Linking Publishers and National Bibliographic Services Factsheet 1 - November 1996

Telematics for Libraries

What is BIBLINK?

Project BIBLINK aims to establish a relationship between national bibliographic agencies and publishers of electronic material, in order to create authoritative bibliographic information that will benefit both sectors. It was launched on 1st April 1996 with funding from the European Commission's Telematics Applications Programme.

The concept crystallised from the work of an EU concerted action known as CoBRA. This forum recognised that the significant growth in electronic publishing raised issues that needed to be addressed at an international level. Project BIBLINK will call upon the bibliographic expertise of the national libraries of Europe, working in conjunction with partners in the book industry, to examine the way in which electronic publications are described for catalogues and other listings.

Why is BIBLINK needed?

All the players in the book industry need bibliographic information. For example:

• national libraries need to secure authoritative advance information about new electronic publications and to exercise bibliographic control over those publications
• libraries and library utilities need information about new electronic publications in order to be able to satisfy their users and to incorporate such data into their catalogues
• publishers need to register new electronic publications (whether on-line through the Internet or off-line on a medium such as a CD ROM) and to ensure timely, accurate and full exposure of their products and services
• electronic publications can carry enriched bibliographic data as an integral part of the publication to benefit users

The issues to be addressed therefore are:

• there is no agreed standard of bibliographic description for electronic publications
• there is no direct bibliographic link between publishers and national bibliographic agencies
• bibliographic control over electronic publications (especially those published via networks) is not adequate despite the continuous growth in the amount of material being published chiefly or solely in electronic form

What are the objectives of BIBLINK?

The BIBLINK project is addressing the above issues by furthering the development and improvement of national bibliographic services by establishing a link between the parties concerned. It is intended to deliver an interactive prototype/demonstration system which will enable publishers of electronic documents to input and transmit an agreed minimum level of data describing the documents to national bibliographic services, allowing those services to enrich the data (for example, by the application of authority control for proper names or the addition of subject information) and retransmit it to the publishers.

Technology

The prototype will employ an agreed standard format for transmission and will convert as necessary to library-based MARC formats for use by the national libraries.

As it is in the nature of on-line publications to change, provision will be made for establishing a one-to-one relationship between a bibliographic record and the electronic document to which it relates. During the registration stage of an electronic publication at the national bibliographic service the document and its description will receive a digital signature, time stamp or fingerprint in order to facilitate verification of a publication and its bibliographic description.

Timescale

BIBLINK has been divided into two distinct phases, each expected to last about eighteen months:

Phase 1: In addition to the scope of the project being more precisely defined, basic information is being collected about data formats, numbering systems, encryption, authentication and format conversion. Consensus about these will be sought with a representative group of publishers.

Phase 2: The prototype demonstration system will be developed and installed at the sites of the project partners and the participating publishers for trials.

Project partners

BIBLINK is being led by The British Library; its partners include:

Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Spain
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris
Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Den Haag, Netherlands
Nasjonalbiblioteket, Rana, Norway
UKOLN, University of Bath, United Kingdom
Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

Two sponsors advise the project:

Book Industry Communication (BIC), London, United Kingdom
CD-ROM SPAG, London, United Kingdom

Project management has been sub-contracted by the British Library to Level-7 Limited, Bracknell, UK.

More information

Further factsheets will be issued as the project progresses, both on paper and on a WWW page that is being developed. For further information contact:

Ross Bourne
Project Co-ordinator BIBLINK
The British Library
Boston Spa
Wetherby
West Yorkshire LS23 7BQ
United Kingdom

Tel.: +44 1937 546591
Fax: + 44 1937 546586
E-mail: ross.bourne@bl.uk
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/BIBLINK/