Preface

In recognition of the fact that national information and cultural heritage are not only conveyed in the form of printed matter, the Danish Library Centre (DBC) and the Royal Library decided in 1995 to propose to the National Bibliographic Council and the Danish Ministry of Culture that the national bibliography should also include electronic documents, although only those found in a physical state in the form of diskettes and CD-ROMs. Such documents have been included in the Danish book list and Danish periodical list since 1996.

At the same time, developments in the form of Web publication on the Internet were moving so fast that DBC decided to launch a project to find out whether net publications could and should be subject to bibliographic control in the same way as printed and electronic publications in fixed physical form. The reason for this was that we felt the existing search engines on the net suffered from the general problem of searching in unqualified data and generally replying with excessive amounts of data. We also felt that the information contained in net publications did not basically differ from the information in publications in fixed physical form. If net-borne publications are excluded from bibliographic control, there is a risk that many people will find it difficult to gain access to an increasing amount of the information citizens need, as opposed to the information stored in products in fixed physical form. The ultimate target was that registration should be in DanBib (the joint superstructure system for the complete Danish library system) alongside the national bibliography and the total list of publications at Danish libraries. DanBib should also be used to make direct linking to documents possible.

In addition, a new Legal Deposit Act was pending (and was passed during the project period). It covers all electronic documents on the net which are deemed likely to be available as independent units in a final form. The Act requires that a general standpoint should be taken in terms of national bibliographic registration.

In the autumn of 1996 the Danish National Library Authority (Statens Bibliotekstjeneste, or SBT) decided to provide joint funding of the project. At the same time the principle of national bibliographic registration of electronic documents on the Internet was presented to the National Bibliographic Council, who expressed their agreement. In this connection the project's ultimate target was altered to include not only evaluation of bibliographic control in general, but also proposals as to how the work involved in national bibliography should be performed.

The project was designed by the following employees at DBC: Poul Bergstrøm Hansen, Jytte Hansen, Lone Ferdinandsen, Annette Laursen, Jørgen Nielsen, Susanne Thorborg, Hans Meulengracht Madsen (replaced by Vibeke Nielsen) and Randi Diget Hansen (project manager). From the autumn of 1996, when the National Library Authority started contributing joint funding of the project, Leif Andresen and Elise Hermann from SBT were observers, as was Grethe Jacobsen from the Royal Danish Library. Grethe Jacobsen was included in particular with a view to establishing contact with the legal deposit institution and the national bibliography. Five status meetings were held, attended by the external observers.