National Library of Norway Progress Report 2001

1. Institution
   National Library of Norway

Finsetvn 2
NO-8607 Mo i Rana, 
Norway

ELAG Contact Person:
Mr. Svein Arne Brygfjeld (Adviser) , 
svein.brygfjeld@nb.no , 
phone:+47 75 12 12 72 , fax:+47 75 12 12 22

Institution Type: National Library

Mission Statement
The National Library of Norway (NB) is the administrator of The Norwegian Act on Legal Deposit, which has given Norway one of the most comprehensive systems of legal deposit internationally. NB receives books, serial, newspapers, microforms, photos, and digital objects. NB is also responsible for the legal deposit of radio and television broadcasts and also receives a preservation copy of audio recordings in Norway. As many other national libraries, NB has large historical collections with significant value for the nation.
 

2. Computer networks and Internet connectivity

Since the last participation in an ELAG meeting, the National Library of Norway has invested a significant amount of both economical and human resources in the establishment of what we call our 'Digital Long Term Repository'. This infrastructure is described more later in this report. But at the moment of writing, it consists of
• two identical Unix-based servers from Hewlett-Packard, N-class machines with 4 processors and 8 GigaBytes RAM and a fault-tolerant architecture
• a storage area network based on Fiber-Channel (FC-AL)
• disk array systems from Hewlett-Packard, XP256 with approx 4 TeraBytes net disk available
• tape library from ADIC, AM/J based on LTO tape technology, capacity in current configuration approx 30 TeraBytes
• local area network based on switched ethernet, currently only 100 Mbps but upgrade to Gigabit bandwith underway
The network bandwith to the Internet is based on a 155 Mbps access of which the current available bandwith is 30 Mbps for the Rana division and 12 Mbps for the Oslo division. All internal communication between the two departments is based on use of the Internet. We use the national Internet provider for education and research, UNINETT.
For other purposes, there are a significant amount of dedicated services running NT and Linux.These servers are so far not directly connected to the SAN, but some will be according to our plans.
3. Library automation

Several systems are used, but most important is BIBSYS for printed material, MAVIS for audiovisual information and GalleriNOR for still images.
4. Digital Library

General
The National Library of Norway has for years been working on various digital library initiatives. It is easy to recognize the result of this effort, both in services, in the organisation and infrastructure.On the IT proffessional human resource side, the staff has grown from approx 7 manyears in 1994 to more than 40 at the moment of writing. Digitization of our own collections and collections belonging to others is an at all times ongoing process. Most of this work is carried out in the libarys media laboraty. The Media Laboratory has established production lines for digitization of still images (photographs, large prints, microfilm), audio and film/video. All of these are high quality high capacity production lines, and we are able to produce all wanted formats and qualities.
The Digital Long-Term Repository
As mentioned above, the National Library of Norway has spent a lot of its resources on the establishment of a general basic infrastructure for handling of digital object over a long time perspective.The basic idea is that all digital objects in high quality shall be stored within this framework. It is fundamental to fuctionality as well as the ability to do future effective processing on the objects that they are stored on file or in databases, and not on media-formatted isolated carriers (like CD-Audio and DAT-Audio). Some principal services in this storage is in place, like identification service and metadata service. General search and delivery services are also in place.Worth underlining here are choises with respect to identification and metadata:
All digital object within the repository is identified by URNs. There is a URN service in place, which can give out URNs on demand, keep track of physical address for a given object and also do basic address resolution.The URN service is aslo made available to some external users.
On the metadata side, one as choosen to try the Dublin Core standard as a minimum metadata format for digital objects. The DC service is in place. Some of the planned use for this service, is network based legal deposit of digtal objects.In that case we expect automated update of metadata when a digital object arrives the library.
For long-term preservation, the only realistic approach so far is migration. Migration will work well for simple digital object, object which do not relay on special software to be accessible. Our plans include migration services for simple objects in the repository.
5. New in-house databases

DC service: A database holding metadata on Dublin Core format.
Mavis: Database for audiovisual information.
Tiden: Digitized newspapers.
6. Special web services

Just a taste:
EMI: A database presenting the emigration from Norway to America.
Tiden: Digitized historical newspapers. Currently only one, but complete from 1893-1978(!), newspaper is available for free use on the Internet.
Galleri Nor: Database containing approx 100.000 digital photographs. The running version has been around for a while, and a new is under way.
The Schøyen Collection: The Schøyen Collection comprises most types of manuscripts from the whole world spanning over 5000 years. It is the largest private manuscript collection formed in the 20th century. The whole collection, MSS 1-4517, comprises 12,536 manuscript items, including 2,083 volumes. 6,178 manuscript items are from the ancient period, 3200 BC - 500 AD; 3,848 are from the medieval period, 500 - 1500; and 2,510 are post-medieval.
Spirit of the Vikings: More than 400 digitized broadcast radio programs from the second world war. Available including audio on the Internet.
7. Research and technology development projects

The library participates in quite few projects, spanning from small scale project with local focus to large international cooperative projects. We participate in a number of EU-funded RTD projects, and we have applied for one more. There are also plans to apply for funding under the EU eContent programme.
But in here I would like to focus on three projects of particular interest, namely 
• The Digital Radio Archive

In cooperation with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), the library is digitizing the historical radio archive of NRK. The archive is expected to contain more than 50.000 hrs of audio recordings, and happily most of it is already described in an excisting database.The audio is digitized in high quality and stored in the digital long-term repository. Bit-reduced versions (RealAudio and MPEG) are made available for professional and public use on the Internet. The access however, is limited so far.
• Nordic Web Archive

The Nordic Web Archive (NWA) project is a cooperation between all the national libraries in the nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden). All these libraries are working on legal deposit of the national web-spaces. In NWA we try to find a common way to meet this challenge. The current activity of the project is funded by Nordunet, and the focus lies on access to a historical web archive.
• Legal deposit of digital objects

The library has got governmental funding to start a new activity on legal deposit of digital object from (among other areas) the Internet. It might not be known by you, but the legislation on legal deposit Norway also covers what is called 'electronic resources', which enables the National Library of Norway to do legal harvesting and archiving of the content of the Internet. The project is expected to go on for 3 years starting in the summer of 2001.

Norway, 13 May 2001