Reviving the dead:
a common market for
"document recycling" in the Nordic-Baltic countries?
by Joakim Philipson
ABSTRACT:
Taking as its point of departure the experience made with the
"document recycling database" (Gjenbruksbasen), an intermediating service
offered by the Repository Library at the National Library of Norway, Rana
Division, this paper discusses the prospects for re-using documents that are
not needed by one library, but may be eagerly wanted by other libraries. It is
argued that such recycling of information has several benefits, both for the
preservation of the environment (less copying, meaning less use of paper) and
for the promotion of "information equality" world-wide. The task, it
is claimed, is very much that of finding the potential users of the documents,
a fundamental task for all libraries. One way of achieving this could be the
foundation of an international electronic clearinghouse for document exchange
on the Internet, a two-storeyed "document recycling database" of both
needs and supplies, where libraries in need of a certain document could search
for desired items and, in case they do not find what they want, can store their
requests, while at the same time documents that are no longer needed by a
library can be stored in the "supplies department". With modern
web-technology this is something that could be implemented already today. A
natural agent for setting up such a clearing-house, it is argued, would be the
IFLA Universal Availability of Publications (UAP) programme, which has as its
objective "the widest possible availability of published material (that
is, recorded knowledge issued for public use) to intending users, wherever and
whenever they need it and in the format required". A first step in this
direction could be the creation of a common market for "document
recycling" in the Nordic and Baltic countries.
1. Introduction:
"recycling" in libraries
Two of
Ranganathan's well-known laws of library science state that books are for use,
and that every book has its [potential] reader. The question is only how to
find her or, more seldom it seems, him - the reader. We librarians do our very
best to live up to these principles. Still, it is a well-known fact that far
from all documents in libraries are ever being read. A study from the
University of Pittsburgh indicated that about 40% of the books bought by the
university library were never used during the first six years in the library.[1]
Even with an effective policy of weeding, far too many books and journals lie
buried in libraries for years and years without ever catching the eyes of a
reader. Indeed, in his Stone lecture in Bibliophily for 1992 at Glasgow
University Sir Graham Hills characterised libraries as ”literary graveyards”.[2]
Now, one should
not be too pessimistic about this. Some books and some journals in libraries do
get read. It may even seem that precisely those books and journals that one is
particularly interested in are those that are most frequently on loan. In this
sense all libraries are, one could claim, in the "recycling
business"; at least some documents in libraries are used and re-used over
and over again, whether through lending or through in-house use. That is the
fundamental idea behind public libraries: to make documents accessible to as
many users as possible.
However, all this
is of little comfort to those long forgotten literary corpses, on the tombs of
which no one is ever putting flowers. What are we to do with them? Let them
rest in peace on their shelves, hoping for the powers of nature to make them
simply fade away? Although this may perhaps sound as the most humane way of
treating them, it has little to recommend itself in terms of
cost-effectiveness. In fact, the mean cost of housing a single volume in a new
academic library has been estimated (in 1993) to be approximately $39.[3]
Quite apart from economic considerations, keeping the corpses among the still
living books may substantially reduce the attraction of the latter on new
readers. For one thing, it may make it more difficult even to catch sight of
them in a surrounding of dead bodies, still able of creating a lot of noise in
an OPAC search environment.
Thus, both
economy and search efficiency are two strong arguments for weeding. The
question is rather: what is to be done with those documents that are removed
from the library collection, as unfit in the struggle for circulation? There
seems to be several possible options. I would like to divide them into two
groups, into passive and proactive
methods of disposal of weeded documents. The one group of methods ending
naturally with some kind form of burial, while the other is aiming rather at
some kind of revival of documents. Among the passive methods one could range
such means as 1. stashing the documents
in storage, 2. outright cassation, or 3. selling off.
1. The first
option, stashing in storage, is
evidently not a viable alternative in the long run; it will perhaps reduce the
costs for housing somewhat (since storage space can possibly be used more
effectively when documents are no longer supposed to circulate, and there is no
need for open access), but most likely not enough to make it economically
feasible for more than a limited period. Also, if there should be any point at
all in storing these documents, they must still be searchable. This means that
either they will continue to create "noise" in the OPAC of the
library, or their bibliographic records must be transferred to another
(sub)catalogue, at an additional cost.
