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Denmark's Electronic Research Library. Annual report 2005

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Title:
Denmark's Electronic Research Library. Annual report 2005

Summary:
Information supply to research and education is still the core objective for Denmark’s Electronic
Research Library (DEFF). In 2005 the majority of DEFF’s projects focused on the development of digital services to scholars and students based on libraries and their information resources. The framework for DEFF’s activities is characterized by continuous extension of existing and new collaborative relations.

The Ministry of Education’s institutions’ involvement in DEFF was officially marked in the spring at a
conference in which the minister for education took part. The interdisciplinary cooperation between
the three ministries, Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Ministry of Education and
Ministry of Culture is an obvious opportunity for creating an even more coherent information supply
and for establishing new collaborative relations between the institutions under the Ministry of
Education and the other institutions in DEFF.

Publisher:
Danish National Library Authority

Author:
Denmark's Electronic Research Library

Language:
English

URL:
http://www.bs.dk/publikationer/english/deff05/index.htm

ISBN:
87-91554-62-4

Digital ISBN:
87-91554-63-2

Version/edition:
21-04-2006

Data formats:
html,htm,jpg,gif,pdf,css,js

Publisher category:
statslig

Key subjects:
Denmark's Electronic Research Library

Contents



Preface

Introduction

DEFF organisation

Review of DEFF

DEFF activities in 2005

International cooperation

Knowledge Exchange

Accounts

Objectives in 2006

DEFF secretariat

Preface

Information supply to research and education is still the core objective for Denmark’s Electronic Research Library (DEFF). In 2005 the majority of DEFF’s projects focused on the development of digital services to scholars and students based on libraries and their information resources. The framework for DEFF’s activities is characterized by continuous extension of existing and new collaborative relations.

The Ministry of Education’s institutions’ involvement in DEFF was officially marked in the spring at a conference in which the minister for education took part. The interdisciplinary cooperation between the three ministries, Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Culture is an obvious opportunity for creating an even more coherent information supply and for establishing new collaborative relations between the institutions under the Ministry of Education and the other institutions in DEFF.

Another important event for DEFF was formalisation of the cooperation with foreign partners through the establishment of Knowledge Exchange. This cooperation provides DEFF with a unique opportunity to work closely with and learn from foreign partners who in a number of areas have gone considerably further than we have in Denmark. In this connection there is a great deal of inspiration to be gained from JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) Great Britain, DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) Germany and SURF (SURF Foundation) Netherlands, where the collaboration – apart from the library area – also includes joint IT development within the university area.

Particularly the collaboration with the universities is getting increasingly more important when creating a coherent infrastructure. The need for very close cooperation was underlined both at the conference, ’Building the Info Grid’ last September and in the review, which DEFF carried out last August. Common access management is an obvious example of an area where cooperation and coordination are essential, and I am happy that the work in DEFF within this area is now aiming at a national solution for higher education and research.

There is also increasing focus on the need for establishing common and coherent solutions within the library field itself. The many common projects within DEFF and the extended cooperation within system architecture are good examples of the development of common solutions, but I would welcome an even greater focus on concrete consolidation and agreements on shared services.

The libraries face growing demands from the ’mother institutions’ as to new services, for example in connection with support for publishing and learning. At the same time, a number of library services look like being standard offers which it might be an advantage to streamline. I would like to see a closer cooperation on consolidation of the libraries’ standard services on fewer platforms and a functional division of labour where libraries establish competence centres offering shared services.

DEFF ought to continue to be a forum for shared development, but ought moreover also to a greater degree to focus on how to consolidate information supply and thereby release more resources for the establishment of new services.

Kim Østrup

Kim Østrup
Chairman of DEFF Steering Committee

  

Introduction

To a great extent this annual report reflects that 2005 was a year of international cooperation. There were three major events: Establishment of Knowledge Exchange, the conference ’Building the Info Grid’ and an international review of DEFF. These events will have great influence to bear on activities in 2006 and particularly on the revision of strategy and preparation of a new action plan for DEFF, which the Steering Committee has planned for 2006.

The extension of the cooperation in DEFF with the Ministry of Education’s institutions is an important cause for the revision of DEFF’s strategy. As will appear from the National Budget stipulations for DEFF the extension has been formalised, but the practical collaboration and concrete objectives have as yet not found their final form.

Peter Brantley
Peter Brantley, Director of Technology from California Digital Library,
photographed during his talk ’Deploying services, not libraries’.

At the conference 'Building the info grid' 
At the conference ’Building the Info Grid’ in September
2005 17 countries were represented with about 240 delegates.

Distinguished engineer from Google Scholar, Anurag Acharya
Distinguished engineer from Google Scholar, the
charismatic Anurag Acharya, was keynote speaker
at the conference with ’A Google Scholar Perspective’.

