20 years of library automation in Finland
Juha Hakala's career with library automation started in January 1987, when he
was recruited to the Automation Unit of Finnish Research Libraries at the
Ministry of Education - a unit which later was relocated to Helsinki University Library, the National Library of Finland,
and became the Database Services Department. In the end of
February 2007 Juha transferred to the Administrative Department, where his job
is to
coordinate all the major projects of the National Library. In this article he looks
back to this past 20 year period, which covers about half of the history of library
automation.
It has been a long way from the first server - HP3000 992 with 256 MB of
memory - and the first software - British Library's Library Software Package (LSP).
Now the library consortia in Finland host five Sun supercomputers and are in the
process of updating them, too, to the next generation of hardware. The LSP was
traded first for VTLS and then for Voyager, and the ILS has been
complemented with other systems, such as portal system MetaLib, digital object
management system DSpace and electronic resource management system HALTI II.
Internet archiving requires more and more storage capacity and in digitisation
there are various solutions to consider as well as political
decisions to make.
Electronic publishing is another aspect that has deeply affected libraries,
but it is such a vast topic in itself that it was left out of this article.
For futher information, please, contact
Mr. Juha Hakala,
Director of IT
The National Library of Finland
P.O.B. 15 (Unioninkatu 36)
FIN-00014
UNIVERSITY OF HELSINKI, Finland
Email:
juha.hakala (at) helsinki.fi
The Finnish General Upper Ontology (YSO) - towards a Finnish
semantic web
The objective of the National Semantic Web Ontology Project in
Finland (FinnONTO, 2003-2007,
http://www.seco.tkk.fi/projects/finnonto/)
is to build a semantic web infrastructure in Finnish and to demonstrate its
benefits with pilot applications. The consortium behind the project currently
includes 37 Finnish organizations. One of the core thesauri that are ontologised
in the project is the widely used Finnish General Thesaurus (YSA) maintained by
the National Library. It is the basis for the Finnish General Upper Ontology (YSO)
which has now been released for testing. The idea is that The Finnish General
Ontology could be “the semantic glue” between many domain ontologies and this
way offer a possibility to link contents from different domains in the Finnish
semantic web.
This article discusses the need for ontologising YSA for use in
the semantic web, the cost effective way to impelement ontologies in client
applications and pilot portals and applications developed within the FinnONTO
project.
More about YSO at http://www.seco.tkk.fi/ontologies/yso/
For further information, please, contact:
Mr. Eero Hyvönen, Professor
Helsinki University of Technology, Media Technology Laboratory
and University of Helsinki
e-mail: eero.hyvonen (at) tkk.fi
Ms. Katri Seppälä, Researcher
Helsinki University of Technology, Media Technology Laboratory
and The Finnish Terminology Centre TSK
e-mail: katri.seppala (at) tkk.fi
Mr. Kim Viljanen, Researcher
Helsinki University of Technology, Media Technology Laboratory
e-mail: kim.viljanen (at) tkk.fi
Mr. Matias Frosterus, Researcher
Helsinki University of Technology, Media Technology Laboratory
e-mail: matias.frosterus (at) tkk.fi
Nelli 2.0
Since it was launched at the Internet Librarian International
2005 the term Library 2.0 has been a popular topic, even to the extent that it
has become a bit of a buzz phrase. However, the Finnish Nelli Information
Retrieval Portal Team considers many of its features well worth implementing.
The first actions taken will be RSS feeds and the intergration
of Nelli to virtual learning environments, such as Moodle and WebCT. The
integration to web browsers would also be much easier with help from the Nelli
Office. The new version 4.0 of the MetaLib software also has many Library 2.0
features that facilitate these enhancements.
For further information, please, contact
Mr. Ari Rouvari, Project Manager
The National Library of Finland / Library Network Services
P.O.B. 26, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
e-mail: ari.rouvari (at) helsinki.fi
Open Repositories 2007
The Open Repositories 2007 Conference brought together over 350 experts from
all over the world to discuss the latest developments in the field. The
conference focused on open source repository platforms, but also other related
topics, such as long term preservation of digital assets and virtual learning
environments, were discussed.
During the three-and-a-half day conference, Open Repositories 2007 continued
the very successful format of Open User Group meetings for DSpace, Fedora, and
Eprints, followed by general conference sessions that covered cross-cutting and
overarching issues.
The article is a conference report by Samu Viita, who
participated in the DSpace User Group. The main part of the article is devoted
to this platform, which is widely used in Finland.
The Conference website is at
http://openrepositories.org/
For further information, please, contact
Mr. Samu Viita, Systems Analyst
The National Library of Finland / Library Network Services
P.O.B. 26, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
e-mail: samu.viita (at) helsinki.fi
We only have names : URN facilitates locating documents
URNs (Uniform Resource Name) are persistent, unique identifiers for
documents published in the World Wide Web. They facilitate identifying, locating
and linking online documents. They are also functional enabling direct
access from the reference.
Online documents have traditionally been identified by the URL address.
However, that is exactly what it is, an address, not an identifier. We are all
familiar with the problem of broken links when the document has been moved
elsewhere or - even worse - been replaced by a totally different document in the
same address.
There are several different systems for identifying online publications, the
best known of which are the Handle system with the DOI identifier and PURL.
Technically all these systems work in a similar way. What makes URN unique is
that it is administered and maintained by national libraries, and therefore
there are no commercial interests involved. It is a public service like the
identifier systems that have been traditionally used within the publishing
sector, e.g. ISBN, ISSN.
For further information, please, contact
Mr. Esa-Pekka Keskitalo, Senior Systems Analyst
The National Library of Finland / Library Network Services
P.O.B. 26, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
e-mail: esa-pekka.keskitalo (at) helsinki.fi
The Bookway project and the National ONIX Centre
The various actors in the book industry (publishers, bookstores
and libraries) have all developed systems to meet their own particular needs.
Consequently transferring data between these systems has not been easy, and at
worst not even possible at all. In 2004 a project called Bookway was launched
to investigate possibilities to facilitate this process.
Based on the final report of this project the book industry in
Finland agreed to start using the ONIX format. To support this the National
Library opened a National ONIX Centre in the beginning of this year.
More information about the ONIX format is available at the
EDItEUR website at http://www.editeur.org/
For further information, please, contact
Ms Aija Vahtola, Systems Librarian
The National Library of Finland / The Finnish ONIX Centre
P.O.B. 26, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
e-mail: aija.vahtola (at) helsinki.fi
MARC 21 update
The Finnish libraries have been using various national
cataloguing formats and profiles (FINMARC, MARC21-fin). To facilitate
international exchange of bibliographic data the university libraries consortium
made a decision to go over to the MARC 21 "proper". The same decision was later
made also by the polytechnic and public library sectors.
The article gives an update on the schedule of the process,
including the translation of the format, test conversions and training.
For further information, please, contact
Ms Nanna Jokinen, Systems Librarian
The National Library of Finland / Library Network Services
P.O.B. 26, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
e-mail: nanna.jokinen (at) helsinki.fi
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