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1.
Summary and proposals How should the work involved in national bibliography be performed
The bibliographic control of printed publications in the form
of national bibliographies has existed for the past 150 years.
The understanding of what national bibliography is (and the rules
and principles on which it is based) have developed gradually
over the same period of time. National bibliography
The term "national bibliography" is defined today to
mean lists of the documents published at any time in a specific
country. One distinguishing feature of national bibliography is
that it is largely "objective" in the sense that its
goal is the complete registration of published documents
(within certain formal frameworks) notwithstanding the physical
form of the documents concerned, the subjects they deal with,
or their quality.
In addition, the practical goal of national bibliography (as expressed
in UNESCO's and IFLA's Guidelines for the National Bibliographic
Agency and the National Bibliography. 1979) is to
and in the long term to achieve a historical function by reflecting
a country's social, cultural and economic development.
Summary In order to obtain a model for a national bibliographic registration system that includes net publications, the project has focused on the following areas in particular. Inclusion criteria Proposed principles for national bibliographic inclusion criteria have been drawn up. They operate with the concepts of static and dynamic publications - with homepages as an independent category under dynamic publications. These principles reflect the criteria that exist for publications in fixed physical form, since there are formal requirements with regard to both size and (to a certain extent) content. For instance, it is proposed that publications of a commercial, internal, highly local or private nature should not be included. Registration method The proposed registration method seeks to cover the special needs of net publications in terms of description and format. The problems of describing static and dynamic publications vary. The level of registration has not been finalised yet; for one thing, the new cataloguing rules drawn up in parallel to the project by one of the project participants will have to be tested in practice before the levels in the national bibliography generally are recommended to SBT in the autumn of 1997. Self-registration by authors/publishers using metadata is regarded as a necessary supplement if very large amounts of information are to be registered. Tracing and maintenance To ensure the constant validity of addresses (URLs), a PURL server has been established which functions as a central exchange. If an international number system is adopted like the ISBN system, it must of course be used. But a solution is required immediately. The further development of automatic tools to check publications is needed. In addition, we feel that the current collaboration between national bibliography and legal deposits should continue. Finally, concentrated efforts are needed to persuade authors/publishers of net publications to regard such publications in the same way as printed publications. Storage in DanBib
The DanBib base will be given a Web interface in the autumn of
1997, making it possible to link from registration to net publications.
Proposal
Our impression that the information found in net publications
does not basically differ from the information found in publications
in fixed physical form did not change during the project period.
On the contrary, the net as a form of publication seems to be
gaining ground generally. It is also still necessary to qualify
data before searching accurately for and finding the relevant
publications. Consequently, it is proposed that national bibliographic registration should be started according to the above-mentioned principles and rules, developed during and in parallel with the project. At the same time it should be clearly understood that the net is a form of publication that is still developing, and that the rules and principles observed now are likely to change in the not-too-distant future. A number of elements used in the selection and registration of traditional forms of publication can be re-used, but there is also a good deal of new material that requires new experience of registration. It is proposed that the understanding of all national bibliography functions should be modernised to cope with net publications, and in particular that emphasis should be placed on satisfying current national information requirements and less on the historical dimension.
It is proposed that both static and dynamic publications should
be registered even though static publications are the only ones
to be covered by the Legal Deposit Act, because the information
contained in dynamic publications is just as important for citizens
as the content of static publications.
In the light of the somewhat volatile nature of the net at present,
the question is whether it is worth registering publications that
may disappear again. Using the inclusion criteria drawn up during
the project, publications containing information no different
from the information to be found in printed products will be the
main type registered. The net is now used increasingly as a "standard"
medium publication, so we feel convinced that net publications
will tend to become more permanent as a result. Finances and required resources
The resources required in connection with national bibliographic
registration depend on the extent and level of registration. The amount of maintenance required will have a decisive effect on the amount of time spent on dynamic publications in particular. We recommend that dynamic publications should be registered by open registration involving both establishment and maintenance. It might be a good idea to check registration mechanically once a week, month, six months or year etc. to find out whether publications have changed significantly in terms of content, since automatic checks will only reveal changes in terms of size.
With a view to performing registration within a reasonable financial
framework, we suggest that maintenance only involves the author/publisher
stating whether major changes have been made, or discovering by
automatic checks that publications have ceased to exist at the
address stated (URL).
We estimate that the number of net publications meeting the inclusion
criteria in 1998 will be limited (about 500-800 titles). On the
other hand, during this period payment options on the net are
expected to become available in general, after which the number
of net publications is expected to increase at the expense of
traditional publication forms.
We suggest that in 1998 the national bibliographic registration
of about 650 titles should be started - as well as focusing efforts
on persuading authors/publishers of net publications to regard
such publications as the equivalent of printed publications. As mentioned above, the net is still very new and will continue to develop in 1998. So the resources needed to carry out registration are estimated as being twice those needed to register a book.
It will be necessary to re-assess the extent, level and resource
requirement after about one year of operation. Expenses in 1998:
2 x 650 net hours = 1,300 net hours Corresponding to one project man year in terms of staff consumption.
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