National Budget stipulations for DEFF 2005

Denmark’s Electronic Research Library (DEFF) is an organisational and technological partnership between research libraries cofinanced by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Culture. DEFF’s purpose is to advance the development of a network of electronic research libraries that make available their electronic and other information resources to the patrons in a coherent and simple way. DEFF offers financial support to shared development projects, development of infrastructure and administrates joint purchase of licenses. The Danish National Library Authority runs the secretariat of the partnership.

 

DEFF organisation

DEFF coordination commitee

 DEFF steering commitee

From left to right:

Kim Østrup, Niels-Henrik Gylstorff, Peter Rubeck and Karen Grundvad Kvist

Gerd Bechlund, Jens Thorhauge, Erland Kolding Nielsen and Poul Bjerregaard

 DEFF responsible

Bo Öhrström

 

Organisation of DEFF

Organisation of DEFF

 

The organisation of DEFF continued in the main unchanged in relation to 2004. The status of the license group was changed, however, when it went from being a group under Directors’ Forum of the Research and Higher Education Libraries to being a programme committee under DEFF. The members of DEFF’s programme committee were originally appointed up until 1. January 2006. But the Steering Committee decided to extend the mandate until 1. September 2006, thus providing time to revise strategy and discuss action plan before deciding on the actual organisation in relation to programme areas.

Review of DEFF

“As we move from an information environment of scarcity to one of abundance the phrase ’pervasive information’ could be an appropriate description of the user’s new demands in relation to IT systems. There will increasingly be a need for libraries to present information to the user’s own information environment and for the library’s information resources to be integrated into the user’s work processes.”

The above quotation is taken from the report on the international review of activities in DEFF that was conducted in August. The summary was written in connection with head of development at the State and University Library, Birthe Christensen-Dalsgaard’s study of development tendencies within the field of libraries and IT. The quotation illustrates part of the reason for DEFF carrying out a review. A study of activities with external resources can in fact give an indication of international developments and whether DEFF is on the right path.

An important purpose of the review was to provide contributions to the revision of DEFF’s strategy. Apart from the concrete action lines there is therefore also quite extensive focus on organisational issues. The review was carried out in the course of two days in August together with partners from the Netherlands (SURF), Great Britain (JISC), Finland (FinELib) and Norway (BIBSYS) who then submitted recommendations as to the future work of DEFF.

General recommendations

In relation to DEFF’s overall activities and the role of the Steering Committee the reviewers paid particular attention to the fact that there is no management as such as regards library and IT development. They pointed to this as a considerable challenge, i.a. because the building up of a coherent infrastructure demands a great degree of coordination and agreement on objectives.

The reviewers suggested DEFF’s strategy to be formulated in a broader context that would relate explicitly to universities and other central players, but also to more general social objectives. The need was stressed for a very definite focus on choice of activities and projects as well as a clear message as to how DEFF should create value for its interested parties. In this connection it was recommended that the Steering Committee should conduct an analysis of these parties. It was also suggested that it was desirable to work towards a better dissemination of results and to include more libraries in this work.

Excerpts from conclusions from Review

  • Pervasive information – the library present in the user’s web environment
  • National policy for research results and teaching materials that would ensure access to these
  • Programme for information literacy
  • Better dissemination and documentation of results
  • E-learning and epublishing merging into an eframework
  • Knowledge management of university is a possible new role for the library
  • Closer collaboration with universities and possible need for a Danish SURF
  • Web services and Shibboleth are the way ahead.

In relation to DEFF’s overall activities it was recommended that the Steering Committee take the initiative to current benchmarking with other countries within certain selected areas. Licenses were considered an obvious such area. The reviewers also found that the Steering Committee ought to take the initiative to the formulation of a number of general policies and guidelines, i.a.:

DEFF’s activities

The review examined the activities within the three programme areas: System architecture, E-learning and E-publishing. Generally the reviewers agreed that DEFF’s activities and plans within the three programme areas were sensible and sound. The emphasis was on development of access management based on Shibboleth, and plans for a serviceorientated architecture were the right initiatives. However, access management and general architecture presuppose close collaboration with research and education institutions, out of consideration for the users but also because the systems in the architecture must exploit each other’s functionality. That was why the need for close collaboration with the libraries’ mother institutions was emphasized.

The reviewers pointed out the need for common standards and interoperability in order to ensure a coherent infrastructure. They also drew attention to the tendency for elearning and epublishing to be regarded as part of a larger common information infrastructure at for example universities. It was mentioned that the library is getting a more active role in supporting knowledge processes at the mother institution (see e.g. eframework.org). The need for new digital learning materials was underlined and finally the reviewers emphasized information literacy as a major focus area in a new strategy for DEFF.

