At the time I write this, it is clearly spring in the air, even in Southern California, where one believes that we experience a
single season all year. Daylight is already longer and we are entering the last term of the academic year. Since we last met in
Boston, we continue to worry about our colleagues, friends and families who are living and working in regions of the world that
are targets of terrorism and where daily exposure to war and conflict is unfortunately too common.
By the time many of you receive this, those of you in academic libraries may well be in summer recess, but all of us should be
making plans for the IFLA 2002 Conference, just a few months away. It has been my pleasure overseeing the work of this
year's program planning committee that included Philippe Raccah, Raymond Schwartz, and Mette Stockmarr. They have
planned a very exciting and timely program that should have serious relevance and interest to us with a fascinating lineup of
speakers from France, Sweden and Scotland.
Elsewhere in this newsletter you will see descriptions of the Open Session we will host. There is also a description of our site
visit to Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh arranged by Marianne Nordlander to learn about some of the very interesting
initiatives the staff there has launched, including the development over the last decade of the popular resource, EEVL,
http://www.eevl.ac.uk/. From now until August, we will share highlights of the conference as we become aware of details and
content so everyone can plan a productive and enjoyable trip. We will have ample time to explore the Glasgow/Edinburgh
regions and our conference runs in parallel with the Edinburgh Festival, (http://www.eif.co.uk/), always an international draw.
IFLA Headquarters has been busy making sure that the strategic plans each section and division has articulated is in place and
being executed. For us in this Section, we are committed to our work with colleagues in developing countries. We are looking
at ways to partner with other library associations interested in responding to the crises of library conditions and erosion of
sci/tech collections in Afghanistan. We also migrated our listserv to a permanent address as part of the IFLA communication
network now established at INIST and find that we have been discovered by several potential new members and welcome them
to our activities. As of now, we have not yet been successful in attracting a new member from the UK to join the Standing
Committee but hope that by the time of our conference that situation will be remedied.
We have increased our cooperation and outreach efforts with several associations and will have reports on them at our annual
meeting. As the season of library conferences gets into gear, I look forward to seeing many of you at meetings prior to IFLA,
at the:
• International Association of Technological University Libraries (IATUL) meeting in Kansas City,
• Special Libraries Association (SLA) in Los Angeles,
• American Library Association (ALA) in Atlanta
• American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) meeting in Montreal.
Those of you going to other conferences we look forward to your sharing tha with us when we all come together in August.
Please anticipate a wonderful summer and if you are not sure about whether to attend IFLA this year, I hope that the contents of
our newsletter will inspire you. Let's look forward to greeting old friends and making new ones in Glasgow where we will have
an exciting and full agenda. Please do not hesitate to contact myself or Irma Pasanen, our Section Secretary, with comments
and questions about the IFLA Science & Technology Standing Committee.
With best wishes,
Julia Gelfand
Chair and Treasurer
Ms. Julia Gelfand
Research & Instruction Division, Science Library
University of California Irvine
PO Box 19556, Irvine, CA 92623-9556, USA
Phone: (1) 949/824-4971 Fax: (1) 949/824-3114
E-mail:
jgelfand@uci.edu
Secretary and Information Coordinator
Ms. Irma Pasanen
Helsinki University of Technology
Library
PO Box 7000, 02015-HUT, Finland
Phone: (358)(9)451-4125 Fax: (358)(9)451-4132
E-mail:
irma.pasanen@hut.fi
IFLA GLASGOW 2002 SCI-TECH PROGRAMME
Our exiting and timely Open Session will be on Tuesday, 20 August, "
Negotiating with Friends or Foes: Licensing SciTech
Digital Resources.” The session will address the selection, archiving, and access of digital materials for external users from
three different viewpoints. The session will discuss how licensing bundled digital products and consortial agreements affect the
selection process. In addition, how do the limitations of archiving past content figure into the equation? For example, some
publishers will give (or sell) formally subscribed digital content on a physical medium (e.g., CD-ROMs, magnetic tape) without
searching/interface software. Some questions remain about the longevity of current digital formats and appropriate
preservation policies. Finally, the accommodation of non-affiliated users in licensing agreements in licensing agreements is a
relatively new challenge. Many institutions are providing access to non-affiliated users and would wish to expand those users'
access to digital resources.
