[Cohsl-list] [Fwd: Mihalis Tzekakes & Giannes Kosmas' paper from MGSA]

Good afternoon CoHSL. At the Library Meeting of MGSA, this October, Rhea Karabelas Lesage delivered the report written by Mihalis Tzekakes and Giannes Kosmas. The Library group had hoped our colleagues from Crete would be present to participate and guide us in discussion as we establish a Modern Greek Resources Project; we were very disappointed they were unable to attend. With Mihalis' permission this afternoon, I post the report to the list on his behalf. I am certain CoHSL list members will find the paper comprehensive and instructive in a a very exciting way. Since his tenure as University Librarian at the University of Crete, and now as the Voule Library Consultant, Mihalis has been a lightning rod of innovation and drive behind major cataloging and digitization projects underway at national institutions in Greece. He continues to be a tireless champion in the creation of a seamless, unified Greek catalog network. With Mihalis and Giannes at our side, I believe our endeavor to establish a Modern Greek Resources Project will not fail. After reading the report below, I am sure you will agree as to its importance. Thank you and eucharisto poly Mihali kai Gianne, opos panta, Gisela Kam ************************************* ************************************* HELLENIC STUDIES PROJECT This paper is the result of the discussions and exchanges we started prompted by the Athens meeting last year. We do regret that we did not manage to personally present this paper and we would like to express our apologies for this. The main goal of the proposed program is to create tools that respond to the needs and expectations of the Libraries and the relevant institutions that support departments of Greek studies. These tools will be related to the following areas: - Quick and reliable information about the new publications related to the Greek Studies in Greece and abroad, - Effort to improve and update the routines of acquisitions relevant modern Greek Studies, - Effort to improve and streamline the procedures for development of collections in the libraries hosting Greek language material, - Cooperative cataloguing and documentation of Greek language material, - Effort to establish schemes of exchanges (books, periodicals, electronic material etc.), - Cooperation and coordination in the area of digitization of rare material related to Greek Studies, - Effort to build up digital collections based on material relevant to Greek Studies, - Effort to establish an ILL scheme among the participating in the Project members. The basic aim of the Project is to establish a PORTAL, a gateway whereby the participating members will be able to detect their material as regards: - Bibliographic awareness information, - Access to full text format of the documents they are seeking. Crucial keystone terms for the implementation of the Project are: COMMUNICATION AND CONNECTION An indicative table of the institutions, libraries and other organizations that might be suitable members of the Network is the following: - Libraries in Greece and abroad, - Institutions and Academic Departments in Greece hosting departments of Greek Studies, - Libraries and Institutions in Greece and abroad which possess reliable electronic catalogues, - Libraries and Institutions in Greece and abroad that build up digital collections of Greek Studies material, - Libraries and Institutions in Greece and abroad that share the need to create and have access to indexes of important and valuable for the researchers Greek periodicals. - Publishers and non profit institutions that have WWW accessible electronic catalogues of their publications, - The VIVLIONET bibliographic data base, which is supposed to be the Greek electronic version of Books in Print. THE PRESENT SITUATION IN GREECE AND THE PROJECT SUCCESS CHANCES Before we go further it is important to describe the situation in Greece and explore the chances to succeed. It has to be admitted that if this discussion took place a few years earlier our effort would come up to formidable hurdles related to weaknesses in infrastructure and the lack of human and economic resources in the libraries, their patron institutions as well as the agents involved in the sector of publishing and bookselling. Fortunately things have changed significantly for the better the last few years. In the area of libraries, the Academic Libraries in particular, given funding unprecedented by Greek standards, managed to streamline their infrastructure, reaching almost the level of research libraries abroad, mutatis mutandis of course. In this way the Academic and Research Libraries and quite a number of Public Libraries: - Offer electronic catalogs accessible through the WWW, - Use MARC standards for the documentation of their holdings, - Possess integrated library systems for managing their library routines, - Make extensive use of the WWW facilities, - Have started to digitize their material and create full text digital collections. LIBRARY PROJECTS IN GREECE The applications of the ICT have permitted the libraries to create a number of brand new tools of advanced technology that enable the libraries to have simultaneous federated searches in the catalogs of unlimited number of libraries. This is the case of ZEPHYRUS (http://zephyr.libh.uoc.gr/), a program that was created by the Automation Team of the University of Crete Libraries on behalf of the Consortium of Greek Academic and Research Libraries. This program based on Z39.50 protocol allows simultaneous federated searches in 34 catalogues of Greek Academic and Research Libraries. It is worth mentioning here the present trend in Greek