General development tendencies

The presentations of the more general development tendencies also pointed to a more active and extrovert role for the libraries. Several of the tendencies within research and education will bring a direct influence to bear on libraries.

Research and education

In relation to research it was stressed that much important scientific progress happens across traditional research areas. That is to say that scholars are inspired by methods and results from other areas of research, or that they establish interdisciplinary cooperations. This socalled ’mode 2-knowledge production’ involves a great need for IT systems and dissemination that will support research across subject areas. It was suggested that libraries could play a role here.

A similar tendency towards more interdisciplinary cooperation can be observed in relation to sectors where educational institutions, authorities and businesses to a greater degree act as producers of knowledge in various contexts. This phenomenon, triple helix, also provides new challenges to an information infrastructure and to libraries.

Finally – in connection with the discussion on lifelong learning – the need for IT support of the interaction in different shared practices was stressed as well as the need for a broader focus than in traditional elearning.

It was emphasized that all educational levels to an everincreasing degree focus on learning that is projectorientated and problembased. Professor Hans Siggaard from Learning Lab Denmark did not think that the need is directed towards more content – at any rate not as far as higher education was concerned. He felt that the need is greater for supporting new ways in which the user can organise, exploit and deal with the content. Learning Lab Denmark’s work with educational XML was mentioned, and it was suggested that libraries could focus more on what the user actually does with the material than just make content available – a suggestion in keeping with the introductory quotation.

Library development

Birthe Christensen-Dalsgaard maintained that the application of new technology often passes through three phases. In the first phase the technology is applied in existing processes, which are made better and cheaper. In the second phase the technology is integrated into the processes, which are partly adapted to the technology. And in the third phase the processes begin to change character, and completely new applications and processes emerge. The application of IT in the public sector with selfservice systems as the preliminary highlight can probably be said to be an example of such a development.

Birthe Christensen-Dalsgaard illustrated how IT is changing the libraries’ activities and which of the three phases the development has arrived at within a number of areas. The areas presented and discussed were:

An important tendency, which is also emphasized in the three stages, is the move towards greater focus on IT support of processes and a more dynamic library concept.

DEFF activities in 2005

DEFF secretariat

The DEFF secretariat coordinates the activities in DEFF and is placed at the Danish National Library Authority. The Authority’s deputy director, Bo Öhrström, has the dayto-day responsibility for DEFF.

The secretariat has eight members of staff whose salaries are paid by DEFF. This in an increase in staff by two compared with 2004 and reflects increased activity within in particular the license area, i.a. due to the Ministry of Education’s institutions joining DEFF.

One of the Authority’s consultants is permanently attached to the DEFF secretariat, working primarily with electronic publishing, digitisation, elearning and library-IT. The Authority’s lawyer assists in contractual negotiations and deals with legal issues, while the Authority’s communication consultant handles DEFF’s communication activities.

Apart from dayto-day tasks the DEFF secretariat’s most important activities in 2005 were the planning and arranging of a number of DEFF events in cooperation with the participants of the programme committees.

DEFF events 2005

  • Information meetings about electronic information resources from 7. February till 9. March throughout the country

  • Seminar on the AAI projects 9. February at The Royal Library in Copenhagen

  • Seminar on XML Web Services 11. March at Technical University of Denmark in Lyngby

  • Conference marking the Ministry of Education’s reentry into DEFF 18. April at The Danish Architecture Centre in Copenhagen

  • Conference in collaboration with ISI. Distribution of prizes to frequently quoted Danish scholars 24. May at Moltke’s Palace in Copenhagen

  • Seminar at The Royal Library on propagation of XML Web Services 25. May at The Royal Library in Copenhagen

  • Consortia Day – licenses and professional networks in DEFF 17. August at University of Southern Denmark in Odense

  • International review 18.-19. August at The Copenhagen Admiral Hotel

  • Standardization courses for educational libraries – on danMarc2 and the interplay between DanBib and local bases 22.-23. September at Schæffergården in Gentofte and 13.-14. October at Vingstedcentret in Vejle

  • Seminar on future information structure – ’Building The Info Grid’ 26.-27. September at Copenhagen Business School in Copenhagen

  • Seminar on search engines – ’Federated Search’ 13. October at the Royal School of Library and Information Science in Copenhagen.

DEFF programme areas

The programme areas reflect DEFF’s strategic action lines. They include six very different areas with associated programme committees responsible for the development of each individual area.

The most central area is cooperation on purchase and administration of digital information resources within the license area. Within System architecture work is going on with development and consolidation of access management and extension of a serviceoriented architecture. E-publishing and elearning focus on the establishment of an infrastructure and standards for the libraries’ handling of new material and on the development of the user’s information literacy.

