National Library of the Czech Republic Progress Report 2001

• Institution:

National Library of the Czech Republic
Klementinum 190
Prague 1,  110 01  Czech Republic

 
ELAG Contact Person:
Mr. Adolf Knoll (Deputy Librarian) , adolf.knoll@nkp.cz , phone:+420-2-21663274

Institution Type: National Library

Mission Statement

National Library with two main functions:

• archives for national production of documents;
• research library of foreign literature for humanities and natural sciences
Other national co-ordination roles especially for public libraries.
 
• Computer networks and Internet connectivity
1. In general HW, SW
• two interconnected (100 Mbit/s) networks in two main buildings; ca. 500 connected computers in LAN of the main Klementinum building + dozens of notebooks; ca. 30 computers connected in the Central Depository building; Internet connectivity via the National Research and Educational Network (European Quantum project) at the speed of 155 Mbit/s; internal networks at 100 Mbit/s (Central Depository), while in the main building upgraded from 10 Mbit/s up to 100 Mbit/s
2. New HW, SW; connectivity upgrades
• many new PCs and upgrades; special servers purchased for fulltext of articles from periodicals (see projects) and for harvesting web documents (see projects); another special server for the on-the-fly conversion of images into DjVu format within the Digital Library (see the paper);
• firewall installation (December 2000 - February 2001)
• Library automation
1. In general HW/SW
• ALEPH 500 for the library collection processing running on Unix OS (Oracle)
• Union Catalogue In-House system running on Unix OS (Oracle)
• AiP SAFE document delivery system of the Digital Library (see the paper)
• Microsoft Office; Windows 95, 98, 2000
• network OS: Unix, Linux, Solaris, Windows NT, Novell (this will end in the near future)
2. New HW, SW, other
• firewall software and related hardware; new LAN components for increasing speed; starting testing of AiP SAFE and of the new version of the Union Catalogue informations system; new KATIF 2.0 information system for work with the images from the scanned catalogues; for additional information also about other related matters see the projects paragraph
• Union Catalogue
• Software used
• In-House Oracle-based system
• New features
• new version with better interface and functions
• Digital Library
• Based on your own production of digital documents
• based on the production of the two national digitization programmes (see below); launched the Czech testing version (through English introduction now) of the Digital Library (see the paper); improvement of the interface as well as the English version under preparation
• If so, what is new in your digitization programmes?
• the programmes have got a new framework: they are parts of the national information policy and they have the national status that enables them to extend on a greater number of institutions; there are two digitization programmes: Memoriae Mundi Series Bohemica as access programme to rare library materials (ca. 600 manuscripts available, i.e. more than 200,000 pages; foreseen growth in 2001 ca. 80,000 pages) and Kramerius (ca. 200,000 pages available; foreseen growth in 2001 ca. 200,000 pages) as preservation microfilming of and digital access programme to acid-paper library materials, mostly periodicals (for more information, see the paper)
• foreseen interoperability with DIEPER (planned start of the work for Autumn 2001); while tools for interoperability with the MASTER manuscript bibliographic record developed and tested nowadays
• Based on external sources
• starting tests of harvesting selected web materials (NEDLIB harverster)
• continuing with enhancement of access to full texts of articles from Czech periodicals, partly accessible via the ALEPH 500 database of Czech articles (ca. 20,000 texts); altogether ca. 60,000 articles available in full text in LAN - still waiting for final setting of all the software licences to enable public access
• Important commercial web services accessible to your users - for more complex information follow this link
• New in-house databases
• no new databases; for the list of and search in our in-house databases follow this link
• Special web services
• trying to improve; see here the existing ones
• Electronic document delivery services
• planning implementation of AiP SAFE for improvement of electronic document delivery services (now testing)
• the Digital Library foresees the off-line delivery of parts of documents or of the entire documents on request
• Research and technology development projects
• RTD programmes in 2000
• RTD projects in 2000
• from 2001 planned also implementation of uniform information gateway for hybrid libraries and three other projects from another areas of work
• Other important projects
• Public Information Services in Libraries projects in 2000
• Sponsored projects in 2000
• If you read also Czech, more complex information about our programmes and projects is here

Prague, 14 May 2001