Libraries to digitize their rare and valuable material, create digital resources and offer free access to the national and international community. We would like to give some indicative but by no means exhaustive examples of this case: - The University of Crete Library has created a digital full text database that includes about 14000 Greek monographs up to now. The majority of them come from its rare book collections. It can be visited at the address: http://anemi.lib.uoc.gr/. It is worth mentioning that this site is very popular among institutions in Eastern European countries that host departments of Modern Greek Studies. An exploding number of monographs are added every week. - The University of Patras Library runs a similar project called KOSMOPOLIS. The scope of this project is to create a full text data base of old and rare Greek periodicals. The database is WWW accessible and up to know hosts the following rare Greek periodical titles. 1. Ακρόπολις Φιλολογική 2. Αλεξανδρινή Τέχνη 3. Αποθήκη των Ωφελίμων Γνώσεων 4. Αποθήκη των Ωφελίμων και Τερπνών Γνώσεων 5. Απόλλων 6. Αργώ 7. Αττικόν Μουσείον 8. Γράμματα 9. Εδέμ 10. Η Ευτέρπη 11. Ημερολόγιο Σκόκου 12. Θελξινόη 13. Ιόνιος Ανθολογία 14. Ιωνική Μέλισσα 15. Μη Χάνεσαι 16. Νέα Ζωή 17. Ο Νουμάς 18. Ποικίλη Στοά 19. Χρυσαλλίς - E.L.I.A. (http://eliaserver.elia.org.gr) has already started an ambitious project that intends to create a full text digital database of 84.500 documents, which are related with: o photos and cartes postale from ELIAS’ collections, o Grey literature documents, o Newspapers, periodicals and 19th c. Greek Almanacs, o Documents of Greek artistic life (Theater, cinema, music etc.) - The National Library of Greece has started a similar project digitizing its old Greek Newspaper collection. So far the following titles are in full text are available through the WWW: (http://www.nlg.gr/dlefimerides.htm) 1. ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΙΑ 2. ΕΜΠΡΟΣ 3. ΡΙΖΟΣΠΑΣΤΗΣ 4. ΣΚΡΙΠ 5. ΤΑΧΥΔΡΟΜΟΣ (της Αιγύπτου) - The library of the Hellenic Parliament has also started a similar project that intends to transform its microfilm collection of old Greek Newspapers in digital format. The microfilm collection of Greek Newspapers amounts about 15000 microfilms corresponding to 9000.000 pages. THE CONSORTIUM OF GREEK ACADEMIC LIBRARIES The consortium of Greek Academic libraries started as a joint project of the Greek Academic Libraries, sponsored by the European Union, in order to jointly face the increasing problem of the scientific periodical subscriptions. So far it has had an unparalleled success. It has managed to set up a state funded platform, through which the subscriptions of all the Greek higher education institutions are handled. This means that: - All higher education Greek institution share a common subscription in electronic format, and they all have access to the corresponding electronic periodicals, - This shared subscription is funded by the State, - The subscription prices are the result of hard negotiations between the Committee of Periodicals and individual publishers such as: 1. ALPSP (Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers) 2. ACM (Association of Computing Machinery) 3. ACS (American Chemical Society) 4. AIP (American Institute of Physics) 5. American Psychological Association (PsycARTICLES) 6. Blackwell Publishing 7. Cambridge University Press 8. Elsevier (ScienceDirect) 9. Emerald 10. IEEE 11. Institute of Physics (IOP) 12. Kluwer Law International (KLI) 13. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) 14. Oxford University Press 15. Project MUSE 16. Sage 17. SpringerLink 18. Taylor & Francis 19. Wiley - A huge national network of information resources has been created including more than 15.000 titles of electronic periodicals and electronic databases covering not only the current subscriptions, but the contents of all back issues as well. In general, we would not exaggerate if we concluded that the Consortium of Greek Academic Libraries and in particular the Periodical Subscription Program is the most outstanding achievement of the last 70 years in the area of Education and Culture. PUBLISHING AND BOOKSELLING SECTOR Progress is also detected in the area of the private sector related with publishing, book production, circulation and bookselling. It is indicative in this case the presence throughout the country of big chains of franchising bookshops, such as ELEFTHEROUDAKIS, PAPASOTIRIOU, IANOS etc. On the other hand, we have the case of serious institutions which are concerned with the production and commercial exploitation of quality books. In this class we include cases like the Cultural Institution of the Bank of Greece, the University of Crete Press and other relevant examples that are the outcome of cultural activities of Banks or Universities. OFFICIAL ORGANIZATION PROMOTING GREEK PUBLISHING AS PART OF GREEK CULTURE AND CIVILIZATION Another characteristic of the positive changes that have taken place in recent years are the government or private foundations that are established in order to promote the Greek culture and civilization. EKEVI the Greek National Book Center, The Foundation of Greek Culture and Civilization and other similar organizations intend to promote and support the production and circulation of Greek publishing products in Greece and abroad. Famous private foundations like the Onassis Foundation or the Niarchos Foundation have recently been interested in contributing to the improvement of the infrastructure of Greek libraries. SOME CONCLUSIONS The above mentioned points lead us to some worth mentioning conclusions: 1. A tremendous progress has been noted in the area of libraries