ITT9904: Calibnet - An Overview

CALIBNET*: An Overview

CALIBNET: Today & Tomorrow

CALIBNET has made significant strides towards fulfilling its dual objectives, i.e.,

(a) launching its library network programs, facilitating remote online access to the holding data of Calcutta libraries, and other specialized databases as well -- a significant step towards bibliographic resources sharing amongst Calcutta libraries; and

(b) providing electronic access to globally available information, imbibing its 'information centre approach'.

Both are essential for advanced learning and scholarship. In the process, CALIBNET aims at covering a wide panorama of information end-user interests, with diffusion of new electronic information technology as the primary concern. The present status of CALIBNET and its immediate focus follow.

Software Developed & Library Network Launched

Intense in-house research and development efforts have now achieved the Library Network capability by three significant strides:

(a) a multi-user storage and retrieval software 'SANJUKTA' to support CALIBNET's Centralized Database (CDB), and to provide online access to it from remote locations;

(b) a conversion software package 'PARAPAR' to support interchange of bibliographic data between USMARC, UNIMARC and CCF files, and also from non-standard formats to standard ones; and

These apart, CALIBNET's pioneering study and research led to its publication of the "Guidelines for Implementation of UNIMARC in Indian Libraries". This will be an invaluable aid for the national database development programme under consideration, that favours adoption of UNIMARC format.

Software 'SANJUKTA' and 'PARAPAR'

With the support of SANJUKTA, the CDB, hosted on CALIBNET server and located at the Network Service Centre, can be accessed and searched online by any one from a remote location, provided one is equipped with a computer, a telephone, a modem and a password from CALIBNET. The efficacy of SANJUKTA has been tested by successful remote logging of the CALIBNET server at Jadavpur, hosting the CDB, from a Workshop venue at Great Eastern Hotel, Calcutta. Online access to the locational information of bibliographic resources via the CDB and sharing of such resources amongst the libraries of this metropolis is now a reality.

The capability of PARAPAR was established through exercises and/or tests on sample records furnished by a major library in New Delhi, and conducted in-house at Calcutta at their instance and eventually demonstrated at a Workshop-cum-Meeting in New Delhi.

The Centralized Database

Now that the library network capability has been established, the most crucial and indispensable activity is to develop the basic resource -- the Centralized Database (CDB), that constitute the very backbone of the any library network -- by inputting the holding data of Calcutta libraries.

The CDB, launched only recently, currently holds around 30,000 records covering:

(a) conference documents held by Calcutta and contiguous libraries;

(b) social sciences: management and economics, behavioural sciences, quantitative methods, computer science, etc. including predominantly journals held by management libraries in South Asia, libraries of Indian Statistical Institute, and Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta; and

Library Network: A Cooperative Movement

The CDB is the bedrock of CALIBNET, and its development essentially calls for a cooperative movement, whereby each library partakes in the movement by contributing its own holdings data to be incorporated in the CDB and thereby enrich it. The CDB needs to be now augmented by inputting holdings data of as many libraries as possible and getting the data continuously updated. Optimum coverage of libraries, which alone will progressively transform the CDB into a truly resourceful online searchable central pool of Calcutta's bibliographic holding data, is now on with the cooperation of libraries.

Participant Libraries

The responses from institutional libraries are very encouraging. The libraries of following institutions have extended cooperation by way of furnishing their respective machine-readable database and/or current journal subscription lists:

1 Calcutta University

2 Jadavpur University

3 Indian Statistical Institute

4 Indian Institute of Management

5 Central Research Institute for Jute and Allied Fibres

6 Anthropological Survey of India

7 Botanical Survey of India

8 Geological Survey of India

9 Zoological Survey of India

10 Bengal Engineering College (a deemed university)

11 National Atlas and Thematic Mapping Organization

12 Bose Institute, and

13 University College of Medicine (Calcutta University)

These are being now inputted into the CDB. By the advent of the new millennium, holding data of many more libraries are expected to go into the CDB. Priority is being accorded to holding data relating to current journals subscribed and new additions from January 1, 1999.

Electronic Access to Global Information

In tandem with its library network programme, CALIBNET has added to itself, under its 'information centre approach', a new dimension that of a purveyor of global information, a phenomenon that now pervades international information market.

With online access to Internet and in-house CDROM resources, CALIBNET can explore a wide spectrum of the knowledge base and corporate and professional enterprises, and meet the information requirements of researchers, academics and other scholars, professionals and any other practitioners engaged in a wide gamut of subject interests.

