Code Number: 056-142-E
Division Number: VI
Professional Group: Information Technology
Joint Meeting with: -
Meeting Number: 142
Simultaneous Interpretation:    Yes

Creating an Information System for the Russian State Library. A Pilot Project Challenging IT

Alexander Vislyi

Abstract

Paper

1. The Russian State Library - mission and facts

"The Russian State Library is a unique and universal collection of Russian and foreign documents. It is an especially valuable monument of cultural heritage of the Russian people. It is the national library of Russia. The mission of the library is to collect, preserve and provide access to the universal collection of documents, that reflect human knowledge and are connected, first of all, with Russia and its national interests" - thus the opening statement in the new brochure of the Russian State Library (RSL) [1].

In 1990 the role of the Russian State Library was described for the IFLA meeting in Moscow in the following terms [2]: "The V.I. Lenin State Library of the USSR (now Russian State Library) (...) was created in 1862 in Moscow as part of the Moscow Public Museum and the Rumjantsev Museum (...). The Library fulfils the following functions: the national universal book storage; the All-Union co-ordination centre of scientific-methodological and scientific-research work in the field of librarianship, bibliographic science and book science; the centre of recommendatory bibliography and inter-library lending; the central Book Museum; the central specialised organ of information on culture and arts (...). The stocks are universal in scope and the types of publications; they are acquired on the basis of legal deposit of the home publications (...) and other sources."

1.2. Facts

The history of the RSL starts in 1862, when Count N.P. Rumyantsev bequeathed his rich collection of books, manuscripts, archaeological and ethnographical materials to the State, which then became the foundation of the current Russian State Library. Today the Library holds over 42 million items, acquiring and storing national and foreign publications from the beginning of the book printing until today in 249 living and dead languages. It also contains an outstanding manuscript collection going back to the VI century. The Library and its staff of almost 2 500 people serves first of all the national and international research community, but also fulfils the functions of a public library, welcoming up to 5 000 users daily e.g. some 1.5 million Russian and foreign visitors per year, and circulating more than 35 000 items. It co-operates with libraries and institutions in more than 100 countries through its exchange programme and services about 2 500 borrowers all over the world. According to the Guinness Book of Records the RSL is the largest library in Europe and the second largest in the world.

2. RSL library automation - history and developments

2.1. History

The history of automation in the RSL can perhaps be characterised as typical for the development in many big libraries, e.g. one of initially a series of often uncoordinated starts and small initiatives, many of which failed to develop into major services or service support systems. The library has learned these lessons, with the result that the Tacis pilot project is seen and supported as a major opportunity for a new beginning.

The RSL was one of the first libraries in the former USSR to start looking into the automation issues in the late 60-ies when the Library signed a contract with one of the leading domestic software developers to create an automated system. Nevertheless the existing technological base, the complexity of the task, the large volumes of information and the absence of automation experience caused this initiative to be not very successful. In 1990 the RSL signed a contract with the VTLS Company under which an integrated automated system would be customised to the RSL requirements upon recommendation of the library staff. According to the contract a basic version of the VTLS system was installed on a Hewlett Packard computer. The library staff was trained in the use of the system. For two years attempts were made to customise the system, but owing to the scarce funding the work had to be stopped.

In April 1994, Computerization of Library Services became a part of the RSL modernization program [4] developed by a specially created UNESCO international high-level expert commission. As recommended by the Commission, at the end of 1994 - beginning of 1995 a team of CEC (DGXIII) experts produced a detailed analysis of main RSL problems related to automation and suggested a plan for the implementation of an integrated library system [5]. In 1995 the RSL signed a leasing agreement with the IBM Eastern Europe/Asia Ltd. aimed primarily at creating an RSL local area network.

After the official approval of the RSL Development Strategy [6] by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation in May 1996, a revised version of the RSL Modernization Program was developed with widest involvement of the Library staff. The Automation and IT Implementation part of the Program was discussed in detail and recognized most priority task by the UNESCO Commission at its meeting in September 1996. The main projects to be implemented were Creation of RSL LAN, Implementation of Integrated Library System, Retrospective Conversion of Catalogues, RSL Digital Library.