regarding their infrastructure and in particular the ICT applications 2. The level of services offered by the book publishing and book selling sector has been improved significantly. This means their services to libraries in Greece and abroad apart from the accurate and well timed information for their publishing products can be extended in the area of cataloguing and bibliographic services, i.e. Marc records etc. 3. Public Utility Organizations of the private and the public sector include in their programs activities of funding library projects and projects aiming in the dissemination of the Greek book. All the examples mentioned above indicate the trend of Greek libraries, cultural organizations, publishing houses and booksellers to fill the gap between the Modern Greek and the Western European and American standards. There is only one aspect where our traditional Greek mentality remains stable and compelling. It is our national weakness to be united, coordinated joining our efforts in order to achieve better exploitation of human and economic resources. The case of the joint subscription program of the Academic Libraries is a significant and unique exception. The idea of creating a joint project and a resource platform for promoting Greek studies in Greece and abroad could become another outstanding exception. It can be considered as a unique challenge for all of us in order to increase the level of our communication and cooperation in a crucial for the Greek Culture area. THE IDEA OF A GREEK STUDIES PROJECT Having described the positive factors in Greece that could support a Greek Studies Project, we should start being concerned in defining the needs we expect to address with this project. In an effort to start the discussion we mention an indicative, not exhaustive, table of such needs. Any idea or proposition completing and enriching the initial draft is more than welcome: - Identification of libraries in Greece and abroad which are suitable in participating in the original stage of the project. It is taken for granted that among these libraries there should be included the major Greek libraries (such as National Library, Hellenic Parliament Library etc), as well as those libraries outside the borders of Greece that possess significant collections of documents interesting to Greek studies, - Development of a tool that will enable participating libraries and institutions to: • Access the catalogues of all the participating parties. • To have simultaneous federated searches in these catalogues. • To have online communication so that they could be able to identify material related to Greek studies in the Greek publishers’ catalogues. • To be able to place orders online for the titles of interest through the electronic catalogues of the publishers and book sellers. • To be able to trace and download full text material in digital databases in the WWW sites of libraries in Greece and abroad. • To be able to have coordination in digitization projects in order to avoid duplication and overlapping. • To facilitate the effort to create authority forms for Greek names of persons and of corporate bodies by agreeing to use common reliable sources (dictionaries, reference works, and encyclopedias). • In Subject cataloguing identify areas and find solutions in cases where terms corresponding to the American or Western European usages do not match the Greek usage. • To participate in a cooperative cataloguing project specifically designed for the needs of cataloguing Greek language material. • To download records for Greek language material from the catalogues of the participating libraries. • To convert Unimarc records to Marc21 records. • To transliterate records in Greek character set into records in Latin character set using the transliteration standards and practices of the participating libraries. • To exchange their duplicate copies, • To design ILL activities concerning Greek language material. The above list could be extended further, but it does not mean that we have to implement all these at once. We can start by rating them in an order of precedence, giving top priority to those that are grated highly. The LIVESEARCH Portal of the University of Crete In support of the above mentioned propositions we draw an example from a similar project which has been implemented recently at the University of Crete Library. This software was designed and developed in an interface platform which is a further development of the above mentioned distributed search engine Zephyrus. It has reached already the last stage of tests and it is expected that it will be available for the public in the very near future. The new distributed search engine was designed in such a way that it could offer an attractive and friendly search environment for material which derives from heterogeneous kinds of resources. The interface shares similar characteristics with the popular search engines (such as Google, Yahoo, AltaVista etc.) and offers the web user a familiar sense. Nevertheless, the total amount of the resources to which access is provided has been meticulously selected by the Information Department of the University of Crete Library, so that the visitor can find reliable and relevant information. The information resources that have been selected are library catalogues of Greek and foreign institutions, digital libraries as well as databases with scientific and research material. The technology behind the system has been designed in such a way that can easily respond to further needs and can easily consolidate any new source of information that could appear in the future. The visitor finds himself in a simple, functional environment and can search information