Patricia Yocum
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Professor Pierre Berard from the University Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, France will open the
session with a view of a mathematician in "Documentation Issues for Mathematics in the Digital
Age.” Professor Berard is also the Head of the French National Coordination Team for
Documentation in Mathematics, The Cellule MathDoc and he will explain the actions taken both
at the national level as well as in the framework of international cooperation concerning databases,
digitization, and long-term archiving and perpetual access. He will also explain how end-user
needs and scientific considerations influence the policy towards consortial agreements.
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Ingegerd Rabow, Manager of Electronic Resources at Lund University Libraries in Sweden, will
discuss the role of localising and customising electronic resources from a library perspective. Her
presentation "The Personal Touch: Availability and Branding of Licensed Materials,” will also
deal with archival access as well as the authentication of authorized users and of non-affiliated
users.
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The third speaker of our open session will present yet another view towards licensing
electronic resources. Director of Information Services at the University of Glasgow Libraries,
Chris Rusbridge will examine the legal provision aspect (copyright vs. contract law) and he
will also pay attention to the self-archiving movement and to the needs of digital preservation.
His presentation is titled "The License Trap: The Need for Common Licensing Terms for
Scientific Literature and Databases.”
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STUDY TOUR
The workshop will be an interesting
Study Tour to Heriot-Watt University Library in Edinburgh on
Thursday, 22 August. Heriot-Watt University (
http://www.hw.ac.uk/) is a progressive institution with strong academic
programs in business and technology, located on the outskirts of Edinburgh. We will have a guided tour of the library
(
http://www.hw.ac.uk/library/index.html) , meet the staff and have a seminar focusing on current initiatives and projects. These
include EEVL, the Internet Guide to Engineering, Mathematics and Computing, Resource Discovery Network (RDN, which
brings together several UK-based resource gateways) as well as SELLIC, the Science and Engineering Library, Learning and
Information Centre, which is an initiative of Edinburgh University Library and the Science and Engineering Faculty. During the
day we will have time for lunch and the seminar ends at approximately 3 pm.
Following the visit to Heriot-Watt, registrants will be taken to central Edinburgh to enjoy independent sightseeing. There will
be return buses available in the evening and after the Tattoo show according to the schedule by the conference organizers. You
should pre-register for Tattoo as part of your conference registration. Number of participants to Heriot-Watt University Sci-
Tech
site visit is restricted to 40 persons.
Transportation will be provided from Glasgow by conference organizers in conjunction with other library tours.
Preregistration is ESSENTIAL. Please e-mail Marianne Nordlander (marno@bibl.liu.se) by 15 July 2002 in order to
guarantee a seat in the Sci-Tech group transportation for this specific workshop.
Plan ahead and mark your calendars with the following IFLA 2002 Sci-Tech events:
- Sci-Tech Standing Committee I meeting on Saturday 17 August at 8.30-11.20
- Open session on Tuesday 20 August at 11.00-13.30
- Workshop Study Tour on Thursday 22 August all day in Edinburgh (please remember to
preregister with Marianne Nordlander!)
- Sci-Tech Standing Committee II meeting on Friday 23 August at 10.15-12.15
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NEEDS ASSESSMENT SURVEY - Ongoing Section Project
The Science and Technology Libraries Section has for some time been interested in ways it can better support science and
technology libraries in developing countries. Members of the Steering Committee have suggested a variety of ways. Additional
notions have come in response to a survey the Committee has sent to new Section members.
We would now like to expand our survey group by querying each continuing member of the Section. Our short survey can be
answered in a few minutes. All responses will be considered.
Identifying a specific person in a member library can be a big challenge. We are taking this opportunity to alert you that a
survey will be coming to your library before the IFLA Conference in Glasgow and hope you will arrange to have someone
complete it. It would be ideal of course if we could send the survey directly to a specific person. If you would like to be that
person or can identify who that person could be, please send (by paper mail or email) the person’s name and institutional name
to:
Patricia Yocum
Shapiro Science Library
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
USA
pyocum@umich.edu
Please note if a paper or digital (email attachment) form of the survey is preferred. Thank you for your help. Further discussion
of this assessment project will take place at the Standing Committee meetings in Glasgow.