Within User facilities the emphasis is on user service in the shape of virtual reference and improved usability on the libraries’ homepages. And finally, within Portals the main issues are consolidation of existing portals and development of these professionallybased accesses to information.

DEFF activities in 2005

Members of DEFF’s programme committees

User facilities

Peter Søndergaard

E-learning

Stig Broström

E-publishing

Annette Winkel Schwarz

Licenses

Helle Lauridsen

Portals

Birte Christensen-Dalsgaard

System architecture

Arne Sørensen

User facilities

The programme committee User facilities had an unusual large number of meetings in 2005 with seven working group meetings, dealing with project preparations and completion of the programme area’s second action plan.

The action plan 2006-2007 presents the following vision:

The programme committee User facilities has a vision of developing the meeting between library and library patron. User facilities’ vision operates in the ’cross field’ between those development tendencies which are considered positive for the users and those actual conditions as regards information dissemination that create barriers for those users’ access to information. User facilities’ vision shapes the action plan’s dual strategic logic between focusing on the usersupporting element in information dissemination and on those elements that create barriers for access to information. The vision is realised in the following action lines:

The formulation of the action lines provides the framework within which the projects are developed. Two usability studies were completed in 2005. 11 major Danish research libraries took part in one of the studies and submitted the report The userfriendly digital research library, while the other usability study between the Arkade libraries is to submit its report in 2006. The object of usability studies is to localise problems and barriers that library users face in their attempt to gain access to the libraries’ materials and resources: Localising such barriers goes a long way towards trying to remove them. Once introduced in the libraries, considerations inspired by usability methods ought to develop into a permanent intellectual tool to be used in the libraries’ deliberations on user service. As part of the reporting User facilities programme committee therefore developed a project dealing with the establishment of a knowledge centre for library usability with an obligation to gather new experiences within this field, assist the libraries with initiating usability studies and arranging conferences on the subject. The project outline is being worked up at the present time.

A common feature of the eleven libraries’ usability study was that the users find it difficult to make the most of the libraries’ offers of electronic resources. This situation can be remedied by adapting homepages etc., and the service could be marketed more effectively. The working group therefore discussed and outlined a new User facility project on marketing, following the same methodical model as in the previous usability project. The project is expected to be discussed in the DEFF Steering Committee at the beginning of 2006.

Within the action line ’Improved information access’ User facilities and ’Ask a librarian’ over the year discussed a common project on local and national virtual reference applying new and shared software. The DEFF Steering Committee approved the project, and in early 2006 a twoyear joint project will start up with the application of software VRLplus+ developed by the American Docutek. About 15 special and research libraries will be invited to participate with local installations.

With help from the User facilities programme committee CVU-Mid West received funding for ’The analysis model – a web tool’ where library and instructors together will develop an IT tool for i.a. dissemination of information.

In 2005 User facilities joined a project on revitalising the service: ’Books to your doorstep’. This meant that the DEFF catalogue gained a new purpose as catalogue for the libraries taking part in that service. As a result of a relaunching of the service, it became possible in 2005 for the users to return borrowed material to any participating library.

In the coming period the User facilities programme committee will further attempt to modernise, dynamise and adapt the libraries’ user service according to the action plan for 2006-2007.

E-learning

Closer interplay between the digital library and digital tuition, development of students’ information literacy, access to the library from a Learning Management System (LMS) and accessibility of video material on the net are some areas that the elearning committee have been dealing with in 2005.

Development of information literacy

Development of information literacy has been an important theme for the elearning committee over the past year. A number of projects have been launched that represent the Ministry of Education as well as the university sector in various ways. The aim is closer integration between professional education environments, making the development of information literacy no longer exclusively a library task, but also a task to be solved in cooperation between library and education.

The DELA-project

The elearning committee launched the important DELA-project (Digital Educational Library Access), which is engaged in bringing the library to the user in the actual learning context. Via the virtual learning environment the user can access relevant material from the library’s collection. As part of the project a pool for learning objects has been developed, LORE (Learning Object Repository).

Video material – part of digital library services in the future

The committee also launched the project ’EduMedia’, which will give the users online access and opportunity to distribute learning and researchrelevant video material via streaming on the Internet.

Compendia on the net

Communication and knowledge dissemination is one of the elearning committee’s permanent goals, and was therefore also a field of activity in 2005. A way to fulfilling this goal has been the project ’Research libraries as facilitator for netbased tuition’. The project has dealt with the task of transferring experiences and knowledge within the field of ecompendia to other DEFF institutions. This happened via oneday workshops for interested institutions.

Site on copyright

Finally the elearning committee has been working on copyright issues in cooperation with the epublishing group.  