2. The second
option, cassation, may seem to be and
probably is the easiest way out. But apart from those cases when documents are
weeded simply on the ground of their being physically worn out and judged
impossible to repair, it also seems to be a terrible waste both of money and
human resources. After all, someone once laid down quite a lot of energy on
writing that document, and even if it is only one copy out of many thousands,
it nevertheless cost the library (or someone else) some money and also a
certain effort to purchase and catalogue it once upon a time. Simply throwing
the document away without further notice means that not only the document
itself, but also the effort and the money involved will be wasted. But, most
importantly, the very same document, although considered to be of no use in one
library, may be eagerly wanted by the users of another library. To throw fully
readable, useful documents, that are still in demand by readers elsewhere in
the world in the waste-basket is simply morally defective.
3. Selling off weeded books has been used by
some public libraries as a means of acquiring a few extra dollars to enhance
their poor budgets. In principle, there is nothing wrong with this, but one may
doubt that it will ever take on such proportions that it will substantially
contribute to the solution of the budgetary problems that libraries struggle
with or, to an even lesser extent, help them getting rid of all the documents
that must be weeded from their collections. After all, a document that is not
in demand when offered for free on loan, will hardly be very much in demand
when offered for money.
Among the
proactive means for disposal of weeded documents, aimed at revival rather than
burial of these "dead bodies", one could mention such methods as 4. digitisation - very much en vogue these days, i.e. giving access to the document in a new way,
with the hope of thereby reaching new user groups) while at the same time
freeing storage space. Other (pro-)active methods could be 5. traditional "marketing" by means of e.g. exhibitions, book-talk, visiting authors
etc. Finally, when everything else seems to fail, there is the option of 6. "recycling".
4. Digitisation, that is the conversion of printed documents to
electronic format, is a mot clé among
information specialists in these days. However, it is a costly and
time-consuming investment, that has to be considered carefully before a
decision is made. Given the nature of the documents under consideration here,
i.e. documents that are weeded from ordinary library collections because of
their low rate of use, it is most likely not feasible economically to have
these documents digitised. Digitisation should rather be seen as an option to
be considered primarily for printed documents that are either so heavily used
that they run the risk of being quickly worn out, or for rare and valuable
documents that are withdrawn from circulation for reasons of security. It may
also be an option for heavily used reference material, where digitisation and
online connection give the opportunity of offering access to material that was
formerly only for in-library use to users in their homes. However, there are
copy-right and licensing issues that need to be solved first here. Quite apart
from economical and judicial considerations, despite the obvious advantages of electronic
documents in terms of searching abilities, distribution and storage handling,
hands on hearts, how many of us really prefer computer screens to paper when it
comes to reading a document? Is it
not true that most of us, once we have found, for example, an interesting
electronic-journal article on our favourite web-site, we hasten to make a
print-out, in order to be able to sit down quietly in our best chair and read,
at a distance from the flickering computer screen? Studies indicate that paper
can hold up to 50 times more information for a given area than a
computer-screen, that large parts of the information presented on a screen are
actually lost when we read from a screen, and that we in fact read 25-30% more
slowly on a computer compared to paper.[4]
It is a well-known fact that far from
making paper obsolete, the advent of the computer and the information explosion
that has followed in its wake, has dramatically increased the use of paper.
Paradoxically, it may seem, one way of reducing the rather enormous waste of
paper and trees resulting from the extensive use of printouts of electronic
documents, could be that of increasing
instead the use of already existing
paper-bound, printed documents.[5]
5. Many
librarians, especially those working in public libraries and with children, are
good at "marketing" books
from their collections by various means, such as book-talk, exhibitions, outreach activities, story-telling, visits from
authors etc. One may only wonder how often these means have been put into
effect in order to help books that are virtually "dying", or that
have at least been shamefully neglected, come forth once more from the depths
of the library's collections, and to give them a renewed opportunity to reach
new readers. I suspect a lot more could be done here. Of course, there will
always be books that will seem hopelessly outdated or are simply physically
worn out, without any chance of rescue. These should naturally be put to
eternal rest some place, removed from the still living creatures.
6. But there may
be still other documents that simply have not got a fair chance of proving
there usefulness, simply because they never got a chance to catch the eye of
the right user. It is for some of these documents that the answer may be recycling.
Now, what exactly
do we mean by "recycling" - another mot clé of our time - in this context? First, we should make a
distinction between the recycling of
contents and the recycling of the
physical material. Two of the other options mentioned above could in fact
be perfectly compatible with "recycling" in either of these senses.
