Digital Archiving in the Hungarian Széchényi Library The story and the plans of the Hungarian Electronic Library Rome, 21. Oct István Moldován OSZK, MEK Department

Review Digital preservation Digitisation and archiving Different approaches in the world One alternative : the Hungarian Electronic Library Summary

Digital preservation UNESCO Resolution on Digital Preservation: “The world’s cultural, educational, scientific, public and administrative resources... are increasingly produced, distributed and accessed only in digital form.... Digital information is highly susceptible to technical obsolescence and physical decay and maintaining ongoing access to digital resources requires long-term commitment.”

Digitisation and archiving Digital archiving as much important as digitisation! fast changes on the Internet off-line media types become obsolete publishers don’t archive the electronic versions etc. paper documents => many digitisation projects original electronic documents => only a few digital archiving projects

Possible approaches in the world Denmark: Netarchive United States: The Internet Archive Sweden: Kulturarw3

One possible approach: The Hungarian Electronic Library abbreviated in Hungarian: MEK launched in 1994 supported by the Information Infrastructure Development Project (IIF) The main goal: “to collect and organise Hungarian and Hungary-related electronic documents that are freely available for scientific, educational or culture-related activities.”

Hungarian Internet Backbone

Original MEK Gopher

Original MEK1 Web

MEK VRML

New MEK2 Web

The organisation : Civil initiative and later a non-profit association with volunteers Since 1999 : A department of the Hungarian National Library Staff: 5 full time employees, 7-8 co- workers, and still many volunteers

Acquisition sources from Web-sites from CD-ROMs directly from authors directly from institutions directly from publishers from volunteers

Content reference books; lexicons, bibliographies, dictionaries classical and contemporary Hungarian literature (novels, poems, short stories) scientific literature (articles, books, conference or research papers) Hungarian literature in foreign languages maps, music scores...

Size more than documents with metadata total size of the files is about 2,5 Gigabyte formats: plain text, HTML, PDF, Word, RTF, TeX, PostScript, LIT e-book, JPEG As of October 2002:

Usage about visitors a day more than hits per day visitors from countries main user groups:  students,  teachers,  parents,  blind people,  Hungarians living in foreign countries

Statistics

Copyright new copyright law since 1999 on-line publication is similar to television or radio broadcasting Hungarian Bureau for the Protection of Authors’ Rights (ARTISJUS) generic permission for novels, short stories and poetry individual permissions for scientific literature

The process of aquisition Internet Website , FTP Floppy CD-ROM printed document Copyright permission Quality control Format conversion „ISO and Unicode” Cataloguing, metadata other information Upload to MEK Downloading

Example #1 (the original Word document from the editor)

Example #1 (converted HTML format in the MEK)

Example #1 („cover page” in the MEK2)

Example #1 ( DC metadata and “catalogue card” in the MEK2 )

Example #2 (original printed document)

Example #2 (electronic version - from the translator - in the MEK)

Example #3 (original CD-ROM database)

Example #3 („virtual exhibition” with the manuscript in the MEK)

A new document type: the Electronic Periodical Archive A collection of the URL addresses Selective archive of journal issues Full-text archive of selected journal articles scientific journals cultural journals magazines newspapers newsletters (some of them published in foreign countries) A 3-level service:Types of e-periodicals:

Plans for the future integrated digital library system open standards and free software Dublin Core metadata data exchange in MARC format Z39.50 support Open Archive Initiative compatibility persistent URN addresses interface and text to speech conversion for blind people chat forums for the readers...

Summary The task of collecting, processing and providing various types of electronic documents can be undertaken effectively only by national libraries. Need of selection, quality control and post- processing of these documents. Long time preservation and the easy availability of the documents are also equally important. I hope, we all will be able to cope with this challenge, and the libraries will be with us in the end of this century too - even in electronic form.

Thank you for your attention!