E-publishing

Initiator of a Danish research portal, midwife for epublishing of smaller periodicals, active in Open Access issues as well as digitisation of materials for teaching and research are some of the areas that have figured on the agenda of the epublishing committee.

Forskningsportal.dk

A great effort has been made to realise the plans for a national research portal for journalistic communication of research results. A concept description and a web mockup have been presented in a scheme design and submitted for hearing to ministries, research institutions and among disseminators of research. Generally speaking there is considerable back up. Work on the implementation of the portal will be continued in 2006.

Research registration

Research registration and publishing has been another important theme during 2005. The PURE system has been implemented in seven universities. Work is going on to integrate PURE and The Danish Research Database. Formats have been developed and working routines described.

From printed to electronic periodical

An important area has been the work with smaller periodicals’ migration from printed to electronic form. The target group was noncommercial periodicals published by universities, libraries or companies or a combination of these. A project has been testing a number of epublishing software and analysing the deliberations of the periodicals as to the change to epublishing. Two periodicals representing the areas of technicalnatural science and humanities/social sciences were migrated. The project finished with a workshop in November.

Preservation of data in Institutional Repositories

There is an increasing awareness of the need for the preservation of digital data in connection with the building up of Institutional Repositories. A project was therefore initiated within this area.

Digitisation and Open Access

During the past year a vast number of governmental commission reports were digitised. These attract a large user group (law students, lawyers etc.), which would mean heavy wear on the collections, but in this way the collections are made available to a much greater extent.

The programme committee has also started to focus on digitisation of teaching materials and the question of rights to published material, including the need for dialogue and awareness on behalf of ministries, universities, research councils and research agencies in relation to Open Access.

Licenses

2005 was the year when the Ministry of Education’s reentry into DEFF became really noticeable. More than 40 Ministry of Education institutions have gained access and their demands for resources other than those of the research libraries have encouraged the establishment of professional networks. These are composed by participants from all library types and they help towards a broad and professionally wellfounded selection process. The networks were established in late summer 2005.

Development in number of DEFF license agreements and libraries

Development in number of DEFF licence agreements and libraries

Since DEFF in 1997 signed the first consortium agreement on behalf of a number of libraries, the number of both participants and agreements has risen.

The first agreement in 1997 had eight participants. From 2000 the number of participants has risen annually, but it is obvious that from 2004, when the Ministry of Education’s institutions joined the license agreements, the number of participants has risen markedly. The number of license agreements is increasing steadily. However, it is very likely that the increase will not go on at the same pace.

DEFF perspective plan for licenses 2005-2006

During 2005 the license committee also worked on a revision of the perspective plan for the license area. The plan indicates that the aim of the license committee is to help the institutions to acquire as much relevant academic information as possible for scholars, teachers and students. Acquisition takes place via national cooperation in order to streamline the process and the administration of licenses as well as to obtain as much information as possible at the most reasonable price available. Cooperation takes place on an international scale in order to obtain the best prices and conditions.

Over many years the license committee and Directors’ Forum of the Research and Higher Education Libraries have discussed scales for payment of individual licenses. The big old periodical licenses were all agreed on the basis of the individual library’s stock of printed periodicals, and many years later this may seem unreasonable. The question of scales has therefore been examined and discussed very thoroughly, but it was subsequently agreed by Directors’ Forum of the Research and Higher Education Libraries that redistribution within the Directors’ Forum of the Research and Higher Education libraries was not expedient and the project was finally shelved.

The license committee’s sustained wish to try to negotiate a professional license across the libraries was eventually realised, but unfortunately the offer was not sufficiently attractive to make enough libraries want to participate.

Agreements on ebook licenses, however, have been much more successful. Not only have the large periodical publishers Elsevier, Wiley, Springer and Thieme etc. embraced the medium and started to publish ereference works in a serious way. Many new packages have also seen the light of day and been exceptionally well received by Danish libraries. E-books present an entirely new challenge to the libraries, and it is to be expected that the work with ebooks will become more and more prominent.

A lot of hard work has also gone into agreement on more Danish licenses. This is heavy work for both the DEFF secretariat and the libraries, as Danish publishers generally speaking are not inclined to put Danish literature on the net.

At the very end of 2005 the license area went from being a group set up by Directors’ Forum of the Research and Higher Education Libraries to becoming a true DEFF programme area. It is to be hoped that the muchdesired cooperation with the other DEFF programme committees, which the license committee initiated, can be strengthened and unnecessary duplication avoided.

Elsevier – Number of downloads 2000-200 incl. DADS figures

Elsevier - Number of downloads 2000-2005 incl. DADS figures

The Elsevier agreement is the biggest agreement, both in terms of volume and price, that DEFF has entered into. Since the agreement was signed at the end of 1999, usage has been steadily increasing.

