK [3] and Germany [4]. And as far as I can tell, every major European online bookstore that I have visited from Bertelsmann [5] to Waterstones [6] and WH Smith Online [7] in the UK and FNAC in France [8] seems to have closely copied the Amazon model in designing their sites. They each strive to offer as broad a selection of titles as possible, including both books they hold in inventory and titles they can order from elsewhere, and each includes as much detail on each title as they can get, including cover art, tables of contents, synopses, reviews, customer comments, and anything else they can get their hands on.
Based on this evidence, the features pioneered by Amazon would seem as important to European customers as to those in the U.S. So the real question is not whether European patrons would appreciate a library catalog fashioned after the Amazon model, but rather how to create such a catalog within the complex environment of the European community. Clearly, Europe does present some special difficulties, but I don't think the problems are insurmountable, particularly in light of the strong tradition of cooperation among many European libraries. And if Europe's librarians could pull it off, you could establish very real benefits for libraries and library patrons all over Europe.
So, how would we build Earth's Largest Library in Europe? Let's look at the pieces and see how we might fit them together.
First off, let's not call it Earth's Largest Library, that would only encourage somebody from South America or Africa or Asia to write in and complain that it didn't apply to them. Instead, let's call it Europe's Largest Library or ELL, for short. ELL would aim to provide library patrons all over Europe with a single catalog where they could find information about books, videos, periodicals, and other intellectual property, available (1) at their local library, (2) at other libraries throughout Europe either via interlibrary loan or by visits to those libraries, or (3) available for purchase (“in-print” books) by the library should patron demand warrant.
ELL's new catalog would be a big, rich; wonderful catalog with user-friendly information supplementing the skimpy MARC records, enough information to help patrons choose what they want. The interfaces would make the catalog easy to use. They would correct misspellings automatically, recommend books based on previous borrowing habits, allow users to recommend books to friends, provide lists of books appropriate for particular age levels and lists of books that have won awards, and provide all the many other amenities developed by our friends on the commercial side.
Amazon originally built their catalog around Baker & Talylor's Title Source II database, which included “enhanced bibliographic records” with cover art, tables of contents, etc. for selected titles, and inventory records of books available from other selected suppliers. Amazon then added in reviews, customer comments, the recommendation engine, and other features, to produce their single union catalog of over 4.5 million records. In the original Earth's Largest Library article, I suggested that libraries could achieve a similar effect by creating a union catalog that combined a source of current in print bibliographic information like the Baker & Taylor database or Bowker's Books In Print, plus a catalog of books held by other libraries available through interlibrary loan, such as the OCLC WorldCat database.
Of course, neither the U.S.-focused Books In Print nor its equivalents, nor the OCLC database would do much good in Europe. However, similar sources of information exist for most European countries. Why not take advantage of them?
We could get current bibliographic data from any of the various “In Print” catalogs such as British Books in Print, Spain's Libros en Venta, Germany's Verzeichnis lieferbarer Bücher for Germany, and the like. In many countries, we could license large retail and wholesale catalogs already in existence to produce current bibliographic records, for example, the Book Data database, or the Waterstones, WH Smith, or Amazon.uk catalogs for the UK, and the Bertelsmann catalog for the UK and much of the rest of Europe. And if we wait a while longer, we might someday acquire detailed records on current titles directly from the publishers themselves, as Amazon already does. Many publishers are working hard to come up with an international standard for bibliographic information that would allow them to easily transfer catalog and book data directly to wholesalers, retailers, and libraries via EDI or electronic data interchange. And if these efforts bear fruit --- and there is every reason to suspect they will --- publishers may soon be providing much of the basic bibliographic information in our catalogs. For further information on European initiatives in this area see [9].
Creating a union catalog of works held by other libraries throughout Europe would be a little more difficult. There really is no direct equivalent of the OCLC WorldCat database for Europe as a whole. To extend the Earth's Largest Library concept to Europe, we would have to build one or something very similar from the ground up.
As a start, we should combine existing national union catalogs, bibliographies, and other tools which each country has developed to keep track of their national bibliographies and to help locate titles for interlibrary loan. I know — just from the brief investigation I have done — that these sources differ from country to country. Some countries have developed comprehensive online union catalogs; in other cases, even two or three major sources will still not cover everything. And, of course, formats differ for various bibliographic records (although not as seriously as they might, thanks to International Standard Bibliographic Description).
Probably the biggest problem is the lack of complete holdings information in some of these databases, including omission of some libraries. To plug these gaps, we would have to design a way for libraries to add their local holdings to the catalog — probably by matching their local OPAC records against the titles in the national catalogs. But these differences are not insurmountable. With a little thought and hard work, we could build a source that would serve as a WorldCat for Europe. It wouldn't be perfect, of course, but then, neither is OCLC.
When operational, we would have a single source that would allow the patron to easily determine what books were available in his library had and what books were available to him at other libraries elsewhere in the country and throughout Europe. For a good example of how you might structure something like this, have a look at the Bertelsmann's BOL.com site [10] that offers an online catalog that currently covers books in seven European countries and in six different languages. The site operates off a single database and transaction system with a consistent user interface across all of the countries that makes the catalog easy to deal with, even if you are not fluent in the language. You can only search one country at a time, but you can switch from country to country just by clicking a link.
It is not hard to imagine a similar interface for the EL