In 1996-97 with the support of the Moscow Telecommunication Corporation the RSL fiber optic backbone connecting separate library buildings was built. It was also connected to the Moscow Fiber Optic Backbone - since that time the RSL has had fairly stable Internet access. The first part of the RSL LAN was created by IBM Eastern Europe/Asia Ltd. in 1996-97. The Moscow Government has been paying for the connectivity, the Research and Education Network FREEnet provided free IP-service since 1996 through 1999.

With financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research in 1996-97 there was organized a tender for an automated library system for two national libraries of Russia. The VTLS Virtua system was recognized and announced a winner, but due to lack of funding the contract could not be signed. The RSL retroconversion project was presented and discussed at the all-Russian Retroconversion Workshop (Moscow, RSL, 1996). The pilot stage of the project started in early 1997 with the support of the Russian-German joint venture "Prosoft-M" and resulted in test 1000 machine-readable bibliographic records in RSLMARC/USMARC format produced from conventional cards.

The concept of RSL Digital Library was developed and presented to the Russian-Japanese Digital Libraries Workshop (Moscow, RSL, 1996). The pilot stage of the RSL DL project first of all reinforced the Memory of Russia project started in 1994 as a part of the UNESCO's Memory of the World programme. In 1995 UNESCO funded hardware and software for scanning, in 1997 the Open Society Institute rendered support for storage of digital images and further digitisation in cooperation with the Institute of High Performance Computing and Data Bases (Saint Petersburg). As a result all first printed Cyrillic books were digitised and became available on the Internet by now [7].

2.2. Latest developments

Currently the RSL has around 400 workstations (ranging from AT286 to Pentium III) and a number of servers on different platforms: IBM RS6000 with AIX operating system is used as mail and ftp server; Pentium with Windows NT is used as Web server; Pentium with Novell Netware is used to support the workstations working with MEKA, and Sun Microsystems Enterprise 450 server with Solaris operating system is used to support ALEPH-500.

A number of different projects introducing, using or focusing on IT and the electronic library environment are currently underway in the RSL, of which the Tacis project is an integral part. Many of these projects are carried out in co-operation with other Russian partners. The following is a very brief description of these projects:

Centre of Legal and Business Information. The Centre of Legal and Business Information [8] was established in 1998 to assist the public in the search of information on Russian laws. Users of the Centre can browse legal databases and receive information on the latest developments of software producers and their promotional materials.

OREL Project. The RSL has launched a project to create a digital library called "Open Russian Electronic Library" (OREL) [9]. The main objective of the project is to preserve the most important digital documents (documents include digital texts, graphic, video and audio files) in the Russian language, and to maintain them on the Internet if their authors can not do that themselves. These resources are very important for all Russian speaking users and in themselves are important evidence of the early digital era in Russia. Currently under the OREL project the Library provides access to the works by Nobel prize winners in physics, chemistry, literature, economics, physiology, medicine and the Nobel peace prize winners.

Russky Courier. The objective Russky Courier service is to provide users with electronic copies of documents requested by them. The requests are received via Internet and the documents copied are found in the collections of the RSL and other libraries within and outside Russia. Other project participants are Hewlett Packard and Inter companies.

Meeting of Frontiers Project. "Meeting of Frontiers" is a project to create a bilingual (Russian and English) library of different information media [10]. The documents of the library describe the history of exploration and settlement of people in the West of the USA which happened in parallel with similar processes in Siberia and Far Eastern parts of Russia and led to the meeting of Russians and Americans in Alaska and North West coast of America.

Internet and Electronic Document Room. The room was officially opened on 2 December 1999. It allows 40 users to gain simultaneous access to international electronic resources in a comfortable environment. The electronic resources include: Internet resources; CD-ROM resources stored in the RSL; electronic catalogues and other databases of the RSL.

Digital Library of Ancient Slavic Books of 15th - 16th Centuries. The project will result in the creation of the database of first printed Slavic books of the 15th - 16th centuries. The database will be accessible via Internet. The project is funded by the Open Society Institute and aims at creation of full text digital copies of the most valuable and rare documents with reference materials and search facilities in Russian and one of the European languages.