A number of smaller institutions have subsequently been included in the agreement, making the total number of participants 39.

The comparatively big increase that happened in 2003 is due to the fact that Elsevier bought up Academic Press and made their titles available from 2003. An increase of about 300,000 downloads clearly shows that users have accepted the electronic periodical.

Average price per download

Average price per download

Price per download (DKK)

Since 2002 the price per download (on average) has been falling every year. This shows that fortunately the number of downloads increases more than does the price. It also shows that electronic periodicals are being used, and that it is a medium to be reckoned with in the future.

 

Portals

In 2005 the work in the portal committee was characterized by three main activities:

Migration of existing subject portals to Keystone

Keystone is DEFF’s Open Source tool for the construction and running of subject portals. In 2005 the work on migration of the last subject portals to Keystone was completed. The portals in question were: The Virtual Music Library and Bizigate. The two portals were at the same time moved to the DEFF portal hotel, bringing all DEFF portals together.

The new Virtual Music Library at www.dvm.nu reflects the increased focus on dissemination of source material: The online periodical Dansk Musik Tidsskrift (Danish Music Journal) has been supplemented with all the articles published in Jazz Special from 1991 ff and the Nordic Sounds from 1982 ff.

Dansk Musiklitterær Bibliografi (Danish Music Literary Bibliography) and Dansk Musikfortegnelse (Catalogue of Danish Music) from the Royal Library’s database are also searchable from The Virtual Music Library.

The migration of Bizigate meant that the portal was supplemented with an English user interface. The link pool of resources registered in the old Bizigate has also been thoroughly sorted and tidied.

Finally, the DEFF secretariat has assisted the development of Juraportal.dk (law portal) in Keystone.

Evaluation of the subject portal concept

The study Portals in Danish research libraries, subject portals and web pages was completed. The study consisted of interviews with representatives from 13 research libraries and the objective was to examine experience of and need for dissemination of academically relevant Internet resources.

The report revealed i.a.:

In connection with interviews it was also discovered that the construction of subject portals has been most important for professional cooperation:

The hybrid library – from the users’ point of view

The aim of the project was and is to secure the basis for making decisions on:

Input was collected through field studies where nine selected users kept a diary and also through two workshops where ideas were put to the test. The idea is that the identified statements will be quantified in connection with a major questionnaire.

The final report is being drawn up, but preliminary results seem to be:

On information retrieval

On staff

On the physical library

The library is used as a framework for studies and professional intercourse, but the library’s staff and resources are only used to a small degree.

Other activities

In 2005 the programme committee initiated two theme days. The first was a followup to the work with migration, while the other dealt with future plans for the portals. Despite the portals’ established plan for the future work, there was also a wish to continue meeting and discussing portalrelated tasks and issues.

System architecture

One of the most important general activities was the planning and staging of the conference ’Building the Info Grid’ with over 200 delegates from all over the world. The conference marked the increasing focus on international cooperation and must be deemed a great success (http://seminar.deff.dk/).

Access management (AAI): At the beginning of the year most of the projects started in 2004 were completed. One project, which were to produce statistics for traffic through proxy servers was, however, not completed till autumn 2005. The project on local authentication whose aim was to consolidate the existing access management system used by Danish scholars and students, continued in 2005 with special focus on integration of CAS (Central Authentication Service). The system was offered as a package to several of the major research libraries and has been implemented in a number of them.

New projects in 2005 are ’Consolidation of user databases’ where The Royal Library and the State and University Library are establishing a system that ensures integration with external user data from the mother institution on the basis of a consistent data model. Together with the project ’E-periodicals and Shibboleth’ these have provided the professional and experimental basis for the year’s major result within the area of AAI, which is the formation of a joint national initiative DK-AAI in cooperation with The Danish Rectors’ Conference’s ICT-initiative. Towards the end of 2005 a financial basis was established for starting DK-AAI as a national framework for access management for research and higher education. The main purpose for 2006 within this field will be the establishing of DK-AAI as a more permanent organisation. This will happen by way of concrete results that demonstrate the utility value and will ensure a complete national backing in the three ministries and among the universities.

XML-based web services (XWS): The sub area likewise completed the 2004 projects at the beginning of 2005. The XWS part has in 2005 been working on a project which uses Fedora, a web service based library architecture, as generic architecture for repositories. Most pilot projects have shown positive results, but as we are talking about pilot projects with services that are not necessarily central to libraries, it has proved difficult to obtain any wider acceptance of the web service concept on behalf of many libraries.

