1 Introduction
2 Project to establish
Korean Library Information System Network (KOLIS-NET)
2.1 Background of the project
2.2 Organization of the
project
2.3 Description of the
project
3 Project of Digital Library
3.1 Background of the project
3.2 Description of the
project
4 Conclusions
1 Introduction
The ability to operate information circle generally in a country is looked on as national information ability. This information ability surpasses the material values in the international society today being the very core factor of nation power competitiveness and all the nations in the world have make constant efforts to improve the information ability creating informationized society of today.
In the informationized society, libraries have became the central channel responsible for the distribution of the rapidly increasing bibliographic data and people showed so much deep interest in whether the libraries can fulfill the modernized function and responsibility affecting the nation power. Understanding this, major nations in the world started to take radical measures to modernize national library system.
The main points of the measures can be summarized as follows: to reinforce the responsibility and function of national library radically, to systemize all domestic libraries in one connected network, to standardize the processing method of bibliographic data and to get highly skilled in data use ability.
To meet this international trend, the National Library of Korea representing libraries in Korea, is carrying out the KOLIS-NET project and digital library project to come true national union bibliographic system prescribed in "the Promotion Law of Library and Reading", as well as the computerization of library operation.
2 Project to establish Korean Library Information System Network (KOLIS-NET)
2.1 Background of the project
Ever since the National Library of Korea started to computerize library data, introducing computers in 1982, it developed KORMARC to standardize processing method of bibliographic data and established the data base of domestic materials.
Based on the many years' experiences, it solidified a foundation to form the library computer network making general development plan for computerization project.
In 1989, the establishment of library network was included as a main project in "Education Research Network", which was one of the five national basic computer networks and the library computer network plan of "General Development Plan for Library's Automation Program", which was drawn up in 1987, was mostly accepted.
Also in 1990, the government framed its policy to build up the library computer network in an early stage as a part of political enterprise for balanced development by region and this was intended to distribute bibliographic data by establish library computer network to supply necessary data in any area for the balanced regional development.
The National Library of Korea drew up "Korean Library Information System Network (KOLIS-NET) Program" in June of 1990, by which it established and utilized the library computer network to connect systematically overseas distribution channels of bibliographic data and 495 major domestic libraries from 1991 to 1997.
2.2 Organization of the project
To carry out effectively the KOLIS-NET program to connect libraries into network, the National Library of Korea was nominated as a organization to manage this program in a general aspect and under the National Library of Korea there are 3 operation organizations according to the library classifications. The National Library of Korea is tentatively in charge of the operation organization of public library, Seoul university library in charge of the operation organization of university library and KAIST R&D information center in charge of the operation organization of special library.
Also, a local center is set up in every kind of library (Public: 10, University: 9, Special: 5) to union data in the area and under the centers, there are branch libraries (468).
2.3 Description of the project
1) Developing processing format to standardize bibliographic data
The standardization of processing method is essential to establish and utilize data base in cooperation. Especially, because the standardized data formats are the most important factor to computerize library due to the complexity of bibliographic data, we standardize the format, which is the basic means of bibliographic data depending on the data.
Organization Chart of the Project
As stated above, we already established the KORMARC format for monographs in the early 80's. As we came to feel strongly the necessity to standardize bibliographic data process due to the "KOLIS-NET Program", we speeded up the project to develop the KORMARC format for non-book materials format in addition to revising the format for monographs and serials in 1991 and to develop a KORMARC format for the old books. We set the formats for monographs, serials and non-book materials as Korean Standard (KS) and plan to set up the data base in a standardized system by including other formats in KS one by one.
Currently about 94% of Korean libraries which is trying to computerize the operation is applying the standardized KORMARC format to the establishment of bibliographic data base and the KORMARC format is commonly used in public (100%), university (94%) and special (84%) libraries.
Table 1: The KORMARC use situation
2) Developing and distributing software to computerize the library operation
To computerize operations of all libraries in standard format and to cut down the budget and manpower to develop programs separately, the National Library of Korea developed the program (KOLAS: Korea Library Automation System) to acquisition, technical processing, lending, searching, data management and various statistics in total system and several programs were developed applicable to the different capacity of computer. The programs are distributed to the library in need for free.
In 1991, we developed the computerization package (KOLAS) for a PC to handles monographs and distributed it to 1,298 libraries until now. In 1992, we developed the package to operate in UNIX environment exchangeable among the libraries and distributed to 88 libraries. In 1995, we developed the package for a PC and UNIX to process serials and distributed to 183 and 43 libraries respectively.
Table 2: KOLAS package Distribution Situation (As of end of February, 1997)
According to the results of the survey on computerization in Korean libraries, 625 libraries (about 40.8%) out of 1,531 surveyed libraries were computerized and 316 libraries (50%) were proved to utilize KOLAS, which was developed and distributed by the National Library of Korea. (Computerization Rate - public: 70%, university: 57%, special: 22%)
3) Establishing National Union Bibliographic Database
We control the national union bibliographic data base by classifying it into bibliographic data, collection data and authority control data, which were established by the libraries participating in library network in the Shared Cataloging System.
