ELAG 25 years young – Czech Minister of Education calls libraries the pillars of the information society

Citation

(2002), "ELAG 25 years young – Czech Minister of Education calls libraries the pillars of the information society", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 36 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/prog.2002.28036aab.001

ELAG 25 years young – Czech Minister of Education calls libraries the pillars of the information society

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ELAG 25 years young – Czech Minister of Education calls libraries the pillars of the information society

In his opening statement to the 25th Seminar of the European Library Automation Group (ELAG), the Deputy Minister of Education in the Czech Republic (Doc.-Ing. Josef Prusa) called libraries pillars of the emerging Information Society. He addressed the more than 100 delegates of the ELAG Seminar on "Integrating Heterogeneous Resources", who met in Prague (Czech Republic) for three days of information exchange in June 2001.

Workshops, papers and discussions clearly showed that the library world has to move fast in the adoption of mainstream standards. For instance, XML can be used as a carrier for MARC records, but will not replace (yet) the MARC record. ZML may be a way to structure Z39.50 protocols. XMARC and ZML are linking library ICT applications to the ICT mainstream applications. Much attention was paid to open linking and open URLs, a framework for implementing open (context-sensitive) linking, for the further definition of service components of libraries and information providers. Linking everything together is becoming a hot topic.

Linking of primary resources (full texts) with secondary/reference/context resources is a major refinement now and the library OPAC may be the start of a search for information, but increasingly it is only one of the options available to the user. The appropriate-copy problem (linking based on access rights, preferences, cost, speed or mode of delivery) is forcing libraries to look at new business models and pre-coordinated relations with owners of information. Discovery, subject portals, data centres, institutional and personal agents, virtual learning environments and access are the new features in a globally distributed digital library landscape.

Libraries and other collection entities, such as archives and museums, have all to work together and open-linking is a means to accomplish this co-operation. Digital collections are globally distributed and require access to heterogeneous resources via a unified interface and cross-database searching.

The workshops covered topics directly related to the Conference theme as well as related subjects like: automated v. human indexing, long-term archiving (preserving the access to electronic documents), classic principles of librarianship in the light of Internet, as well as Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR)-based automated catalogues. The full text of papers presented at the seminar and reports from the workshops are available at: http://www.stk.cz/elag2001

The 2002 ELAG Seminar is planned for Rome, Italy, 17-19 April 2002. It will deal with the (expected) promises of the applications of the semantic Web and is entitled: "Semantic Web and Libraries".

For further information please contact: Paula Goossens, ELAG President, Koninklikje Bibliotheek, Keiserslaan 4, B-1000 Brussels, Belgium. E-mail: paula.goossens@duke.kbr.be; URL: www.kbr.be/elag