Koninklijke Bibliotheek Progress Report 2001

Institution

Koninklijke Bibliotheek
Prins Willem-Alexanderhof 5 , POB 90407
The Hague,  2509 LK  Netherlands

ELAG Contact Person:
Mr. Theo van Veen (researcher) , theo.vanveen@kb.nl , phone:+31703140658 , fax:+31703140656

Institution Type: National Library

Mission Statement

The Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National Library of the Netherlands, gives everyone access to the knowledge and culture of the past and the present by providing high-quality services for research, study and cultural experience. The collection constitutes the living memory of written, printed and electronic publications. The humanities take pride of place, with special attention being given to Dutch history, language and culture in a wide international context. Information outside the KB's own collection is effectively mapped. The KB knows how to find anything. It is also the knowledge centre for the supply of scientific and scholarly information and the pivot of national and international co-operation.

Computer networks and Internet connectivity

In general HW, SW

The internet provider is Surfnet and the connection to internet is 32 Mb/sec. Protocols supported are TCP/IP en IPX. The firewall being used is Checkpoint's Firewall 1. Dial-in facility is Shiva (32 simultaneous users)

New HW, SW; connectivity upgrades

Library automation

In general HW/SW

The Library software being used is the Pica LBS3 system (version 3.7). This software runs on a cluster of two Compaq Alpha 1200 servers.
The deposit system, which is called DNEP-pilot runs on a three node IBM RS-6000 SP with approximately 2 TB storage capacity. The main software is DB/2, Digital Library 2.4.1 and TSM 3.7, together with in-house developped applications for loading digitized materiaal.

New HW, SW, other

The meta-catalogue containing more than 20 in-house databases, among which is the library catalogue, runs on a two Compaq ES-40 cluster.
The new deposit system, which is now being developped by IBM is called DNEP-implementation and will run on three IBM RS-6000 SP's with approximately 12 TB storage capacity. The main software is DB/2, Content Manager and Tivoly Storage Manager. The software that will integrate this with the other KB-systems and with the KB-workflow is still under development.

Union Catalogue

Software used

The KB uses the Pica Union Catalogue. Cataloguing is done directly in the Pica system by means of Pica's "Intelligent Bibliographic Workstation" and new records are fetched online and written to the local Pica system.

New features

Digital Library

Based on your own production of digital documents

Online 1995-1998
Hundred Highlights of the National Library
Historical atlasses, 500 maps, 90 Gb
Online 2000
Watermarks (incunables), 2700 images, 2 Gb
Online 2001
17th century pamphlets, history prints, 30.000 items, 1.5 Tb
Medieval Illuminated Ms, 10.000 items, 195 Gb
Childrens books, 11.500 pages, 200 Gb
Online 2001/2002 /2003
Bibliopolis - history printed book, 18.000 pages, 110 Gb


If so, what is new in your digitization programmes?

The Memory of the Netherlands is the newest of the digitization programmes. The genaral goal of this programma is to build a national collection and it will start with about 16 collections to be digitized. The website will that give access to these collections is mainly intended for educational purposes.

Based on external production

Online 2001
Newspapers 1920 - 1930,150.000 pages,150 Gb
Government papers 1814-1996, 30.000 pages, 15 Gb
Travel accounts - Linschoten, 21.000 pages, 12 Gb
Childrens books, 11.500 pages, 200 Gb
Legal Iconography, 14.000 images, 60 Gb
Online 2001/2002 /2003
Memory of the Netherlands, 8 Tb


Important commercial web services accessible to your users

New in-house databases

The KB-catalogue is a new information service from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in which various types of publications, available in the KB or on the internet, can be found. The KB-catalogue contains about 2,000,000 records describing books and journals, electronic journal articles, cd-roms, scholarly internet resources, Dutch websites, manuscripts and documentation about the special collections of the KB. Bibliographic descriptions are derived from over 20 smaller catalogues of the KB. The KB-catalogue has been developed to enable simultaneous searching and retrieval from all these catalogues. For the development of the KB-catalogue, various open standards that apply to search engines on the internet, have been used. The data from the various source databases have been converted to XML, according to a bibliographic Document Type Definition designed by the KB. The XML-records are stored in a database (Oracle) on a webserver, and indexed with full text indexing software (Altavista). Retrieval has been realised by creating various Perl-sripts. The presentation of the records is handled by XML-stylesheets. The number of databases in the KB-catalogue keeps growing and the technical infrastructure for the KB-catalogue is also being used for other in-house databases, that are not part of the KB-catalogue.

Special web services

Electronic document delivery services

Research and technology development projects

The Koninklijke Bibliotheek and IBM Nederland are tackling the problem of the preservation of digital publications. To this end they have signed a contract to build a unique storage system. The system will be the core of the Netherlands Depot for Electronic Publications being set up by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) with support from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. The system will preserve publications and ensure that they remain accessible to future generations. These are publications that are deposited with the KB by Dutch publishers as well as digital publications from other sources.

Other important projects

Reported by Theo van Veen <theo.vanveen@kb.nl>

den Haag, 24 April 2001