Digitisation could be seen as a form of recycling of contents, while the second
option, cassation of weeded documents may be combined with an effort at
recycling the paper on which they are printed. Thus, when we speak of recycling
as yet another option, what we have in mind is something else. It means simply
retaining the document as is, while transferring it to new potential users.
This in turn could be done in at least two ways. One is the transfer of the
document to a repository library, where it becomes part of a regular collection
aimed at traditional interlibrary lending and document supply. But another way
of recycling in the same sense of the word is that which means transfer of
ownership directly from one library to another, where the document is in
demand. This, of course, can be done by means of an intermediating repository
library, which helps in effectuating the transfer. These two ways of recycling
are both perfectly legitimate and are in fact complementary to each other. At
the Repository library of the Norwegian National Library we are offering both
these services parallel to each other. In an ideal world, the relationship
between interlibrary loan and "document recycling", in the narrower
sense of tranfer of ownership from one library to another, should be simple
enough: Libraries should be expected to request interlibrary loans for
documents that they do not have, i.e. that are not part of their collection policy.
The purpose of "recycling" on the other hand, again in the narrower
sense of transfer of ownership, is precisely to provide those very documents
that do form an essential part of libraries' collection policies, to make it
possible for them to complete their collections by including permanently
documents wanted by key user groups of their library. Now, why is it that we do
not - yet - live in this ideal world? Why is it that libraries are still forced
to request interlibrary loans of documents that should really be part of their
own collections, considering their special responsibilities and user groups?
Well, at least part of the answer could be simply that the market, the supply
of documents for "recycling" is as yet far too small. But let us look
a little more in detail at some possible reasons why libraries are sometimes
forced to request "unnecessary" or "irrational"
interlibrary loans (as seen from the point of view of the library society at
large, for the individual library requesting the ILL the choice may often seem
perfectly rational ). There are at least three obvious such reasons: 1. economic constraint (preventing
acquisition of requested, primarily newer documents, for permanent inclusion in
collections), 2. lack of storage space (limited
number of shelf-meters), 3. requested
documents are out of print/out of stock/not found in antiquarian book-stores.
"Document
recycling", carried out by a repository library acting as an
intermediating agent, helping other libraries in transferring documents that are
no longer needed in their collections, to new owner libraries, new collections,
may not be THE answer to these well-known problems. Nevertheless, as should be
understood simply by looking again at these possible reasons for
"irrational" ILL, "document recycling" may have a potential
for at least alleviating somewhat the problems, and thereby lowering slightly
the seemingly ever increasing demands for ILL.
2. Gjenbruksbasen: an intermediating service at the National Library
of Norway, Rana Division (NBR)
One of the
objectives for the creation of the new repository library at the National
Library of Norway in 1990 was an expressed wish to bring about a more effective
distribution and use of documents within the Norwegian library network.[6]
The "document recycling database" (in Norwegian: Gjenbruksbasen, henceforth: GB)
should be seen as a means to achieving this goal. The purpose is twofold, and
in fact very much the same as it is for our interlibrary lending service:
1. to free
storage space in libraries
2. to supply
documents needed by other libraries
Thus, if
libraries are indeed to be characterised as "literary graveyards",
again with the words of Sir Graham Hill, the GB is a conscious attempt at
”reviving the dead”, the books and journals that used to lie buried in
libraries all over the country. The objective is very much the same as that
expressed in the will of another Scottish bibliophile, Mr John Anderson,
founder of the Strathclyde University in Glasgow, who instructed the guardians
of his rich collection of books to ”give sight of them to any learned persons
who may desire to see them”.[7]
One of the
original motives for the building up of a collection of duplicates at the NBR
and for the creation of the GB, was also an expressed wish to be able to assist
in an efficient way libraries that have had their collections, or parts
thereof, destroyed by disasters, such as fire or flood.
The material
received by the Repository Library at NBR consists mainly of seldom used
documents that have been weeded from other library collections. In addition we
receive some 10.000 volumes of legal deposit material yearly, but these are in
principle only for interlibrary lending, and are not eligible for
"recycling" through the GB.
During 1998 the
Repository library received a total of more than 100.000 volumes of books and
serials (the legal deposit material not included). Out of these it can be
estimated, according to samples made, that about 20% are duplicates, i.e. they
are documents that we already have a sufficient number of in the collections of
the library aimed at interlibrary lending. This means that we in 1998 received
about 20.000 items eligible - in principle - for recycling by means of the GB.