On-demand Information Services

CALIBNET has several attractive information packages. CALIBNET's ConFile service reaches at one's desk contents of any journal of one's choice out of over 20,000 high-impact journals. Libraries can now prune their journal subscription list or even forego subscribing to new ones, when budgetary constraints so demand, and still get exposed to their contents from ConFile. ConFile helps libraries in economising on journal subscription and reducing the drain on precious foreign exchange resources. On demand, CalibOrder offers the requisite back-up service by way of delivery of full-text of any article, and even patents.

CALIBNET services are well defined and could be customized as well. Once can leave with CALIBNET just keywords defining his subject interest and get at regular intervals via ConAlert service the current and tailored bibliographic information at his desk. RetroFile offers least status and trend of research on any specific topic. ConFile, ConAlert and RetroFile, in combination, offer the latest information and advances in the entire spectrum the subject interest.

CalibLink

A special feature of CALIBNET is the CalibLink, a email connectivity (from its ERNET hub) installed and working fine at four institutions.

Institutional Resources Development Services

Some of the key institutional resources development services offered are:

(a) retrospective conversion of existing card catalogue in libraries into computerized local databases via electronic mode by downloading from international databases;

(b) consultative services on LIS automation;

(c) manpower development for operating and manning automated LIS environment through a wide range of graded training programmes, and customized courses for individuals or groups at client's site.

Immediate Focus

Indian Resources Database

Development of Indian Resources Database of historical value covering manuscripts and rare books, and personal collections, has already been initiated with porting on the CDB and index to serials published by Asiatic Society during the last two centuries.

CALIBNET on Internet

The design of CALIBNET Web page is almost complete and will be available on the Net very shortly. The web page will facilitate access to bibliographic information resources available through hosting of CALIBNET's Centralized Databases. This apart, the CALIBNET web site would provide:

(A) active links to access

¨ Indian Library & Network Resources,

¨ Overseas Library Resources on India, including rare documents -- printed and manuscripts,

¨ Worldwide Library Catalogues,

¨ National Libraries of the World,

¨ Newspapers and Journals,

¨ Electronic Reference Tools,

¨ Factual Information Sources, and

¨ Book-Trade Databases; and

(B) varied CALIBNET programs for

¨ On-demand Information Services,

¨ Electronic-mail Connections,

¨ Consultative Services for Library Automation,

¨ Manpower Development; and

¨ R&D in IT Applications.

SGML-Mediated Conversion of Free-Text into Standard structure

This is one of the areas of research which should contribute enormously in developing machine-readable databases speedily and cost-effectively. The experience in bibliographic conversion available in-house will greatly help in using the relative software once those are sourced from Internet and / or commercial agencies.

SANJUKTA

A multi-user storage and retrieval software _ has been developed in-house to support CALIBNET's Centralized Databases and to provide online access from remote locations. SANJUKTA has been designed and implemented by A. Mukhopadhyay, Technical Consultant, CALIBNET, and his associates, based on MOD+, a software he developed earlier to support management of small/medium-size libraries.

Database Structure

The database, designed after network model, consists of several inter-operative data files, and implemented on FoxBase platform under UNIX environment. The design supports variable-length fields, multi-valued fields, variable record structure, and storage of variant types of bibliographic records concurrently.

Software Feature

The software has been developed, using 4GL code, and designed to provide the user with options and flexibility in generating records, organizing and searching information, viewing the search outputs, and interchanging data files with external databases with least manual interference.

Search Facility

End-users can search databases in two ways. If so desired, one can view a table of search terms, including personal and corporate names, title keywords, subject descriptors, and then select those of interest with the help of highlighted navigation bar. Alternatively, the user can key-in the search terms directly. Along with the search terms, the relevant field-selectors may be assigned to restrict search within the specified fields. The terms can be connected with each other with boolean operators to narrow down the search. It also permits truncation to include all terms with a common stem. The software employs techniques and methods capable of searching databases with precision and speed, and prompting the number of hits on screen instantly.

Display of outputs

The users have option to specify the range of records for display by inputting the starting and ending hit numbers. The next option they have is for viewing the records in a format of their choice. While the default is Labeled Display, as commonly found in OPAC, the alternatives are AACR II, USMARC and UNIMARC formats.

Record Generation

The records can be generated programmatically by converting bibliographic data imported from external databases, or alternatively, by keyboarding manually. The manual procedure is user-friendly and does not require inputting of any data element twice. The Classification Codes and Subject Descriptors can be assigned by switching predetermined values from an updateable thesaurus.

Data Transportation

Since the centralized databases are populated with records originated in the participating libraries, the import of bibliographic files from external sources is the primary means for database building. The imported records are often dissimilar in structure and required to be converted before transferring into the centralized database files. To support such requirements, a series of utility programs have been created and bundled into a separate package PARAPAR.