Memory of Russia Project. In 1994 the RSL started to work on the Memory of Russia project [7], which is part of the UNESCO's Memory of the World programme. The work resulted in the preparation of a CD-ROM with digital images of 15th century manuscripts and some posters and cheap prints.

The ADAMANT Project. In 1999 the RSL signed a contract with a Russian company ADAMANT to create digital collections on the basis of digitisation of the RSL collections. The project includes installation of 100 workstations for the digitisation with PCs and state of the art scanners with the scanning speed of 7 seconds per page. It is planned to scan 10 000 books per month. In parallel with the production of digital publications the RSL staff are forming a bibliographic database of document descriptions, which as a special electronic catalogue will be available in the library LAN and via the Internet.

Project for the Development of National Bibliographic Record Format. The project aims at the development of Russian standards for bibliographic records in machine-readable form. The project was launched in 1997; project funding comes from the Ministry of Culture, Russian Library Association and Open Society Institute. The team of experts includes representatives of the major Russian libraries, including the RSL. So far the project has resulted in the development of formats of electronic records for the main types of publications.

Centre for the National Bibliography in the Internet. In 1999 the Centre for the National Bibliography project was piloted. Its aim is to create a special centre for the maintenance of an Internet database with the national bibliography on the basis of an agreement between the three main bibliographic institutions, the RSL, the RNL and the Russian Book Chamber. The project is funded by the Open Society Institute, the Ministry of Culture and Tacis (with the use of some funding for the TELRUS 9705 project).

Cataloguing of Internet Resources. The project [11] is funded by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and its objective is to catalogue information resources on the Russian part of the Internet with the use of the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set and the BBK classification scheme. The project was started in 1998. The format for the presentation of information on the Internet has been developed together with user-friendly interfaces for data input, and software for uploading information and searching in the catalogue.

3. The Tacis project

3.1. History

The project proposal was based on the Automation and IT Implementation part of the RSL Modernization Program and submitted to the Tacis programme [12] of the European Commission in early 1997. A positive decision arrived in summer 1997 and the Library was awarded a Tacis project for the duration of 18 months to help it modernise its library processes and services, and to start open up access to its invaluable collections to national and international audiences. At this time the Library was visited by EU experts who started to prepare Terms of Reference in co-operation with RSL staff. The tender was announced in late 1997 and won by a consortium led by The British Council. The implementation of the project began in December 1998.

3.2. Work plan

• The work plan of the Tacis project was drawn up in the first two months of the project, by intensive investigative and analytical co-operation between EU and RSL experts, to determine the following:
• Analysis of user requirements, state of the current infrastructure and information services, examining the future and expected needs of the library users bearing in mind social and cultural changes within society, and mapping the current situation within the Library;
• Analysis of document processing, including the design of a conversion project for conventional library catalogues and specifying organisational structures for and required functionalities of an integrated library system;
• Development of a business strategy and plan by analysing market opportunities for key library services;
• Implementation of a pilot project, including the design of a model LAN and planning, procurement and installation of an integrated library system.

The main strands of the pilot project cover all the essential features of a computer based library system:

• Network: a local network for the pilot project integrated with other RSL networks
• Integrated library system software: design of technical specifications, implementation, customisation
• Retrospective conversion: a model methodology to convert a sample of 10 000 cards under the pilot project
• Conversion of existing machine readable data from the RSL's own MEKA system to the new OPAC
• Training: a cadre of 15 Train the Trainers cascading training to other RSL staff
• Sustainability: business and marketing plans for new IT based services and a fund-raising strategy to ensure expansion of the pilot project

The integrated library software Aleph 500 from the supplier Ex Libris was chosen in an open tender in which major international and national suppliers took part. The technical specifications for the tender were drawn up as a result of many technical discussions involving RSL, EU and local experts. The principles in defining the functionalities of the software were guided by the advice in the original EC feasibility study, namely to take a practical and realistic approach to what is achievable under time-scale and budget of the pilot project.