True, some of the documents received are in such bad physical condition that
they are clearly candidates for cassation, as are also documents that are
considered hopelessly outdated and non-usable for other purposes than that for
which they were originally intended (such as old computer manuals. The
cassation policy will be under constant revision, as we gather statistics on
usage of the GB.) Still, the very large amount of documents received that are
subsequently to be recorded in the GB represent a considerable work-load.
Since the GB
became accessible on the Internet in May 1997 up until and including April 1999, some 3800 documents have been
transferred from the collection of duplicates to new owner libraries, both in
Norway and abroad, where they - hopefully - will receive the attention they
deserve from new users. Until recently the documents delivered through the GB
were fairly evenly divided between fiction and non-fiction. During 1998 the by
far largest number of requests for books from the GB came from Norwegian
institutions abroad, making up for about 56% of the total demand. Among the
domestic Norwegian customers, public libraries were the most keen users,
representing some 25% of the total demand. The remaining 19% of the requests
were divided between institutes (e.g. museums, 8%), school libraries (7%) and
university & college libraries (4%). The clear dominance of requests from
abroad is expected to continue at least for the rest of 1999, as we have just
delivered a giant order of 1732 books (Norwegian fiction literature) for the
University of Latvia in Riga. This is part of a donation program initiated by
the Norwegian branch of an international Christian ecumenical organization.
The GB is a
service offered to, in order of priority, 1.
Norwegian libraries, 2. Educational
institutions abroad, with Norwegian language and/or culture on their curricula, 3. Norwegian communities abroad. Orders
from private individuals are not accepted. The documents in the GB can be
ordered directly online after a search in the database, and are delivered for
free within short time. (As a rule, they are sent as 2nd class mail within a
week, from our receiving an order.) For orders from abroad the receiving
institution has to pay for the postage itself. (This latter rule is possibly
open to revision, if and when a common market for "document
recycling" in the Nordic-Baltic region is created.)
The original
version of the GB did not yet contain serials, but since May 1998 we are
including them as well. To prepare for this step, a minor survey was made among
a sample of Norwegian libraries. It was supposed that at least some libraries
would wish to complete their holdings of serials, if possible, where they have
lacunas. In order to find out about this a selection of libraries were asked to
send lists of desired items. The response, it must be admitted, was rather
weak, but from the answers received we have established a
"waiting-list" of serial items in demand, that we do not as yet have
in our collection of duplicates. This "waiting-list" is checked
regularly before a decision about cassation is made. Items on the list that are
already included in the regular collection of the repository library, meant for
interlibrary lending and copy-service, receive a special remark in a local
field (MARC 096 $f) on the ordinary bibliographic records of the union
catalogue. In this way, when a serial on the "waiting-list" is
eventually recorded in the GB, the cataloguer will automatically be notified of
the "reservation" when a surplus copy first appears. There is also a link
from the home page of the GB to the "waiting list" registration form,
in case a search in the database gives a zero result. This means libraries can
themselves "make reservations" by registering desired items on the
waiting list. We will evaluate the results of introducing the
"waiting-list" service for serials, before we decide about an
expansion to make it cover monographs as well.
Given the very
large number of documents eligible for recycling received by the Repository
library at NBR, and the as yet insufficient resources for getting them
registered in the database within reasonable time after arrival, something had
to be done in order to provide for a co-operative cataloguing effort. This was
effected through the integration of the GB with the national online union catalogue
system - BIBSYS. The result is that we now spend considerably less time than
before (when the GB was a local Oracle database at the NB Rana) on the
registration of documents in the GB, since all documents eligible for
recycling, being duplicates of documents already possessed by our library, have
records in the catalogue from before. In this way, registering documents in the
GB has become a simple matter of copy-cataloguing.
Fig.
1: Search-screen from new version of the GB at
http://wgate.bibsys.no/search/gen?lang=E&base=GJENBRUK
In the new
BIBSYS-integrated version of the GB (Fig. 1)[8]
searchable fields are: Author, Title, Free text (=Title + Subject headings), Subject (select option Local phrase, corresponding to MARC-field
687), Classification, ISBN/ISSN,
Other (e.g. Institution or
Conference, from MARC-fields 110, 710, 111, 711). The subject field in the GB
is used only for a rather crude division into subject categories, with minor
revisions corresponding to the main classes in the Dewey Decimal Classification
system. Experience has shown that some libraries prefer to use this kind of
broad subject searching for generating lists of documents available within a
particular field, from which a selection is then made and an order is issued.
