Around the World: To the Bologna, Italy Central Library

Citation

Mangiaracina, S. (2002), "Around the World: To the Bologna, Italy Central Library", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 19 No. 8. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2002.23919had.001

Around the World: To the Bologna, Italy Central Library

Silvana Mangiaracina

An Internet-based Document Delivery Service (DDS) has been developed at the Research Area of Bologna Central Library within the framework of the CNR (the Italian National Research Council) Project BiblioMIME, in order to:

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  take advantage of new Internet technologies;

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  promote cooperation among CNR and Italian university libraries;

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  reduce DDS management costs;

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  achieve short turnaround times in satisfying DD requests.

The CNR Research Area of Bologna Central Library is a multidisciplinary scientific library serving a community of about 800 researchers among staff, PhD and undergraduate students, and visitors. The state of the art Document Delivery Service at the Library shows more than 4,000 documents exchanged per year with the other 300 Italian scientific libraries.

The Document Delivery Service plays an important role in Italian research and university libraries. The main Internet resources for Document Delivery are the Archivio Collettivo Nazionale dei Periodici (ACNP, the collective serials Italian catalogue), and the Sistema Bibliotecario Nazionale Catalogue (SBN). ACNP records 565,937 serials holdings, which are indicated by 2,344 Italian research and university libraries, and accounts for 250,000 online searches/month.

Figure 1 DD service at the library: years 1998-2002

Figure 1 and Table I shows the trend of DD service at the Bologna CNR Central Library during the four-year period 1998-2001. The great increase in the number of DD mutual requests confirms a more general trend also noticed by other university library systems in Italy.

The impact of Internet Document Delivery (as a provider library) is demonstrated by Table II and Figure 2. Both show the dramatic cost reduction that took place during the last two years of our DD. Adopting entirely Web-based technologies has changed the traditional organisation of DDS at the Library.

Figure 3 shows the number of papers sent per month (Y axis on the left) during the period January 1999-May 2001, depending on the transmission system used by our library: surface mail, fax, or Internet delivery. The total costs in Lire per month (Y axis on the right) are the sum of partial costs per month, where unit costs are calculated thus: L. 3,200 for a single document transmission via surface mail, L. 6,000 via fax, L. 0 via Internet. We have estimated the average document length to be ten pages. The Internet Document Delivery effect is such that expenses have fallen by a factor of almost ten (from an average/month of L. 800,000 in early 1999 to an average/month of L. 100,000 in 2001). A few documents are still sent via surface mail due to their length (usually, when a document is longer than 35 pages, Xerox copies+surface mail is still the preferred method ). Although we use fast scanners (four pages/minute speed), when a great number of pages are to be copied, the Xerox machine may be a time-saver for library operators. Although the Internet DDS consumes bandwidth, it does not lead to a cost increase since CNR pays a fixed fee for its Internet access. For this reason cost is assumed to be zero. This is a specific case; in general this cost should be considered within a cost/benefit analysis.

Figure 2 DD service year 2000: number of documents supplied/requested to other libraries

The CNR project BiblioMIME was started in 2000 with the first prototype system for electronic document delivery, whose main characteristic was its high usability for libraries. The aims of the project are:

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  To develop and experiment with the use of a document transmission system based on the Internet. This could reduce delivery costs such as xerox copying and postal or fax expenses. Receiving libraries benefit the most from such a system, since they would receive high quality documents in a very short time. However, if the use of Internet DD spreads to many libraries, this would trigger a virtuous chain reaction, improving the overall DD national system and benefiting the final library users of the Italian research community.

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  To support the working flow of the activities in the entire DD process, from request to delivery of a document. This would reduce working time and eliminate the need for paper archiving. It would also automatically provide data for measuring DD performance according to a uniform system of indicators.

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  To suggest an experimental model of DD service, promoting inter-library mutual exchange and cooperation, on the basis of special agreements. For instance, a electronic voucher-like system of payment (such as IFLA vouchers), or guaranteed turnaround times could be experienced by all libraries sharing the model.

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  Network Inter-Library Document Exchange (NILDE – http://nilde. bo.cnr.it), the Web-based system that has been developed, is being tested during year 2002.

NILDE was initially designed to simply track number and types of documents requested and delivered, user distribution, delivery times, and types (surface mail, fax, Internet), in order to automate repetitive manual procedures. It was initially tested by our library, which was the only one to provide articles through it. It is now being experimentally used by more than 300 Italian scientific libraries, as requesting libraries, and by 56 libraries which take advantage of all its functionality, mainly as articles providers. It has now dynamical linking from the Italian National ACNP Catalogue.

NILDE allows a library to:

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  send requests to a specific lending library;

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  manage all the received requests;

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  send requested documents via Internet, fax, or surface mail;

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  archive all transactions, in order to report comparative performances (statistics);

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  get accounting reports, based on a "reciprocity" policy established among libraries which agree to cooperate.

Figure 3 Document delivery costs in 1999-2001

NILDE supports document exchange via the Internet by means of a file-uploading/Web-server; this very simple user interface assists receiving libraries in retrieving requested documents. The file-uploading method permits the sending of large size documents, while resolving problems that users may encounter when downloading large size files with e-mail agents. The library operator selects the digitised documents from a Web form and sends it to the destination library. On fly the server NILDE saves the file in a Web-server disk file and creates a new e-mail message that includes a URL pointing to the saved document. The receiver can download these large objects by means of a user-friendly browser.

NILDE has been entirely developed in an Open Source Software environment: Linux RedHat 7.2 OS, Apache Web server, Mysql, and PHP.

The use of NILDE for scanning and sending files without the need for specialised software packages has also proved to be cost-effective, since personnel involved in the DD service need no special training, beyond learning to use a scanner and a Internet browser.

Silvana Mangiaracina (mangiaracina@area.bo.cnr.it) is Librarian at the National Research Council, Bologna, Italy.