NEWS FROM MEMBER LIBRARIES
“National Week of Libraries” in the Armenian Republican Scientific and Technical Library
In April 2002 the Republican Scientific and Technical Library (RSTL) took part in the national festivities of libraries and an
exhibition highlighted the special collections of the library. After the disintegration of the USSR the scientific libraries in
Southern Caucasus were often faced with disbanding or changes in their field of operations. However, the RSTL in Armenia
has managed to prosper thanks to the generosity of the Armenian government and the Armenian Institute of Scientific and
Technical Information. Today, the RSTL comprises of a collection of 4 million books, serials, industrial catalogues and
standards supplemented with 18 million patents. To manage the collections there is a library information system (IRBIS by
GPNTB, Russian National Public Library for Science and Technology). The library also provides Internet access. The library
participates in electronic publishing and during the past few years the library has produced a significant number of databases
containing Armenian research information.
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"The Library of the Future: AVision and its Fulfillment."
Lecture of Dr. William Miller, Director of Libraries S.E.
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Representatives of Yerevan Libraries invited to attend the
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CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
INSPEL (International Journal of Special Libraries) is the official quarterly publication of the IFLA Special Libraries
Division. It is a professional journal primarily for the dissemination of papers written or proposed for publication by members
of the IFLA Division of Special Libraries. The Division promotes and coordinates the work of particular relevance to the
specific types of libraries and the Journal is directed to an international readership among librarians in government and
international agencies, as well as in universities and research institutions. Librarianship is a key subject in a rapidly changing
world. Improved practice will help produce economic benefits, and special attention should be given to problems concerning
libraries in Developing Countries. Material on all aspects of librarianship will be considered eligible for publication. The
members of the Science and Technology Libraries Section are encouraged to submit their papers to the INSPEL editorial board
of which each section chair is a member. Please consider submitting to INSPEL and we will discuss Section themes we may
want to collectively contribute to at our annual meeting. INSPEL is available in electronic form also; please visit the site at
http://www.fh-potsdam.de/~IFLA/INSPEL/intro.htm
AROUND THE WORLD: RUSSIAN ACADEMIC LIBRARIES IN THE ELECTRONIC ENVIRONMENT
Olga L. Lavrik,
State Public Library of Scientific and Technical Literature of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
(SPLSTL SB RAS), Novosibirsk, Russia
Today the Internet - along with the use of its networked
resources as well as the use of the communication
facilities it provides - is clearly one of the strategic
courses in the development of research libraries.
There is a long tradition of research library networking in
Russia where each research library belongs to one or
several library co-operation systems. Of these systems
the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) is one of the
largest. It has a history which dates back almost three
centuries – to 1714, when the first Academic library
(LAS) was opened in St. Petersburg. Already at the
beginning of the 19th century the first interconnected
RAS library system was formed. At the time this was a
new phenomenon within the library activities because the
library services were organized within the research
institute. From then on the Russian academic libraries
were established and developed alongside the academic
institutions as a worthy prerequisite for the progress of
science. Once the science organizations moved eastwards
The Ural, Siberian and Far East branches of RAS were
formed and comprise today of some 100 research
institutes.
Consequently the information and library system of RAS
was formed. Today in Russia there are six centralized
library systems (CLS):
- CLS of LAS with 42 research libraries
- CLS of the Library of Natural Sciences (a network of
216 research libraries)
- SB RAS library system includes 65 libraries with State
Public Library of Scientific and Technical Literature of
the Siberian Branch RAS at the head
- CLS of the Ural division with 23 libraries
- CLS of the Far East division with 19 libraries
- Two information institutes
These centralized library systems of the Russian
Academy of Sciences (CLS RAS) are all formed
similarly, i.e. the organizational structure and the
technological, methodical and economical approaches
and principles they have adopted are alike. There is a
leading CLS library at the head of each centralized
library system. These leading libraries are
- to provide general management of their network
including further education in staff development,
planning and management issues
- to register all editions obtained for research libraries
of CLS
- to organize interaction between libraries and
resource sharing
- to carry out centralized technological operations
such as acquisition, cataloguing, interlibrary loan,
union catalogue managing, deposit storage and
financial restructuring
- to provide common technological and methodical
documentation.
