Current Status of Research Information Services and Future Plan of KERIS
PARK Hong-seok Ph.D. 1)
Senior Researcher, Korea Education & Research Information Service (KERIS)1) KERIS: Korea Education & Research Information Service, Arirang Tower 9th FL., 1467-80, Seocho-dong, Seocho-gu, Seoul 137-030, Korea; Fax: +82-2-3472-8906; honspark@keris.or.kr; http://edunet.keris.or.kr The paper was delivered at 2F Conference Room in the National Center of Sciences Building on Thursday March 23rd, 2000.
1 Introduction
2 Current Status of Research Information Production & Management in KOREA
2.1 Thesis
2.2 Serials
2.3 University Library Collection
2.4 Problems in the University Library
3 KERIS Projects
3.1 Research Information Sharing Union
3.2 Integrated Retrieval System Management
3.3 KERIS Meta DB
3.4 KERIS Full-text System
3.5 KERIS ILL system
4 Problems
4.1 Lack of Standard
4.2 Digital File Collection and Verification
4.3 Copyright
4.4 Unstable Service
5 Cooperation with Libraries
6 Concluding RemarkKERIS is a government organization under Ministry of Education, which was established by KERIS Act (Statue No. 5,685) on April 22, 1999. The mission of KERIS is development, management, and provision of education and research information on the national level. KERIS is providing various information services of wide range from primary education, university education, to research information. KERIS is also developing national plans of education and information management. Focusing on research information services, KERIS is doing several projects related to the university library. It developed the national union catalog, which covers 150 university libraries, and it is managing the nation-wide inter-library loan system in connection with the union catalog. It is also developing a national DB of full-text research information.
2 Current Status of Research Information Production & Management in KOREA
2.1 Thesis
Annually about 40,000 theses are produced in Korea. Most of these are Master's degree thesis and about 5,300 theses are Doctoral. According to the survey by KERIS on the university, 104 universities are producing thesis. Among these, about 50% of the universities was collecting digital files officially. Only less than 25% of universities was managing copyright, which is critical for network information service. Service format is also diverse; Tiff, PDF, original file, etc. According to the survey by KERIS in 1999, 228,279 theses were produced and only 64,071 were digitized. Among these, available ones for online service were only 6,761 because the copyright was not cleared.2.2 Serials
1,092 academic societies produce 1,347 journals and 2,234 university research institutes produce about 1,000 journals. 200 academic journals are in the image-based service by the commercial vendor. National Library, Diet Library, KORDIC, KERIS, and a few university libraries are developing article index. In general, MARC is used for the index. KERIS uses Dublin Core Metadata for the article and thesis.2.3 University Library Collection
University libraries in Korea are under chronic shortage of budget and library collection. The average budget for the library collection is less than 10% of ARL(USA) libraries. Only 540 foreign journals, on the average, were subscribed as of 1997. Currently this situation is not improved, or may be getting worse, because of increased foreign exchange rate during the depression in 1998.Most libraries use KORMARC and USMARC. For the domestic and oriental collection, KORMARC is most used, and for the western collection, USMARC is most used.
Even though the library collection is not strong enough to support the user, resource sharing is not active. The staff for inter-library loan is 1.3 person on the average. The amount of ILL usage is 76.7 on the average per month. This is quite low comparing ARL library's usage of 43,000.
2.4 Problems in the University Library
First of all, as said before, shortage of budget is most serious. Digitization rate is less than 20% and budget for the library collection is less than 10% of ARL libraries' budget on the average.
Lack of standardization is another problem. There had not been enough effort for organized management for research information production and service on the national level. DB's in the library was developed independently without considering exchange and sharing of data. Digital files digitized or transformed into different format. For Tiff image service, there was no standard TOC.Another major problem is lack of an integrated service system. There had not been a national union catalog. Now KERIS is developing and managing a union catalog and full-text DB's on the national level. As mentioned before, the serious problem in developing national DB's is lack of standardization.
KERIS is driving 5 main projects; (1) management of Research Information Sharing Union, (2) management of the integrated retrieval system, (3) digital thesis collection and service, (4) development of research information meta DB, and (5) management of the inter-library loan system (L2L).
