www.bibliotek.dk

Niels Ole Pors, Library Link

One could question whether this piece is about library careers in the traditional sense - but certainly it is about something that profoundly will influence the careers and working pattern of many librarians.

I have earlier written about the new library law in Denmark and about its possible implications. Most of all it is a law about the citizen�s free access to information in whatever form and about co-operation among libraries. Parallel with this development is a new and rather exciting venture. In recent weeks a new service was initiated and opened by the Danish minister of culture - the service is called www.bibliotek.dk. What is it about?

On the surface it is not that exciting. It is simply an Internet-based catalogue that includes over eight million titles in the Danish public library and research/special library systems. It is a common access point to the holdings of nearly all Danish libraries. Eight million different titles is a huge number for a population around 5.3 million.

Of course, there is nothing revolutionary in the technology. It is the concept of access and citizens� rights that is the interesting phenomenon in the new service. In many ways it can be seen as an huge extension of the normal on-line access from home or the desktop at work to the local public library or the research library. Through this service the user is able to browse in the local catalogue, see if documents are on loan, look at his or her loan status. Users also can reserve a document or renew a loan.

This online access to the local library has changed the pattern of use in public libraries. Looking at national library statistics, we see a rather huge increase in renewals. It has not yet been investigated, but it could be hypothesised that desktop access changes traditional information-seeking behaviour quite a lot. One hypothesis could be that the information-seeking process in the future would rely less on browsability and more on subject and author searches. It could indicate a profound change in a single library�s possibility to fulfil requests. I admit that it is only a guess, but this guess is in many ways closely connected to the possibilities in the www.bibliotek.dk scenario.

Let us take a short look - from the user�s point of view - at the possibilities in the new service. One simply starts the browser on the above-mentioned address and has a very simple interface presented on the screen. Then simple or advanced searches can be made, combining authors, titles, subjects, words in subjects, type of material, type of library and so on. The search is rather fast, and the rest is simple. The user simply orders the literature, the video or the music wanted and states at which library it will be collected. If the chosen library - and it is most often the local public library does not own the document they will access it through the interlibrary loan system and notify the user by email when it arrives.

The Internet site also contains an index of every library in Denmark, and this can be used as an entrance to search in an individual library�s catalogue. It is evident that this interface to almost the total collection of Denmark�s library system works very well in conjunction with traditional Internet access to the local library.

There are already plans to expand the services. These include a gateway to materials that can be bought - a couple of key presses then transfer the user to a Internet-based bookstore. The process with value-added information in form of reviews has already started. An increased integration with local systems is planned. The vision is that a user can access information about the status of desired documents in a specific collection, and what the waiting time is likely to be if it is currently on loan. Future plans also include Internet transfer of documents directly to the user's desktop of, for example, journal articles. The question of payment for this type of service needs to be solved. Of course, there is an economic mechanism behind the new service. But it is hidden from the user and is only a matter between local counties and between the public library sector and the research library sector.

The potential for this new service to change the traditional use patterns in public libraries in particular is extremely exciting. If anybody knows of similar initiatives, please comment.

Niels Ole Pors
November 2000
Library Link

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