A project was therefore launched with focus on gaining greater acceptance of web services and on identification of the application that can form the basis for a more complete acceptance. The project arranged a theme day in spring 2005 and again in January 2006. The main purpose in 2006 for XWS will be to continue and complete the work with Fedora and to identify and realise web services with broad application and exploitation in the libraries.

DK-AAI is based solely on open standards.

DK-AAI

Proposed organisation: DK-AAI is organised and financed initially as a collaboration between The Rectors’ Conference’s ’Project Digital Management’, Danish Research Network and DEFF (Denmark’s Electronic Research Library). The Ministry of Education and SEDIRK (The Assembly of Director Generals of the Danish Government Research Institutes) participate in the organisation with a view to a swift extension of this initiative to related areas.

The organisation must have access to resources in the form of money and working hours. Based on inspiration from Finland (HAKA projects) and Switzerland (SWITCH-AAI) the above organisation has been proposed.

International cooperation

In 2005 DEFF was involved in a number of international activities, such as participation in international fora, international visits to Denmark and an international review of DEFF activities. The members of staff in the secretariat who deal with licenses have been in regular contact with primarily foreign suppliers who normally conduct their negotiations in Denmark.

International fora

NordOA

Since 2004 DEFF has played an active part in the cooperation on epublishing and Open Access (OA), implemented in the Nordic networking cooperation, NordOA. NordOA has twothree representatives from institutions of higher education, research and library institutions in each country. The common objective is to deal with national political issues in connection with OA, to follow international developments and to inform and share knowledge about OA at Nordic and national level.

The major action lines for NordOA are:

Denmark is represented by Mogens Sandfær, member of the DEFF programme for epublishing and Hanne Marie Kværndrup from the DEFF secretariat.

International visits to Denmark

Several international organisations have visited DEFF in Denmark in connection with study tours etc. Examples are:

Supplier contracts

The license unit in the DEFF secretariat annually negotiated a large number of contracts based on a contract portfolio of more than 150 contracts. The largest negotiations – in financial terms – were conducted with Elsevier, ISI and Springer with a total contract volume of more than 50 mil. DKK. A number of meetings were held to this end both at home and abroad.

Knowledge Exchange

Towards the end of 2004 four European organisations decided to enter into a formal cooperation through the establishment of Knowledge Exchange. The four organisations were:

Core activities in Knowledge Exchange are to include sharing of information and expertise, common policies and identification of best practices as well as selection and stimulation of joint projects and programmes. The goal was to establish a Knowledge Exchange Office, based at the Danish National Library Authority, managed by the four organisations and manned by two people.

The official launching of the Knowledge Exchange initiative took place in Berlin on 1. December in connection with the 11. Online Educa Berlin Conference, where Executive Secretary Dr. Malcolm Read gave the opening address.

The partnership agreement

During the first half of 2005 DEFF and the Legal Adviser to the government together prepared a partnership agreement. The agreement described primary goals, funding, budget, organisation and activities in Knowledge Exchange, and in May all partners signed the agreement. Subsequently two posts for the office in the Danish National Library Authority in Copenhagen were advertised in the four partnership countries, and interviews were conducted in June with a view to starting work at the end of August.

Establishment of organisation

Knowledge Exchange is managed by a board of directors, consisting of nine members, two members per country and a chairman from the host country, Denmark.

The board of directors was established in 2005 and the members are:

Knowledge Exchange Office was manned with two persons. Diann Rusch-Feja was appointed Programme Director. Diann has i.a. worked as both lecturer and manager at various German research institutions.

Nina von Staffeldt was appointed Programme Manager. Nina has i.a. worked in various Danish agencies and ministries as well as a freelance consultant.

As a connecting link to the four organisations, a national representative for each country was appointed. All of these have a thorough knowledge of the mother organisation and are therefore able to optimize the local cooperation with Knowledge Exchange.

Overall objective and value increment

Knowledge Exchange should be a unifying force, assisting the four partner organisations in the work towards a common infrastructure and common service based on international standards in support of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) within higher education and research.

The main purpose is to develop closer relations between the organisations in order to increase the benefits of national investments in ICT infrastructure, services and projects.

Through knowledge sharing, exploitation of differences, partnerships and advancement of international dialogue the vision is to:

Knowledge Exchange Office must facilitate a better foundation for decisionmaking and policies in the national organisations and focus on achieving better, quicker and cheaper digital development results through a strong partnership.

Knowledge Exchange work methods

The areas for knowledge sharing contain a considerable number of subjects dealt with in various project and development activities in the four organisations. The key subjects for Knowledge Exchange are obviously those where common development, reuse and strategies as well as policies will be to the advantage of all the partners.

The subjects are chosen on the basis of obvious usability and the shortest possible path to a successful result.