Now, in its
present state the GB should be seen only as a first attempt at achieving a more
rational distribution and use of documents within one country. But, obviously,
not only does the database search system still need refinement, there are also
more radical improvements to be considered with regards to cost-effectiveness
and environment. For one thing, it has been shown in a recent study in Norway
that recycling of waste material can under certain conditions have an adverse
total net effect on the environment, since the handling of the material to be
recycled demands more of transportation than traditional waste-disposal
systems. In any recycling system it is therefore of the utmost importance to
reduce the necessary transports involved to a minimum, in order to gain a
positive total net effect for the environment. In particular, it would seem to
be a great waste of time and energy, to have documents that are no longer
needed or wanted by anybody (due for example to their being in a bad physical
condition or their being hopelessly outdated in their field, as e.g. old
computer manuals) transported long distances to a repository library, only for
them to be subject to cassation on arrival.
As is understood
from what has already been said, the overall purpose of the GB with view to any
single document is to transfer it, as quickly as possible, to another library
in need of that very document. The ultimate success of the GB would be a
situation where documents just pass through our hands from one library to
another, with the GB just acting as a relay-station. But, then one might ask,
why should the documents pass through the hands of an intermediating agent at
all? Wouldn't it be more economical, in terms of energy, environment, time and
money, to have the documents sent directly from the supplying library to the
demanding library?
As part of an
answer to this question we are now planning at the NBR to publish the
"waiting list" for serials mentioned above on the Internet in the
near future, including information about the requesting libraries. This means
that libraries in possession of requested items will themselves be able to send
their surplus copies directly to the requesting libraries. (This of course
necessitates a well functioning feedback system, in order to make sure that
once a library has received a requested item, it will be deleted from the
waiting-list.)
The ideal, then,
would be to keep the documents to be recycled in the library which first
acquired them, until they are demanded by somebody else. However, this would
inhibit, it might be argued, one of the fundamental benefits of a repository
library, that of freeing storage space in other libraries. There is no denying
that as long as we have not yet created an efficient information system for the
redistribution and recycling of documents, repository libraries will continue
to play an important role not only for traditional interlibrary lending and
document supply, but also for the recycling and redistribution of documents. In
the future, however, the repository library should perhaps serve more as a
broker, than as a "relay station" (some might even say "junk
station").
3. From relay-station to
broker: finding the customers
A fundamental
task for all brokers, whether they deal in stocks and bonds, in real estate or
in marriages, is to find the right customer for the right "object". A
good broker does not sit passively await for the customers to turn up by
themselves; she or he is an ardent match-maker with an ever increasing
address-book, keeping well-documented profiles of the interests of her/his
customers. One of the roads to success, not only for brokers, but for anyone
interested in selling a product, is to develop the art of finding new
customers. This includes efficient marketing. Advertising is of course one
option. But in our case I would suspect "direct marketing" to be more
efficient. This would mean making use also of a traditional skill that
information specialists are supposed to have (in particular those dealing with
indexing and classification), that of being able to find out about the
potential relevance of documents for
different users. Obviously it will require a great deal of ingeniousness, to
find out about the potential alternative use that documents can be put to.
Librarians charged with this task would sometimes have to free themselves from
traditional classification and subject-headings schemes. For example, it may
not be obvious to everybody that outdated documents in medicine could be highly
relevant to researchers in disciplines such as the history of science,
sociology or - for that matter -
information science. (One way of detecting the hidden potential use of
documents could be through citation indexes such as the Science Citation Index.
It would lead us too far to go into this complex matter here. Let us just note
one example in passing: in a study of citations to papers from the research
field of stratospheric ozone monitoring, it was discovered that a highly
successful paper - in terms of the number of citations it received, was cited,
and consequently found useful, also in disciplines so "remote" from
the original field of research as botany, computer-science and ophthalmology.[9])
As a means for
possible prediction of the relevance (or potential use) of documents to be
recycled, the broker must keep accurate files of statistics of transactions in
the "recycling database"; keeping track of both supplies and demands,
who demands what for what purpose. An idea would be to have an optional field in
the database, where the library demanding a certain document could state the
intended use. The ideal would be a system, involving also the life of the
document before its "reincarnation" through recycling, in which we
would be able to trace the document from its origin (= date of purchase by one
library), through weeding, repositing, to its being demanded by another
library. In this way we would get the tools necessary in order to be able to
predict, with some accuracy, the movements in the "recycling market".
