- Organization of library-information system in Slovenia
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Agricultural libraries and information centers.
Most agricultural information resources are held at the seven
department libraries of the Biotechnical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana.
(Agronomy, Biology, Food Science and Technology, Forestry and Renewable Forest
Resources, Landscape Architecture, Wood Science and Technology, and the Zootechnical
Department). The Biotechnical Faculty maintains also a central library (Central
Biotechnical Library) which is organized conjointly with the Slovenian National
AGRIS Center. This library represents the coordinating body of the Slovenian
agricultural library-information system and also a basis for international cooperation.
Selected information sources are also kept at the library of
the Agricultural Institute of Slovenia and at the library of the Veterinary
Faculty. Electronic and other agricultural information resources are located
also at the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Maribor and at the University
Library of Maribor. The Faculty of Agriculture in Maribor, however, is much
smaller than the Biotechnical Faculty of Ljubljana, which remains the central
agricultural research and education institution of Slovenia. Some agriculture-related
information resources are to be found also at the National and University Library
and at the Central Technological Library.
- Other institutions in support of library-information.
University computer centers: University of Ljubljana
Computing Center assists an extensive and complex network of research institutions
which are scattered on different locations in Ljubljana. The Center has been
developing and extensive wide area computer network METULJ (butterfly) with
the aim to serve University needs. The University of Maribor Computer Center
maintains a Local Area Network that serves the needs of the University of Maribor.
Academic Research NEtwork of Slovenia (ARNES): ARNES
provides network services to Universities, other higher education institutions
and government research institutions in Slovenia. It has been developed as the
national communication backbone. The objective is to promote and enhance national
and international cooperation with respect to scientific research.
Cooperative Online Bibliographic Information System and
Services (COBISS): COBISS has been developed by the IZUM (Institute for
Information Sciences) and has been Slovenian bibliographic utility since 1988.
It has served as a basis for shared cataloguing and maintenance of national
bibliographic database. The system provides for online communication between
local computer systems, and the host computer system. It offers various applications
such as COBIB, INFORS, and several databases, produced by Slovenian institutions,
and assists end-users in Slovenia in accessing many foreign databases. The COBIB
serves as an online union bibliographic/catalogue database based on all-Slovenian
shared cataloguing. INFORS (Information System of INFORmation Resources in Slovenia)
contains information on information resources, available in or accessible from
Slovenia.
Information activities since the sixth Roundtable - Domestic activities
All of Slovenian agriculture libraries have by 1997 started to actively participate
in the COBISS system. Data on agriculture-related, and of course all other records
in Slovenia can therefore be accessed from any of the libraries that participate
in the system. Slovenian agricultural bibliographic resources have become generally
accessible also via the WWW.
Libraries maintain coordinated input that is based on the principles of shared
cataloguing so all the data are entered only once. System has become a basis
for assessment of scientific and professional productivity of Slovenian authors
by the Slovenian Ministry of Science and Technology since all the documents
produced by our researchers need to be bibliographically available as citations
via this system. For the last two years, however, many other activities have
taken place in the libraries and information centers, such as end-user education
or publication of papers and organizing network access to selected information
sources.
New network applications have been organized within the Local Area Network
as well as within the scope of cooperation with some other libraries. Network
licenses have been acquired for a few selected databases with a limited number
of entry posts that require a password. This network has been, however, locally
available only to the libraries of the Agronomy, and Food Science and Technology
Department, and the Central Biotechnical Library along with the AGRIS Center.
There remains the need of extending the services to some other departments.
The problem is technical in nature.
The networking activities that the National and University Library and at the
Central Technological Library are composed mainly of setting up a University
Wide Area Network in order to make databases generally accessible to a large
number of users from the University of Ljubljana. The access is effected by
a special application ULTRANET or via the WWW, and is made possible only by
the use of passwords that are allocated by the two above libraries, and then
locally delivered by the Central Biotechnical Library. This enables the end-user
to accede such invaluable databases as the Science Citation Index or the Index
to Scientific and Technical Proceedings. A number of full-text databases are
being considered for acquisition.
The heads of libraries and information centers hold regu lar meetings in order
to review the most favorable acquisition possibilities such as a setting up
of a consortium. This involves certain organizational problems as it is difficult
to estimate the exact financial share of each institution in question. Moreover,
the library administrators seldom carry sufficient decision making authorityithin
their respective institutions so they are often left with the cumbersome tasks
of persuading faculty deans or department heads of the needs for a significant
change in acquisition policy.