Knowledge Exchange has the following strategic work methods:

Prioritisation of effort

Over the coming year Knowledge Exchange will be focusing on twothree areas of strategic importance for the four organisations. These must be areas where the usability value is obvious, while at the same time the complexity is at a manageable level.

Background information will be produced within essential thematic areas and activities in the four organisations as the basis for prioritisation. The information will be selected at an overall, operational level. Knowledge Exchange Office will subsequently systematize the information according to important common subjects, possible differences and expertise and submit strategic suggestions.

The overall goal is thus over the next three years to develop and implement a wellfunctioning concept for knowledge sharing at several levels and in a variety of combinations by involving key persons and experts from projects under the four organisations in an international cooperation and development environment.

Accounts

DEFF’s grant, inclusive means carried over, amounted in 2005 to about 17,2 mil. DKK. 11,5 mil DKK were spent on action lines and about 5,4 mil. DKK went on expenses in connection with DEFF secretariat and administration – a total of about 16,9 mil. DKK. The difference of 0,3 mil. DKK is due to a number of accounting adjustments and a carrying over into 2006.

Administration of the cooperation on electronic information resources within the license area is an essential part of the DEFF secretariat’s work with a turnover of about 75 mil. DKK. This amount does not figure in the accounts as the licenses are purchased with the libraries’ own means.

System architecture is the biggest item within the action lines. This is i.a. due to the fact that it includes expenses in connection with the running of deff.dk, including payment for TD-Net and funding for projects within the area of System architecture.

The other items within the action lines are almost exclusively grants for projects. The negative figure under E-publishing reflects reversals from an earlier project. When no funding has been given to E-publishing in 2005 it is because the area received large grants in 2004.

A more detailed account can be seen on DEFF’s homepage.

Total balance 2005

DKK

Transferred 2004

78.611

Appropriation 2005

17.100.000

Total appropriation

17.178.611

Costs – action lines
System architecture
Portals
User facilities
E-learning
E-publishing
Licenses (grant Ministry of Education)

 

4.372.105
1.666.400
1.308.664
3.643.600
-172.231
697.792

Total costs action lines

11.515.752

Secretariat (incl. rent etc.)

5.370.927

Total costs 16.886.679
Reversals concerning KEO collaboration

-53.263

Incidental items

1.844

Carried forward 2005

239.935

 

Objectives in 2006

In 2006 the Steering Committee wants to revise the strategy for DEFF and formulate a new action plan. The revised strategy and the new action plan could mean changes in the organisation of DEFF in connection with changes in the programme areas.

Focus will still be on how DEFF can improve the cooperation with institutions from the Ministry of Education area and with other smaller institutions. These institutions need i.a. systems that will support electronic publishing and learning.

2006 will probably also be the year where Knowledge Exchange Office establishes its first concrete collaboration activities between the partners. It is also expected that a more formalised cooperation with universities and research institutions will be established in relation to shared access management. The collaboration has been given the preliminary title DK-AAI and has thus already gained support from DEFF, The Danish Rectors’ Conference’s ICT group and the Research Net.

System architecture will also concentrate on the continuous propagation of web services. It still remains to be decided how the Steering Committee’s focus on consolidation and concrete cooperation on shared services should be realised in concrete projects.

Within epublishing DEFF will endeavour to reach a final clarification of the organisation of cooperation on the Danish Research Database and the establishment of a proper research portal. Work will also be continued on the preparation of an actual recommendation concerning Open Access and concrete recommendations on formats and policies for epublishing and digital learning objects.

Within User facilities projects will be launched with a view to encourage virtual reference, which will make it possible for the librarian to be present in the user’s web environment. The projects contain some very interesting perspectives for the future hybrid library and the libraries’ service profile. Within elearning there will be an examination of DEFF’s projects within the development of information literacy to enable the Steering Committee to determine DEFF’s future role within this field.

DEFF secretariat

Responsible for DEFF:
Deputy Director Bo Öhrström

Administration:
Head of secretariat Jakob Heide Petersen

Consultant, digitisation, retroconversion, electronic publishing:
Library consultant Hanne Marie Kværndrup

E-learning:
Library consultant Julie J. Kihl

Portal editors:
Library consultant Lise Mikkelsen
Library consultant Morten Andersen

Secretary:
Lotte Pantawapirom

DEFF licenses:
Consortia administrator Anette Schneider
Library consultant Kurt Mathiesen
Library consultant Anja Lundeman

Legal matters:
Specialist legal adviser Henriette Fenger Grønfeldt

Communication:
Communication consultant Sine Storr

Denmark’s Electronic Research Library
Danish National Library Authority
Nyhavn 31 E
DK-1051 Copenhagen K

Tel.: +45 33 73 33 73
Fax: +45 33 73 33 72
deff@bs.dk

www.deff.dk  



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