Hopefully, it would make us better "match-makers", with a greater
ability to "couple" libraries, as IFLA is now trying to do in a
special project.[10]
Apart from the
potential new users of documents for recycling, detected by means of bold
relevance re-assessments, who might be the customers? Well, a premier
beneficiary of a "document recycling service" such as the one
proposed here would be the growing number of libraries that are under so hard
economic pressure, that they no longer can afford to acquire books and journals
that are eagerly wanted by their users. Hopefully, as a result it would at the
same time help alleviate the seemingly ever-growing burden of interlibrary loan
transactions now placed on repository and other libraries, as a result of the
cuts in library budgets and the sky-rocketing prices on serials.
Ignoring for a
moment the regular economical hardships, there are also exceptional cases when
libraries need extensive help. Libraries are sometimes hit by natural
disasters, as in Poland during the flood of 1997, or subject to attack during
wars, as with the National Library in Sarajevo. Even in a more peaceful Nordic
environment libraries sometimes suffer heavy damages, as with the public
library of Linköping, Sweden, which was completely destroyed by a fire in 1996,
or the former Hedmark college library at Evenstad, Norway, which was hard hit
by a flood in 1995. To rebuild library collections in cases like these may take
years and years, most often it may not be possible to restore everything that
has been lost. A well-functioning international "document recycling
service" would, however, make it easier to organise interlibrary help in
such cases.
Another,
potentially even bigger "market", are the East European and the
developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where books are scarce
indeed. Here there is a great potential for co-operation with national and
international development agencies and literacy organisations , such as Book Aid International and CODE [11].
However, some earlier book donation programs appear to have been
"insufficiently selective, offering useless books of little value".[12]
An international document recycling service, served by means of a dedicated
bibliographic database, would help in specifying the needs and targeting the
recipients.
But what about
the rich countries in the west: is there really a market for used books (and
journals), outside the obscure antiquarian book-shops, visited only by the most
notorious book-worms? Well, anyone in the least familiar with student-life at
colleges and high-schools (secondary schools) knows that there is a flourishing
market for second-hand text-books in various disciplines. And this is nothing
new, it has been so ever since universities first appeared in Europe, when
books where so much rarer than they are now. But still this market is very
informal in character, mainly relying on small notes pinned up on notice-boards
or on personal sales at the campus at the beginning of a new semester.
Effective as
these informal channels may be on the local level, there is clearly lacking a
central market-place that could handle both needs and supplies of second-hand
literature, so that the supplies available to the individual student in search
of textbooks need not be limited to ones own college or high-school. But
obviously with the advent of the Internet, the possibility of creating such a
market-place is readily at hand. In fact, an electronic marketplace for
second-hand textbooks for students of major Swedish universities and colleges
has already been established through the Universal Internet Advertisement
Network.[13]
Here both vendors and buyers of second-hand books can freely register their
offers or their requests in a database.
Fig.2: Search-screen from the Uniad book database
Searchable fields
in this online database are title, author, subject (according to a list of options), category: bought/sold, preferred university/college for the transaction, maximum price. It is also possible to have the hits sorted by a
field of ones choice. The database does not seem to be very large yet; a
show-command on the 8th
March 1998 resulted in only 70
records all-in-all. (On the 18th April 1999 there were still only 73
records in the database.) In addition to the bibliographic information the
results of a search give information also about price, date of entry in the
database, name, telephone number and e-mail address of the buyer/seller.
Fig.
3: Hit-list screen from the Uniad book database
To "publish
an ad", i.e. to enter a new record in the database is not more complicated
than is searching. It means simply filling out and submitting a form with the
required information.
Fig.
4: Enter record screen from the Uniad book database
This model, then,
is end-user to end-user, with a minimum of editing and intermediating effort
from the database producer/host. Advantages of such a model are ease of use and
low cost of maintenance. The reverse side of it is of course a loss of
bibliographic accuracy, e.g. the absence of reliable authority files for
authors. This may not be so important in a small database like the Uniad, where
it is still possible even to browse through all existing records, but in a
large, international and multilingual bibliographic database, a union catalogue
on a par with WorldCat from OCLC, it
would most certainly reduce searching efficiency beyond what is acceptable.