Instructions for writing of student papers: The information specialists
of the respective libraries of the Biotechnical Faculty have been recently conducting
regular encounters in order to prepare extended instructions for writing of
treatises such as B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. theses, based on international standards.
This instructions will represent the standard for the Faculty.
User training and education: Student education is conducted as a regular
faculty course of information science and documentation. Practical exercises
also take place in the libraries and reading rooms. Students learn how to use
the latest electronic information resources and how to find and retrieve data.
They also get familiar with the basics of the theory of information retrieval.
Special emphasis is placed on the use of controlled vocabulary.
Publication of papers: Papers written by information officers are published
in agriculture-related journals and proceedings, Slovenian library and documentation
journals and proceedings, and also in foreign publications.
Indexes to agricultural journals: Indexes to selected Slovenian agricultural
journals are generated by information officers of the Biotechnical Faculty.
The indexes are based on international indexing systems and facilitate information
retrieval in journals.
- International activities
Meetings and training: Representatives from Slovenia have actively
participated at three international agriculture-related library-information
meetings such as the Sixth U.S./Central & Eastern European Agricultural Library
Roundtable in Tucson, USA in March/April 1997, USAIN/IAALD Joint Conference
in Tucson, April 1997, the Fourth Technical Consultation of AGRIS and CARIS
Participating Centers in Rome, Italy in June 1998, and AgroWeb CEE Workshop
in Godollo, Hungary in April 1999. The meetings provided an insight into the
recent development in the area of information storage, retrieval and communication
with respect to agriculture. They served as a valuable opportunity for our information
officers to review and upgrade methods of organization of information. The AgroWeb
pages of Slovenia have e.g. been set up as a consequence of the Godollo training.
These international events have been of utmost importance as an occasion of
meeting professional colleagues from all over the world and have hence been
stimulating in a professional and personal sense alike.
Exchange program and international bibliographic availability: Slovenian
agriculture-related libraries have maintained an intensive exchange and cooperation
program with libraries and information services worldwide. Slovenian journals
and proceedings have been sent to major libraries such as National Agricultural
Library (NAL) in the United States or FAO Library. Selected journals and proceedings
have been sent to international information indexing services, such as CABI,
in order to be bibliographically synthesized in be made internationally accessible
via databases. As a consequence of cooperation with NAL many documents have
been included into the ISIS catalogue and have thus been made internationally
even more accessible via the NAL's WWW utilities.
AGRIS input: A comprehensive and systematic input has continued in
the AGRIS database which has thus become a very informative source of agriculture-related
documents published in Slovenia. Input has averaged some 500 records per year,
and has included only those records that have been on a published level supplied
with an English abstract and title. This has been set as a condition by the
Slovenian National AGRIS Center. It has become important for researchers that
their published papers be included by at least one international indexing service
so they are motivated to supply the papers with English data what may in turn
increase quality of some papers and thus increase a possibility of international
feedback
Stabilization of human resources and conclusions
Activities in the agricultural libraries in Slovenia have increased in the
period of the last two years. Some questions, such as a maintenance of the national
bibliography in the field of agriculture, have been settled by the final emergence
of the comprehensive all-Slovenian bibliography COBIB that includes not only
agriculture but also all other research areas in Slovenia.
In the present the problems of stabilizing human resources in the libraries
in Slovenia are not very acute. However, significant differences exist between
the libraries in different sectors. Public libraries, such as municipal libraries
for example, enjoy better financial conditions in terms of wages. These libraries
are financed by the Ministry of Culture. Research and education libraries, on
the other hand, receive most of their funds from the Ministry of Science and
Technology, and Ministry of Education and Sport. Wages are accorded mostly by
the later. Also, the wages of library and information staff at the University
are somehow conditioned by the wages of researchers and professors which are
supposed to be higher than those of the librarians and information professionals.
Current attempts exist to at least recognize scientific degrees of library and
information staff and to give such professionals a better chance for promotion.
The situation of wages remains somehow demotivating for University information
professionals which frequently possess more versatile skills than public librarians
since they have to serve a more demanding scientific community, which, in turn,
occasionally shuns the efforts of research libraries.
The libraries and information centers in Slovenia have recently not seen much
reduction in staff. The numbers of library and information professionals were
reduced to the limits in the past. In the county of two million there are altogether
some twenty people involved in the agricultural library and information system.
The existing work force has to do its best in maintaining the existing services
while simultaneously addressing the needs of highly demanding end-users and
introducing new utilities.
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