Electronic publicationsin the Swiss National Library

ELAG 2005CERN, Geneva, June 1-3, 2005

Barbara SignoriSwiss National Library (SNL)

Content

• Background • General• Building up the electronic collection• Storage of the electronic collection• SNL partnerships• Further information

Federal Act on the SNL

„The Swiss National Library‘s task is to collect, to catalogue, to preserve and to make available

printed information as well as information stored on other information carriers with a bearing on

Switzerland.“

Article 2 of the „Bundesgesetz über die Schweizerische

Landesbibliothek (Landesbibliotheksgesetz, SLBG) vom 18. Dezember 1992“

Task of the SNL

• The SNL has the mission to archive all of its Helvetica collection:- printed collection- electronic collection

• In Switzerland we don‘t have any legal deposit law on a national level; rather there is an agreement on the free supply of Swiss publications signed by the SNL and the Swiss Booksellers and Publishers Association.

• In order to fulfill its new tasks in the electronic domain the SNL started the e-Helvetica project.

e-Helvetica project

• Aim: – The aim of the e-Helvetica project is to devise

regulations for the collection, cataloguing, retrieval and long-term preservation of electronic Helvetica (offline & online)

– and furthermore to develop an archiving system for electronic publications.

• Duration: – The duration of the e-Helvetica project is estimated

at six years (2001-2006); thereafter the collection and archiving of electronic publications will be operational.

• Organization:– At present 5 staff are working within the e-

Helvetica project together representing 1.9 FTEs.

• Structure:– The e-Helvetica project is structured into 2 sub-

projects: „Archiving“ and „Organization“.– Within the „Archiving“ sub-project the future digital

archive will be technically planned, built and put into service.

– Within the „Organization“ sub-project the basics for the building up of a collection of electronic publications will be defined.

– The 2 sub-projects are strongly dependent on each other.

e-Helvetica project

Building up the electronic collection

• The SNL will build up its collection of online Helvetica selectively.

• The SNL collects the online Helvetica „physically“.• Helveticat, the library catalogue of the SNL, gives

access to all types of media within the SNL.• The collection isn’t built up to a large scale yet.• The aim is rather to gain some initial experience

by compiling well-organised sample collections.• For the time being the SNL cooperates closely

with the following producers of online Helvetica:– University libraries (theses)– Commercial publishers (monographs & periodicals)– Cantonal libraries (regional & cultural websites =

„grey online literature“)

Online theses

• The SNL runs pilots for the announcement and delivery of online theses via an interactive webform or via OAI-PMH.

• New working processes (cataloguing, attribution of persistent identifiers, storage etc) must be defined and in particular must be automated.

• Since 2003 there is an agreement with the university libraries, including among others:– Use of a common metadata set (XMetaDiss)– Use of standard data formats– Legal right for the delivery to and the archiving at

the SNL• As soon as an automated processing workflow is

in place the SNL will start collecting online theses from all Swiss universities.

Publishers‘ online publications

• The SNL runs pilots for the delivery and archiving of publishers‘ online publications with the 2 Swiss publishers Karger and Stämpfli.

• New working processes (cataloguing, attribution of persistent identifiers, storage etc) must be defined and in particular must be automated.

• The legal situation concerning access to commercial publishers‘ online publications from the SNL‘s digital archive has to be clarified.

• As soon as an automated processing workflow is in place the cooperation will be extended to other Swiss publishers.

• The aim is to keep all Swiss publishers‘ online publications permanently in the digital archive of the SNL.

„Grey online publications“ (1)

• In their capacity as archive libraries, cantonal libraries are also faced with the difficulties of long-term preservation of electronic publications.

• 2 conferences were held in the SNL with the directors of all cantonal libraries in order to find a common level of understanding and to highlight and to define cooperation opportunities.

• This year a working group consisting of representatives of the cantonal libraries and of the SNL is working on a cooperation model for building up a common collection of relevant regional and cultural online Helvetica („grey online literature“).

„Grey online publications“ (2)

• To be selected for preservation, a significant proportion of a work should– be on a subject of historical, social, political,

cultural, religious, scientific or economic significance and relevance to the cantons and to Switzerland and be written by a Swiss author.

– And the work has to be publicly available via the internet (no local storage by private persons, no intranet)

• The aim is to share work when selecting, collecting, cataloguing and archiving grey online Helvetica and make available to today’s and future generations a representative collection.

Storage of the electronic collection

• The SNL is building its archiving system (according to the OAIS model) together with the Swiss Federal Archives (SFA).

• After a common WTO tender the SNL and the SFA were able to begin with the acquisition of a joint mass storage system in 2004.

• The systems are now installed and tested and will come into operation in the course of 2005.

• It concerns redundant systems in the SNL and in the SFA which are connected by optical fiber.

• An automated synchronisation of data takes place between the 2 systems.

• After the tests the system located at the SNL must be moved to a remote place for security reasons.

• Company: Fujitsu Siemens Computers (Schweiz) AG with products of the company Advanced Digital Information Corporation (ADIC)

• Hardware: 2 units ADIC Scalar 10K magnetic tape robot processor, 1 with media of the type AIT-3 (Sony), 1 with media of the type LTO-2 (IBM)

Mass storage system (1)

• Software: ADIC StorNext Management Suite Software for Hierarchical Storage Management and Media Management (HSM)

• Storage capacity: 2 x 200 TB (thereof 2 x 30 TB filled with media), by buying in addition of HW modules scalable to 2 x 1 PB (1 PB = 1 million million megabytes, ca. 2 million CD-R)

Mass storage system (2)

SNL partnerships

• Long-term archiving of electronic publications can be guaranteed only in close cooperation with other institutions at a national and international level.

• The SNL‘s most important partners in this area are:– Swiss university libraries– Swiss publishers– Swiss cantonal libraries– Swiss Federal Archives– Swiss Booksellers and Publishers Association– National Libraries of Germany and Austria– Other national libraries, international organisations

and conferences

http://www.e-helvetica.ch