Another
bibliographic database that might possibly serve as a model for the international
document recycling database that is proposed here is the already existing
journal database of the Book Aid International (BAI) in London.[14]
Unfortunately, it seems this database is only for internal use, and attempts to
gain access to it in order to make an evaluation has so far failed.
But we do not
have to limit ourselves to bibliographic databases and OPACs in our search for
models. There might be something to learn also from the expanding recycling
market in other business areas. In the USA there exists already a host of
"recycled products directories" - national and regional. The most
comprehensive is perhaps "The Official Recycled Products Guide (RPG)"
of Recycling Data Management Corp.,
which lists over 650 manufacturers and distributors marketing more than 4000
products in 700 classifications. Produced by the same company is also RecycleLine, an on-line service
containing the entire Official Recycled Products Guide, as well as many other
information databases (including recycling markets, equipment, and services).[15]
One of the
regional directories is the Michigan Recycled Materials Market Directory, which
helps businesses and institutions find markets for their recyclable materials.
There are in fact three different directories: Processors/Brokers Directories,
County Collection Information, and Recycled Products Directory.
Now, imagine an international
directory/database on the Internet with information about: 1) documents
available for ”recycling”, 2) agents/collections providing ”recyclable”
documents, 3) documents demanded for recycling and 4) demanding
agencies/libraries. What would it take to set up such a
"clearinghouse" for the exchange of documents?
4. An international
clearinghouse for the recycling of documents
First let us note
that the technical demands to be put on an international database for document
recycling are essentially the same as the criteria that every major union
online catalogue has to fulfil in order to function efficiently. Only, for the
"recycling database" to be truly international, for it to serve also
the developing countries, where the potential "market" is biggest, it
must also be able to handle languages other than English, and with alphabets
other than the Latin. Although it seems there is still some distance to go
before a truly multilingual bibliographical database can be implemented on the
Internet, solutions (such as the introduction of Unicode[16])
are on their way.
We mentioned
above the WorldCat of OCLC FirstSearch. Could this global union catalogue serve
as a model for an international document recycling database? Well, first we
must be aware of the fact that even in WorldCat there are problems searching
e.g. for author's names in languages other than English, partly due to
differences in keyboard set-ups. For example, using the WWW-version of WorldCat
with a Norwegian keyboard set-up, a search for Tunström, Göran in index Author
(exact phrase) results in the message:
No
Items Found For: au=("Tunström,
Göran")
Details:
The term au=("Tunström, Göran") does not appear in WorldCat.
However, entering
again Tunström, Göran, but choosing
instead of a direct search the browse index-feature, we get the following
result:
Browse
Author Index for tunström, göran
...
#
Records Exact Phrase
...
1 tunstill, william a
57 tunstrom, goran 1937-
(Closest Match)
1 tunstul,
kasem
...
Using this index
term for a new search finally gives access to the records for author Göran
Tunström in WorldCat. The browse index-feature seems to work here as a
substitute for an authority file with see-references. However, in order to
maintain a user-driven international online catalogue, that is a bibliographic
database in which not only the searching, but also the cataloguing effort is
decentralised, it is absolutely necessary that there is a compulsory authority
control, for which one is automatically prompted upon entering a new record.
It might be
argued in the case above that a search on tunström
alone in the Author (keyword) index
works all right, giving direct access to the records in which author Göran
Tunström's name appears. However, other letters that are not part of the
English alphabet, such as the Norwegian and Danish "ø", seem to be
simply ignored in the WorldCat, at least when entered with a Norwegian keyboard
set-up. For example, a search on author
keyword øverland, limited to language Norwegian, results in a
"No Items Found", while a browse -index for the same author (still as
keyword) results in verland as
closest match. Changing øverland to overland, however, results in a host of
records with author Øverland. Naturally, this kind of malfunctioning is
unacceptable in a truly multilingual database.
Ideally, both
searching and entering new records in the database should be independent of
language and keyboard set-up. Upon entering the database the user should be
presented with the widest possible selection of languages for field tags
(labels), searching (field values), help-screens, and submitting new records
(field values). It should be possible to save selections made as a default, in
order to avoid going through the process again each time upon entering the
database.