In this context the main task of an individual research
library within the research institutes is to provide
information and library service for their respective
readers. Of course all the resources of the whole CLS
system in question is at their disposal. In this way a twolevel
technology with vertical interaction was formed.
Now, once the libraries have got an Internet access they
have begun to consider and discuss this network cooperation
model in the electronic environment.
In this respect the State Public Library System Siberian
Branch RAS has for example developed a program to
integrate the information and library system of SB RAS
and moreover to integrate and cooperate with also
libraries in Siberia as a whole. The first step was the
generation of online catalogues and databases. Internet
access to these as well as to other available electronic
resources is now being provided by the library to the
users of the Siberian Branch RAS. The next steps in the
program will include the following tasks:
- the technological development of a distributed book
catalogue in SB RAS research libraries on a common
software, using the possibilities of corporate
cataloguing and protocol Z39.50
- the technological development of a union/distributed
catalogue of all scientific periodicals in SB RAS
research libraries. The mechanism of updating the
union catalogue via Internet is also being developed
- the further development of electronic document
delivery service to enable more libraries to supply
requests with electronic copies
- the development of a series of complex, subject and
problem-oriented information centers specializing in
different fields. Currently there are four information
centers in operation already within the SB RAS
- the development of a cooperative and corporate use
of information resources among other CLS and
regional libraries to enrich the resource base as a
whole
- the development of technological and technical
interaction practices between regional libraries for
reference service and the creation of corporate
information products and services
- the development of distance education forms and
methods in further education
All in all, from the SB RAS chief's perspective it seems that
working in the Internet environment has made the library
relations among RAS libraries more equal and less
hierarchical. This is important for the forming and managing
of both distributed catalogues as well as information and
library services.
UPCOMING EVENTS
CRIS 2002. Gaining Insight from Research Information. 6
th International Conference on Current Research Information
Systems. August 29
th-31
st, 2002 in Kassel, Germany.
EDUCAUSE 2002 Annual Conference EDUCAUSE 2002: Juggling Opportunities in Collaborative Environments
Atlanta, Georgia, Georgia World Congress Center October 1-4, 2002.
http://www.educause.edu/conference/e2002/
ECDL 6th European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries
September 16-18, 2002 - Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, Italy.
http://www.ecdl2002.org/
Online Information 2002 London 3-5 December 2002.
http://www.online-information.co.uk/online/
IFLANET MOVES TO FRANCE
In March the IFLA Headquarters announced that the transfer of the web site IFLANET from its host since 1993, the National
Library of Canada, in Ottawa, to the new host, l'Institut de l'Information Scientifique et Technique (INIST), in Vandoeuvre-les-
Nancy in France, has been completed successfully. The domain name www.ifla.org remains the same. The Singapore Mirror
Site, hosted by the National Library of Singapore now mirrors the main site based in France. Establishing a mirror site in North
America is currently underway.
New listserv address for Science and Technology Libraries
IFLA has also successfully migrated its listservs to the new server and host at INIST in France. For the science and technology
libraries please note that there is a change in address of the Sci-Tech section listserv. The old list has now been closed.
However, the e-mail addresses of the subscribers of the old list were copied to INIST and activated so there is no need to renew
the list subscription. And in all your future communication please use the new address
stl-sc@infoserv.inist.fr
The Science and Technology Section wants to express its gratitude to Dave Price and his colleagues at the Oxford University
Libraries who have served as host of the Sci-Tech list for the past several years. It was Dave, who as secretary of the section,
created the list and helped to migrate it this spring. Sophie Felfoldi, IFLA Web Master facilitated all the details at the IFLA
end and we acknowledge that as well.
***The new Sci-Tech e-mail address is: stl-sc@infoserv.inist.fr ***
Irma Pasanen, as current Section Secretary, will monitor new people joining the list. In fact, since the transfer the visibility of
the list seems to have increased. Eight new persons have joined since March and in the beginning of May 2002 there were 68
members on our electronic discussion list. There are currently 109 members from all around the world in the IFLA Section for
Science and Technology Libraries. Another reason to come to the Annual IFLA meeting is to meet and greet this interesting
group of science librarians!
IFLA, the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
P.O. Box 95312
2509 CH The Hague
Netherlands
Tel. +31 70 3140884
Fax +31 70 3834827
E-mail: IFLA@ifla.org