One of the project's components was to retroconvert 10 000 cards from the 19th Century Catalogue of Russian books. This catalogue was chosen as being of special interest to national and international audiences, and was defined a priority in the Program for the Modernization of the Russian State Library. Following an internal workshop on retroconversion, the RSL retroconversion team formulated a Request for Proposal to two local suppliers to participate in a test-run. The ProSoft-M company was again chosen and has successfully concluded the conversion from card to electronic records in the USMARC format.

The conversion of existing machine readable bibliographic records from the MEKA system include interalia the "Current Russian Books" acquired since May 1998, "Current Foreign Books" since January 1999, and the database of Dissertations and dissertation abstracts. The result is an initial OPAC of ca. 500 000 bibliographic records.

Training is a key component of the project, to ensure the functioning and sustainability of the pilot project. The process of defining a training programme for RSL staff who will operate the pilot project started with a skills' audit, followed by the definition of the training needs and the identification of the content of the training and who will best deliver it. Training covers the needs of the system management and administration staff as well as of readers' services staff and data input operators. UNIX, Oracle, Aleph 500, Windows, Internet and 'how to train' courses are part of the overall training plan. Given the magnitude of the problem, the approach has been to train a cadre of 15 train the trainers, who will provide cascade training for other staff. Furthermore, 20 key RSL staff involved in the pilot project at the strategic and technical level participate in two study tours, to the UK and to France, enabling exchange of views on common issues in library automation and digital library creation with many EU colleagues

. Business and marketing plans for RSL IT-based services and a fund raising strategy form the non-IT but vital survival part of the project. Workshops on Business Planning were held to discuss marketing theories and the current situation pertaining to the marketing of library services in Russia, as well as the promotion and pricing of services.

3.4. Hard- and software

During the project three individual processes led to the acquisition of the integrated library system, the server, workstations and network equipment.

Integrated Library System.
The functionalities of the integrated library system were defined in an intensive investigative phase of discussions following the definition of the work plan in the first two months. While it was necessary to press on with this speedily, as the requirements of Tacis rules meant that procurement of the ILS had to be subject to an open tender, e.g. a lengthy process, it was also of the prime importance to take great care over this specification. The basis of the information to draw up this technical specification was provided by a twofold approach:

• by the earlier joint RSL - RNL tender of 1996. However, to remain within time scale and budget, this very elaborate and complicated tender had to be greatly revised
• by a Request for Information sent to all the major suppliers of ILS, both within and outside of Russia, to gage their interest and clarify critical questions such as the handling of Cyrillic characters

• translation of all documentation, screen interfaces and help into Russian
• support of Cyrillic and extended Latin character sets in all stages of the work
• client-server technology
• data export-import in RUSMARC
• online data entry in RUSMARC
• data export-import in USMARC

The contract with Ex Libris was concluded in November 1999, followed by an intensive action programme of training, translation, data conversion, up-loading, screen customisation and testing, within the frame-work of a very constructive and result oriented co-operation between the RSL and Ex Libris. At the date of writing this article a database of some 500 000 bibliographic records has been created and all the functions of the RSL OPAC [16] are constantly being tested and refined. The conversion programmes for the existing RSL databases from RSLMARC to USMARC were written and tested by excellent local experts in cooperation with the RSL experts on formats.

It should also be mentioned here that Microsoft Russia [17] was most supportive throughout the project donating free of charge many of their software packages.

Hardware. The choice of the ILS determined the choice of the platform and the specifications of the server; therefore as soon as the evaluation report for the ILS was determined an informal consultation process was launched for the server, which meant drawing up and sending the technical specifications to a number of likely suppliers in Russia. As budget was limited (generally only 15% of the total of a Tacis project budget can be spent on equipment), a realistic approach had to be taken and resulted in the following specification:

• Sun Microsystems Enterprise 450 server in tower, 4 CPU slots, internal 18.2 Gb tape driver
• Networking equipment and 2 PC's to run the server

Another informal consultation process for workstations for readers and staff to search the new OPAC resulted in the rest of the project equipment budget being spent on 45 PC's of the following specification:

• Intel x86 compatible processor, Pentium III or similar, min. 266 MHz, min. 3 Gb hard disk capacity, min. 64 Mb RAM.