PARAPAR

A conversion software package, PARAPAR, has been developed in CALIBNET to support interchange of bibliographic data between USMARC, UNIMARC and CCF files, and also from non-standard formats to standard ones.

Objectives

Its primary objective is to convert data files, received from the participating libraries in variant formats, into a ISO-2709 compliant implementation through which the files are merged into the Centralized Database of CALIBNET.

This apart, PARAPAR provides the necessary means for generating machine-readable catalogue by converting records downloaded from USMARC databases available online or in CD. Its capability of cleaning data, by stripping off the special characters and punctuation marks prior to actual conversion, ensures high quality of data that should require no or little editing. This feature helps the libraries in computerizing their catalogues cost-effectively.

Today, when the UNIMARC is being accepted as the national standard for Indian library databases, PARAPAR should be very facilitating in converting existing files available in variant formats into UNIMARC standard.

The utility also helps those libraries who prefer to develop special databases in CCF by enabling them to convert records from non-CCF files.

Environment

Most of the libraries in India are using CDS/ISIS or some commercial systems for developing their databases. Only a few follow standard specifications. PARAPAR should be much useful in upgrading them to a standard format with a bit of customization. This can be done in two ways. Firstly, when the internal structure is known, as in the case of CDS/ISIS, the conversion can be executed on the internal data. Otherwise, when the internal structure is not known, as in the case of some commercial proprietary DBMS, the conversion can be executed on the data-strings extracted from the output files.

Operations

PARAPAR works at three levels for data extraction, organization and transportation. The middle level file holds processed data elements ready for being transferred to the target file. The user is allowed to browse the processed file for previewing the data representations in their redefined formats for validation, before the transfer finally takes place.

User Interactions

The program assumes that the source file be fully compliant to one of the ISO-2709 implementations, and therefore there should be no need for the end-user to supply processing parameters, like tags, subfield-code, indicators. Users' intervention, though often considered user-friendly, can be idiosyncratic field-designators to creep in. PARAPAR requires its users only to specify the special characters used for the Record Separator, Field Separator, Subfield Delimiter, and to indicate if the Indicators are used in the source file.

The software package has been designed and developed by A. Mukhopadhyay, Technical Consultant, CALIBNET.

Guidelines for implementation of UNIMARC

It has been brought out by CALIBNET to provide the library professionals in India with a working tool for developing their databases in a mutually exchangeable format. The document has been prepared in 1994, based on UNIMARC Manual (1987), by A. Mukhopadhyay, Technical Consultant, under a project sponsored by the National Information System for Science and Technology (NISSAT), Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Government of India. The Guidelines has made an attempt to take care of the special requirements of the Indian libraries.

The document consists of five sections. The introductory section deals with the objectives and scope of the document, the purpose and role of UNIMARC, the physical aspects of UNIMARC, and highlights some significant issues relating to successful implementation of the system. A glossary of related terms has been provided for the benefit of those not familiar with bibliographic database parlance.

The core document enumerates field-by-field specifications of the data elements. Every UNIMARC field has been represented with a definition in terms of the data elements it holds, an indication of its status in terms of occurrence, the proper form of data rendering, and examples of the field -contents filled with actual data. In addition, a number of illustrations of coded records have been given in an appendix for helping the users to understand the specifications and build confidence in working with the standard.

A separate section has been devoted for enumerating various codes to be used in UNIMARC-fields for depicting language, country, currency, role designations, textual formats, GMDs, etc.

The document also offers recommendations, under the section `Implementation Notes' for synchronizing the physical database structure and application software with the UNIMARC specifications, particularly keeping in view the application of Micro-CDS which is being used commonly in India and neighbouring countries.

The appendices include citations of the standards and references relevant to the study of UNIMARC, and a supplementary note on the changes taken place in the UNIMARC format incorporated since 1987.

UNIMARC has been developed with the initiative of the International Federation of Libraries and Institutions (IFLA), and maintained by its Universal Bibliographic Control and International MARC Programme (UBCIM). Besides its use as a common exchange format, the UNIMARC has been adopted by countries like France, Portugal, and South Africa, as their national standard. The scheme has been preferred to other implementations of ISO-2709 due to its relatively sound logical base and comprehensiveness of treatment. It is important to note that the UNIMARC has been accepted by the Library of Congress as a standard alternative to USMARC for distribution of LC Records. In India, it is now being adopted as the national standard for bibliographic database.

The Guidelines is expected to serve the Indian libraries in upgrading their databases to the international standard.

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* CALIBNET, a Society under West Bengal Societies Registration Act 1961, is responsible for Calcutta Library Network, a project sponsored and supported by NISSAT.