Currently, we are carrying out the works to set up a national data base with the data base provided by the National Library of Korea. We are developing and testing the Shared Cataloging System started in 1996 and will operate the system on a national library scale within this year.
The libraries set up 29,216,213 data in the bibliographic data base of domestic and foreign books and is planning to make it national data base after receiving from the libraries.
Table 3: The data base set-up situation
4) Using and supporting computer equipment
To establish the library network, every library connected to the network should be equipped with computer of proper capacity to fulfill its function. In spite of the fact that local center of library network should be equipped with main computer, it is very difficult for the public libraries to keep its own main computer in Korea.
Therefore, in the first stage, we supported 4 local centers out of 10 public library local center with Korean brand main computer II (TICOM) in 1993, and equipped the rest of the local center with the computers in 1995. Furthermore, IBRD fund was introduced and allocated to university library local centers so as to be equipped with computer system.
Table 4: Computer Equipment at The National Library of Korea
Table 5: Computer Equipment at Local Center
of Public Library
5) Operating Network
We operate the network in one-way system as follows; Currently the computer-equipped 4 public library local centers and 3 university library local centers are connected to the computer of the National Library of Korea in on-line system to search and down load the bibliography data base of the National Library of Korea so that they can utilize the data in building up their own library data base.
In this year, we will develop and use the Shared Cataloging System so that we will be able to operate the network in two-way system to establish and to utilize the bibliographic data base among the libraries.
Table 6: The Numbers of the Connected Organizations in Library Network : '92-'97
3 Project of Digital Library
3.1 Background of the project
We go ahead with digital library project to give domestic and international users an access to full text data as well as bibliographies and abstracts, contents of Korean materials on internet as the main libraries in the world do.
In 1995, as a part of "Information Super highway" project carried out in nation-wide scope, we developed "Domestic Academic Reference Information Service". Also we are carrying out the model project of digital library jointly with domestic major libraries (The National Library of Korea, The National Assembly Library, Korean Academy Promotion Foundation, KAIST Science Library, and KAIST R & D information Center)
3.2 Description of the project
1) Domestic Academic Reference Information Service
We developed the software to give an access to Korean materials searching the bibliographies, abstracts, contents and full text data on internet.
We digitalized the full text data of 107 doctoral thesis, 43 major scientific journals and 50 old books and started to offer "Domestic Academic Reference Information Service" in website on internet on March 25, 1996.
The developed software is the program to index the bibliography data of MARC, the program to connect abstracts to bibliography data through the digitalization of full text data and the program to provide text information service.
2) Model Project of Digital Library
We establish the digital library system to supply bibliographies data, abstracts and full text data systematically for users in any place at any time by serving the necessary data for academic and research activities as the major application service of the network in WWW of internet. In this project, all the participating organizations establish the union digital library system where individual users can enjoy the continuous data service through one channel and develop data service and joint ownership software for the integrated operation among digital libraries.
The main points of the developed software are for the participating organizations to use the standardized protocol (Z39.50) to search all kinds of data, to adopt SGML, the standard data format, as a text data base format and to develop the interface and to establish the service supply system centering around users.
The database established by this model project includes text information on the condition that the specific bibliography data kept by all the participating organizations are not contrary to a copyright law. The data bases to be established in each organization are as follows;
- The National Library of Korea : Established data base for 60,000 bibliographies data and 3,000 volumes (450,000 pages) of text images of valuable old books
- The National Assembly Library : The text data of the materials issued by the legislature (90 volumes) and the text image data of the materials requested by the Board of Audit and Inspection (68,000 pages)
- Korea Academy Promotion Foundation : Established the data base for bibliographies data (11,000 articles) of doctorate thesis acquired in foreign country and 1,000 volumes (250,000 pages) of text image data submitted in 1996
- KAIST Science Library : Established data base for the bibliographies data, abstracts (13,000 articles) and text information (1,000 volumes) of doctorate and master's thesis (13,000 articles) and lists data (1,000 articles) and text data (115 articles) of professors' thesis
- R & D Information Center : Established data base for the bibliographies data and the text image data of the research report supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (12,000 volumes) and the text data of science bulletins
4 Conclusions
Information became very important factor for country development in informationized society. And we expect libraries to play the very important roles and the international cooperation among libraries is greatly required to distribute bibliographic data more than ever, in the sense that we can accomplish the growth of nation information ability with the help of libraries.
To meet this kind of the changed social need, the international libraries try to combine the world bibliographic data into one data base for the international cooperation on bibliographic data distribution.
To accomplish this object, each country is responsible for establishing data base of lists, abstracts and text data of literature issued in its own country and this data base is built up in standard format to make sure that all the nations exchange the data smoothly.
The project of library data computer network and the model project of the digital library carried out by the National Library of Korea, are the business to establish national data base and application system in the standard format to make it possible to adopt in this international environment.
Each country in the world will be of great help for world development by digitalizing all the data issued in its country and establishing the system to serve them on-line so that they can hold data in common.