  The local company Redlab [19] was the successful bidder, and delivered 'just on time' as the renovation of the new OPAC room was completed and in time for installation to be ready for the end-of-project international conference 'Managing the Digital Future of Libraries' 17-19.04.2000

  3.5. Partners

  The project derives its budget of 1 million Euro from the Telecommunications Sector of the Tacis programme. Tacis fosters the development of links between EU countries and the States of the former Soviet Union and Mongolia. A key area of Tacis activity is the so-called Know-How transfer, carried out through policy advice, consultancy teams, training, studies, partnerships and also through pilot projects.

  The British Council [20] in close collaboration with the partners in the Russian State Library has been leading a group of EU and Russian experts in the implementation of this work-plan. The project consortium includes partners from the National Library of Scotland [21], Jouve SA (France) [22] and EDS Germany [23]. Subcontracts for specific components were concluded with Lanit (Moscow) [24], IPA - International Procurement Agency - (Holland) [25], IPF - Institute of Public Finance - (London) [26] and the retroconversion firm ProSoft-M (Moscow and Germany) [27]. Russian experts from the Library of Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences [28], Moscow State University [29], the Russian National Library [30] in St. Petersburg as well as many experts from the staff of the Russian State Library itself are involved in different aspects of implementation.

  3.6. Project management

  The rigors of Tacis reporting imposed the strict discipline of 3 monthly planning and progress reports. The management of varied and highly specialised inputs required a disciplined structure of general and specialised technical meetings, supported by agreed agendas and action points. EU experts were required to plan the objectives of each visit and to produce specialist technical reports on findings. In the design and implementation phase specialist EU-RSL teams were set up to deal with aspects of retroconversion, conversion of machine readable data, network creation and business planning.

  The unfailing support of RSL senior and middle management provided strong motivational support to the project team throughout the duration of the project.

  The PR aspect of the project - the project Web site, a launch press conference, the end of project international conference 'Managing the Digital Future of Libraries' and many articles and papers in international and national journals and conferences [31]-[33] - contributed to the perceived overall success of managing such a complex project.

  4. Results of the Tacis pilot project

  At the end of the pilot project in June 2000 the following outcomes will have been realised:
  • a new PC LAN for staff and users with state of the art cabling including improvement of the electricity wiring, and a plan for the global architecture of the RSL LAN to guide further development
  • 45 new PC's for staff and users in the newly renovated OPAC room
  • an RSL Systems Management and Network Operations Centre housing the new RSL Sun server and run by the RSL system management group
  • implementation of the integrated library system Aleph 500 customised to Russian needs, including the handling of the extended Cyrillic character set and full translation of documentation and screens into the Russian language
  • a conversion model for RSL catalogues (both card and machine readable)
  • the retro-conversion of 10 000 catalogues of the 19th Century Catalogue of Russian Writers
  • an OPAC of ca. 500 000 bibliographic records accessible via Intranet and Internet resulting from the conversion existing RSL databases
  • a cadre of 15 'Train the Trainers' staff
  • 2 study tours for RSL staff to the UK and France
  • workshops on retro-conversion and business planning
  • a centre of expertise for Russia on digital libraries development and an international conference disussing relevant issues
  • a business plan and marketing strategy for new IT based services of the RSL
  • a fund-raising strategy to ensure the sustainability and expansion of the pilot project
  • applications to Tacis and other agencies for additional funding to expand the pilot project.