The model
advocated here for the proposed international document recycling service is
"decentralised", in order to provide for a co-operative, joint
cataloguing effort by participating libraries world-wide. It is doubtful,
however, whether it would be wise to allow the end-users, library patrons, to enter records directly into the database,
as in the Uniad case. Rather, patrons should be given access to searching and
given the opportunity to file requests locally, pretty much in the same manner
as ordinary interlibrary loan is operated today. True, a case has been made for
the ultimate goal of an end-user-to-supplier system for interlibrary loan[17],
but there is reason to believe that such a system, when it comes to
non-returnable documents as is here the case, would unduly favour the
"strong and rich" in information resources. That would work against
perhaps the most important motive for setting up an international
"document recycling service", namely, the promotion of
"information equality" world-wide. The unequal access to IT in many
countries, in some cases amounting to a total lack of a modern information
infrastructure, should have something to say for a library-based network for
"document recycling".
All participating
libraries, and possibly also other institutions such as the above mentioned
international development agencies and literacy organisations, should be made to register as users and given a unique
identification code, before they will be able to enter records (either for
documents demanded or supplied). Upon registering it should be possible to
create a profile for the library (agency) in question, tied up to the
identification code, describing its collections, strengths and weaknesses,
weeding policy, future demands etc. Naturally, a library should be able to make
changes to its profile at any time. These profiles should be made searchable on
a par with the bibliographical records in the database. This would help
libraries finding co-operating partners, and possibly make it easier to plan
collection development.
Although
decentralised in practice, in order to maintain the highest possible
bibliographical standard of records, there should still be a co-ordinating,
central agency responsible for the document recycling database. A natural
candidate for this task would seem to be the IFLA Universal Availability of
Publications (UAP) programme, which has as its objective "the widest possible availability of
published material (that is, recorded knowledge issued for public use) to
intending users, wherever and whenever they need it and in the format
required".[18] Two other
core programmes of IFLA's, those for the Advancement of Librarianship in the
Third World (ALP) and for Universal Bibliographic Control and International
MARC (UBCIM) might serve as suitable co-operating partners in a joint effort.[19]
5. A Nordic-Baltic common
market for document recycling?
So, where do we
start? Well, why not start immediately here and now, in our own Nordic-Baltic
environment. From the Repository Library at the National Library of Norway,
Rana Division, we are prepared to share our experiences with repository
libraries in the other Nordic and Baltic countries wishing to build up a
"document recycling" service, and we would be very interested in the
creation of a common Nordic-Baltic market for the free exchange of such
documents within our region, for the mutual benefit of libraries in our countries.
We certainly have a lot to learn from each other, both from mistakes and
successes. One piece of advice that I would like to hand out already at this
stage, for those interested, is to integrate already from the start your
document recycling service with the National Union Catalogue of your country as
a sub-database. Some of the benefits from such a strategy are obvious:
1. It
allows for copy cataloguing, which
means less time spent on registration of recyclable documents and also giving
better quality records (that are already proof-read).
2. It
helps preparing for a future
broker-function of the repository library, when several libraries should be
able to transfer records directly to the document recycling database (instead
of sending all the documents to the repository library).
3. It
gives increased exposure of records,
using the National Union Catalogue as a means for "marketing" recyclable documents, which is good for the
repository library (as delivering agency, thereby getting rid of more
documents, allowing it to make room for new ones), but also for the requesting
libraries (librarians working with ILL and/or acquisition will be able to take
account also of documents available for recycling as a matter of course i their
work).
4. It
enhances the possibility of using the document recycling database also for cooperative collection management (e.g.
for making cassation decisions), since it makes visible to the whole library
community what documents are available as surplus copies, and what documents
are in demand.
We librarians are no magicians (at least very
few of us are). In Russia, by the time of the October revolution in 1917, there
was a semi-religious, political sect, the so-called Bogostroiteli -"God-builders" - having members even of
the Bolshevik regime, who believed that it was possible to gain eternal life by
means of intensive blood-transfusions. One high-ranking member of the sect is
said to have actually died from experimenting with such transfusions. But let
us not be deterred by this fact. "Book transfusion" may also have its
dangers, but it should in any event be less risky, than experimenting with
human blood. And if we can recall to life even a few of the books that lie
hidden in the vaults of our libraries , it may be well worth the effort. Surely,
we cannot guarantee all those neglected, "dying" or already dead
documents out there eternal life. But by means of co-operation between
libraries in our countries we can at least give them - and the users - a second
chance.
Joakim Philipson
Senior Executive Officer
National Library of Norway,
Rana Division
Repository Library
e-mail: joakim.philipson@nb.no