he is interested in either in the local collection or in preselected resources. The information resources and databases are classified in groups according the subject area they cover, the geographical area they come from, the form of the material they include (printed material, maps, photographs, electronic resources etc.) The platform offers the visitor auxiliary tools by which he is enabled to approach and identify the information he is looking for. In the case of a less sophisticated tool the user might not have reached in such an easy and simple way the results of his search. Among these auxiliary tools can be listed the subject areas, the dates, the author names etc, that come out as facets of a search, as well as the browse review of LC subjects headings, which can cross refer the user in broader or more detailed subject areas. The results of the searches are projected either in brief or in detailed form and include information related to the availability of the relevant items in individual catalogues or give the user direct access to the digital material available. Access to the digital material is assisted by the potential reference to context sensitive linking. Based on the result of his search the user is guided to trace additional information resources which offer information relevant to the outcome of his previous search, enabling him to move from one search level to another increasing the results of the original search. The user can select from the total amount of his search result the one or those that correspond to his needs and compile a bibliographic table for a further use. The system is also equipped with a module that allows the participating members for ILL transactions and exchanges. The interface of the system was developed in close cooperation with Indexdata, a pioneer international company in the area of information search and retrieval. The system is an open source product which means that it can be used freely in the future while further extensions and applications are permitted. The University of Crete having acquired long term experience and know-how in these matters can reliably ensure successful extensions and further application of this product. POSSIBLE EXTENSIONS It has to be admitted that the system and the interface described above is deliberately oriented to respond more to the needs of a researcher than those of a librarian. But this does not mean at all that it cannot be modified and be tailored in order to respond to the needs of the librarians. We can confirm that we can consolidate tools in the preprocessing of submitted search commands as well as their results so that the sections of the Greek language text in a record or elsewhere could be converted to Latin script by applying the suitable transliteration scheme. Such a tool could be applied only if the user wanted it, so that he would be allowed to decide which form he prefers (the Latin or the Greek script form). Responding to the needs of cataloguing and documentation of the Greek language material, the system could incorporate tools of projecting the original record from which the information is derived. The system could also automatically transform the documentation format of a record to another MARC21, UNIMARC, DUBLIN CORE etc. A PORTAL FOR THE GREEK STUDIES We hope that it has become obvious so far that the creation of a portal covering the subject area of Greek Studies is feasible. From a technological point of view it can be taken for granted that such a system can be implemented. We could base our effort by extending the platform described above exploiting the experience acquired at the University of Crete and tailoring it in such a way that could respond to the special needs and requirements of Modern Greek Studies. This initiative would spare considerable economic resources since we would not have to create something from scratch. On the contrary, we shall use extensively all the work that has already been carried out as well as the accumulated experience as regards the consolidation of the information resources of the new web database. This new Portal should be hosted at the computer infrastructure of one of the participating members. Its geographic placement does not pose any problem since it has been designed to function as a web service. It suffices that the hosting institution could guarantee its security and the maintenance of the hardware parts of the system. The University of Crete would respond positively to such a perspective and it willingly offers its technological experience as well as the considerable wealth of its information resources through this service. CONCLUSION We once more apologize for failing to present personally our paper, to be able to attend the conference and participate in the discussions. Coming to the end of this paper we believe that if the above proposals for the creation of a Modern Greek Studies Portal seem to be useful and relevant to the needs of the institutions you represent, the most important step to be taken would be to set up a committee in order: - To identify the participating libraries and organizations in the first stage, - To define the services that would be offered by the Portal, - To calculate the initial budged required for such a Portal. Our will to assist in any possible way the implementation of the project should be taken for granted. The effort for raising the required funds for the initial period will follow and we really want to believe that this is not going to obstruct us from launching our plan. Giannis Kosmas Mihalis Tzekakis Information Officer or Hellenic Parliament Automation Team of the Library Consultant University of Crete Library Herakleion Athens