  5. Conclusions

  Many lessons have been learned by all members of the team implementing the project. Together we have been making the most of the unique opportunity to work together constructively to address the issues faced by all libraries on the verge of introducing IT and of automating library processes. The points below follow no order of priority, as each member of the team has different priorities:
  • An agreed and realistic work plan based on common and shared understanding by RSL and EU experts covered all the stages of the development of an Information System, while aiming to achieve one practical result, namely the implementation of the OPAC module, as a first step of a fully fledged integrated library information system. Thus achievability has to be considered a key element in successful project implementation, backed by a constructive and flexible approach to problem solving - showing that 'it can be done' was a main motivational force
  • The principles of a fully integrated team of Russian (RSL and local experts) and EU specialists, and the recognition of a real and lively two way knowledge flow let to a constructive experience of Russian-foreign co-operation that provided valuable experience to all those involved of working in an intercultural project
  • Continued interest by RSL management in the progress of the pilot project has resulted in a strategic and coherent approach to co-ordination between all RSL IT projects, thus achieving economies of scale and synergetic impact between different initiatives
  • Strict adherence to Tacis guidelines ensured an open and transparent process of tendering and procurement of equipment, stimulating competitiveness amongst library suppliers, ultimately to the advantage of all libraries in Russia
  • The approach of the project team to harness local IT expertise to optimise results has widened project experience beyond the RSL and has interalia led to adopting a consortial approach of 5 Russian libraries applying for a new library network project within the Tacis programme.

  References

  1. Russian State Library. - http://www.rsl.ru/
  2. Librarianship in the USSR, IFLA, 1991, chapter II
  3. RSL-Tacis Project Website. http://www.rsl.ru/tacis/
  4. Programme for the Modernization of the Russian State Library. - Paris, UNESCO, April 1994. Revised version: Moscow, January 1998.
  5. The Russian State Library: Planning for Automation 1995 - 2005. Project Definition Report. The European Commission, Directorate General XIII. - January 1995.
  6. The Russian State Library Development Strategy. Moscow, RSL, May 1996.
  7. Memory of Russia. - http://www.rsl.ru/science/memory.htm
  8. Centre of Legal Information. - http://rgb.jump.ru/
  9. OREL. - http://orel.rsl.ru/
  10. Meeting of Frontiers. - http://frontiers.loc.gov/intldl/mtfhtml/mfsplash.html
  11. Cataloguing of Internet Resources. - http://www.rsl.ru/dc/
  12. Tacis programme. - http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/dg1a/tacis/index.html
  13. Tender announcement on the Tacis project Website. - http://www.rsl.ru/tacis/
  14. Ex Libris. - http://www.aleph.co.il/
  15. Ex Libris Germany. - http://www.aleph.co.de/
  16. RSL Aleph OPAC. - http://194.84.119.99:4505/ALEPH/
  17. Microsoft Russia. - http://www.microsoft.com/rus/
  18. Heliomaster. - http://www.heliomaster.ru/
  19. Redlab. - http://www.redlab.ru/
  20. The British Council. - http://www.britishcouncil.ru/
  21. National Library of Scotland. - http://www.nls.uk/
  22. Jouve SA. - http://www.jouve.fr/
  23. EDS Germany. - http://www.eds.de/
  24. Lanit. - http://www.lanit.ru/
  25. IPA. - http://www.ipa-bv.nl/
  26. IPF. - http://www.ipf.uk
  27. Prosoft-M. - http://www.prosoft.mos.ru/
  28. Library of Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences. - http://www.ben.irex.ru
  29. Research Library of the Moscow State University. - http://www.lib.msu.su/
  30. Russian National Library. - http://www.nlr.ru/
  31. Leninka gets a new lease of life // LAR, July 1999
  32. Exploitation sans frontiers // Exploit Interactive. October 1999. Issue 3. - http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue 3/tacis/
  33. International Conference 'Managing the Digital Future of Libraries'. - http://www.rsl.ru/tacis/conf.htm< /a>
  

  Summary

  Monika Segbert MBE FLA (hon) is team leader of the EU-Tacis project "Creation of an Information System for the Russian State Library", running from 10.12.1998 - 9.6.2000. From 1995 - 1998 she worked with the European Commission DGXIII "Telematics for Libraries Department", with the primary responsibility to develop research co-operation for the sector with the accession countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Previously she held the post of Head, Libraries, Information and Books, with the British Council Germany, while being engaged in numerous professional assignments around the world.

  Alexander Vislyi is deputy director, Russian State Library and deputy director, Research Library of the Moscow State University, and the project director of the EU-Tacis project "Creation of an Information System for the Russian State Library". In 1999 he was appointed Counsellor of the Minister of Culture on the informatisation of cultural institutions in the Russian Federation, which are under the aegis of this ministry.