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Library Automation

Notes copyright regulations have developed over the centuries, and the use of printed material by
libraries is adequately regulated for all parties. However, as far as the digital media are concerned,
there are no such fixed practical arrangements, not only because of the short time they have been
in existence, but also because of the difficulties of protecting against unlawful copying. Huge
sums of money are involved in this area and private copying is very easy and fairly cheap as the
technique is rather simple.

Electronic Journals

In the first edition of the Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters and Academic Discussion,
published in 1991, there were 27 electronic periodicals, seven of which were peer-reviewed. The
1997 edition lists 2500 periodicals of which more than 1000 were peer-reviewed.

Electronic periodical services were offered by the large agents in 1997. Swets and Zeitlinger has
already been mentioned as the agent in the United Kingdom project; Blackwell is also offering
such services, as is Reed Elsevier, the largest publisher of scientific periodicals, but only for its
own periodicals. The Electronics Collections Online full text database of the On-line Computer
Library Centre (OCLC), also introduced in 1997, is a Web-based service containing more than
1000 periodicals from 30 publishers.

Records Management

All administrative routines in the information services institutions can be automatized. Both
documents and users can be identified with pin-codes; documents can be ordered automatically
and bills for on-line searches are printed out by the computer. All these operations have an
archive-related dimension, as institutions need to be able to trace historical data in their files,
and public institutions are usually obliged to keep their records for some years before transferring
them to the archive system. There is thus a certain demand for back-up systems and for safety
copying, in the case of electronic processing. Even the selection of books and other material for
library collections is done electronically. Archives must make appropriate choices concerning
delivery formats for data, the media on which data are stored and the principles for selection.

13.2.2 Computerization for Libraries

Libraries were very quick to computerize their management systems. Since the invention of
Machine-Readable Cataloguing (MARC) in the mid-1960s, many countries have adopted national
versions of that format. Nearly all libraries in developed countries are now equipped with
computerized management systems, particularly software for cataloguing and lending
operations. Computerization is steadily eliminating card indexes in favour of Online Public
Access Catalogues (OPAC). In the 1990s, with the development of the Internet and more recently
of the Intranet, the distribution of catalogues on CD-ROM is tending to be replaced by direct
access via those networks to constantly updated files.
In the last few years, major libraries have begun building up digital collections, either for
purposes of conservation or in order to facilitate access to documents that are rare or national
treasures. This trend is so powerful that sites devoted to digital collections have been created on
the Internet.

13.2.3 Scientific Electronic Publishing

In parallel with commercial electronic publishing, which has been gradually introduced over
the last five years by major international publishers (Elsevier, Springer, Academic Press, Kluwer,

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