3.1 Research Information Sharing Union
KERIS is managing the university library union for research information sharing, which is composed of 101 university libraries. The libraries are participating in three projects; electronic thesis sharing, serials meta DB development, and inter-library loan service. About 80-95 university libraries are participating in each of these projects. The union will include additional 50 university libraries and 50 special libraries. The union has 3 committees and subcommittees for each project.3.2 Integrated Retrieval System Management
KERIS is developing an integrated information retrieval system. The objective of the system development is to integrate all the research information services into one. All the DB's will be connected and all the information in the DB's can be searched and retrieved without interruption. The system development will be done by May 2000.3.3 KERIS Meta DB
The KERIS Meta DB has the unified structure integrating the serial title, serial holding, article index, and digital thesis catalog, which are connected to the inter-library loan service or online full-text service. One of the characteristics of KERIS Meta DB is the article index and digital thesis catalog. This was developed according to Dublin Core Metadata, which is mostly accepted as an international standard. The article index and digital thesis catalog have the same structure and metadata set. The metadata set is composed of 13 elements; DC. Title, DC. Creator, DC. Subject, DC. Descrition, DC. Publisher, DC. Contributor, DC. Date, DC. Type, DC. Format, DC. Identifier, DC. Source, DC. Coverage, and DC. Right. According to the KERIS survey, expected numbers of records in the Meta DB are about 50,000 serial titles, 1,500,000 article index record, and 6,400,000 holdings3.4 KERIS Full-text System
The system provides several ways to collect thesis full-text and metadata. (1) The author may provide the text and metadata to KERIS directly. (2) The author may provide the text and metadata to the university library and the library sends the text and metadata to KERIS. (3) The library may send to KERIS metadata and location information for the text in the university library DB. As a result, the thesis is searched through KERIS DB, and KERIS or the university library provides the text. The first half of this year will see the collection of 15,000 Master's theses, 2000 Doctoral theses, and 3,200 Korean-authored foreign Doctoral theses. KERIS is now planning improvement of university academic administration for thesis digital file collection and verification. Also another full-text DB is under development for 500 serials; 400 produced by university research institution and 100 by academic society. This will be done by September 2000.3.5 KERIS ILL system
KERIS ILL system is currently used by 50 university libraries. The user group will be expanded to about 120 university and special libraries in the first half of this year and expanded to about 150 institutions within this year. Centralized fee management system is under development which will be ready for use by June 2000. The system accommodates flexible fee management policy. A regional group can set their own fee policy within the whole ILL group. Fee can be graded by the amount of use. Extra money can be charged to the library with high request and low provision. Also, the system accommodates the individual fee policyThere have been found several problems and obstacles in this project. The major ones are lack of standardization of data and the library system, incorrect or unusable digital files, copyright management allowing the service only within the university, unstable service of a distributed system and others.
4.1 Lack of Standard
The lack of standardization of data and the system is the most serious problem. Many librarians apply the standard manual in different ways and the level of cataloging is different. This problem is serious especially in holdings. A few libraries do not manage holding information. Check-in data is removed when issues are bound.Different full-text service format is another problem for the unified full-text service. Tiff, PDF, original file format, DVI, XLS are used for full-text services. This diversity makes difficult integrated link service. The user must use several viewers to see the full-text from several universities. In addition to this, the format of table of content is different and as a result to view the TIFF image of the document, the user must have a specific viewer which is developed only for the service from the library. The standard TOCDTD was developed in 1999, but this problem will not be alleviated in the very near future because of budget shortage for conversion of TOC into the standard form and because several university libraries want to maintain old TOC's they have been using. Difference of protocol for data exchange is another problem in linking the text with location information in the metadata catalog.
4.2 Digital File Collection and Verification
As mentioned before, thesis files are not being managed systematically. The thesis file has to be collected completely for a national sharing and service. KERIS is trying to solve this problem.Incomplete or unusable digital files cause a difficulty in the development of the full-text DB of high quality. The error rate is expected to be about 10-30%. The error cases are; (1) missing table, picture, image, (2) page different from the print version of the thesis, (3) previous version of the thesis, (4) the version of word processor which is not affordable by the converter, (5) unreadable or broken files, (6) virus, and other minor problems. KERIS is trying to include digital file collection and verification step in the university administration process.
4.3 Copyright
Copyright clearance is critical for online service of the thesis. As said before, most institutions do not clear copyright when the thesis is deposited to the institution. In the cases of copyright cleared, there are some cases of copyright clearance only for the service within the institution. In some cases, terms used in the clearance form are too vague or the period of use allowed in the form is not specific enough to be regally effective. Also cases of no mention about fee and effective date were found, which need to be included in the clearance form to be effective. KERIS developed standard forms of copyright clearance and distributed these to universities.4.4 Unstable Service
Two third of the participating university libraries want to have their own thesis full-text DB. About 50 servers will work for the service. The service may be unstable because of the trouble in the local.For the project to be successful, tight cooperation with the university library is critical. KERIS is trying to have the university library cooperative with KERIS. KERIS and the participating libraries do their roles for this project.
KERIS is developing standard manuals for digital file production and management. KERIS opened the protocol source, functional libraries to the system developer, which were used for KERIS system and which are necessary to connect the university library systems to the KERIS system. For the service on the national level, KERIS is collecting metadata, digital files, and location information, and manage the integrated information system for effective service.
The participating libraries export bibliographic data, location information, and digital files of high quality in the standardized form KERIS proposed. And also, the university library clear copyright for a nation-wide service.Korean university libraries have chronic problem of budget and library collection shortage. The only way to overcome this problem is the cooperation among university libraries. By resource sharing, information service can be expanded to the national level. KERIS is building a national system through which university libraries share their resources. This will be developed into a electronic academic and research formation management system of the nation
Top
■