ISSN 1039-348X
No. 78
November/December 1994
ABN News with Ozline News was edited and designed by Margaret Davey using desktop publishing software. This publication is issued bimonthly by the Services to Libraries Division of the National Library of Australia. Subscriptions are available on application at the rate of $A40.00 p.a. from:
Editor, ABN News with Ozline News
Network Services Marketing
National Library of Australia
CANBERRA ACT 2600
Unless otherwise specified, for further information contact the ABN/Ozline Help Desk on (1800) 026155 or (02) 62621580.
In the last issue of ABN News, we announced the selection of CSC Australia as the preferred vendor for the NDIS Project. On 31 October, the two national libraries signed an initial consultancy agreement with CSC to enable work to begin straight away on what we have called "Phase 0" of the project. This initial work will be primarily analysis and design. We have called it Phase 0 because it is a foundation phase essential for the overall project but with no product from the work which users can see. Over the next two months we will be negotiating the main Systems Integration contract with CSC for the overall project.
Two experienced project managers are leading the project: CSC's project manager, Tran Tai, and the Libraries' joint project director, Jan Rosi. Tai and Jan have both had considerable success in delivering leading edge technology products to the marketplace.
Tai's role will be to deliver an implemented NDIS service, meeting the specifications of the Libraries. Jan's role will be to ensure the services delivered meet Australian and New Zealand user and market needs. Both will be responsible for ensuring services are delivered within tight timeframes and within budget.
Since Jan took up her appointment with the two national libraries as Joint Project Director in August, she has worked to set up a single project structure spanning the two national libraries. There is a project manager in each country and a team of business and technical staff specialising in different areas of responsibility.
Jan has identified the following keys to success of the project:
Phasing (breaking the project down into manageable, lower risk steps) will be a key part of the project. Phase 0 (the analysis and design phase) will take 5 months to complete. It will result in:
Phase 0 will also result in a project plan for the overall project.
In September, we asked you to comment on the implementation priorities as they had been defined in the Request for Tender over a year ago. The feedback we received has been taken into account by both libraries to break the Project into more tightly defined phases:
Phase 1 is aimed at search intermediaries, document delivery staff and end users, including academics, researchers and professionals. The scope of Phase 1 needs discussion with CSC to confirm what is technically feasible. Hence we will let you know the confirmed contents of Phase 1 early next year.
These are the requirements for Phase 1:
These are the requirements for subsequent phases. They are not in order of priority. This will be determined closer to the development of each phase:
We plan to implement all these services within the project timeframe.
Overview of the CSC Australia Solution
The CSC Australia solution will use industry standard building blocks to create a strategic business application specifically designed to meet the Libraries' requirements through to the year 2000.
Hardware Platform
The central processing configuration will be Unix-based and will exploit modern parallel processing techniques to meet the Libraries' demanding availability and performance requirements.
Until recently, this technology has been used mainly for scientific and technical applications requiring numeric-intensive processing capabilities. However, hardware vendors are now realising the potential of parallel processing in the commercial marketplace, particularly as a means of addressing the high volume, text intensive style of processing required by the Libraries.
CSC Australia is proposing to install the NDIS application on a series of IBM SP2 processors at the NDIS central site. The SP2 is the latest offering from the RISC System/6000 family and the first to offer massively parallel processing capabilities. The RISC family uses AIX, IBM's Unix-based operating system.
Data Management & Retrieval Capability
The Libraries' requirement for a powerful data management and retrieval facility will be met by a package of three software components to be supplied by the Oracle Corporation. The first of the components, the Oracle 7 relational database software, will support searches on structured data fields such as dates and coded cataloguing data, including searches on ranges of values. Oracle 7 can also store multimedia data, such as pictorial images and sound, as Binary Large Objects or `Blobs'. It uses an extension of the SQL standard based on the planned international SQL3 Multimedia Committee specification.
The second component, the Oracle TextServer3 software, will support searches on text, including Boolean searches on keywords, with features such as word truncation, word proximity (one word adjacent to or near another) and relevance ranking. This text retrieval software is fully integrated with the Oracle 7 relational database software, allowing searches on text to be combined with searches on structured data. It would also allow multimedia data (such as oral history sound recording) to be linked with appropriate text (such as the transcript of the recording).
The third component, the Oracle ConText software, will support advanced text analysis. It can identify the themes in unstructured text, and assigns a weight to each theme. It can, for example, deduce from phrases like `interest rates' that a document is a banking document. Its analysis capabilities are supported by a 600,000 word dictionary, in which each word can have up to 1,000 attributes or meanings. In addition, ConText uses a `linguistic parser' to analyse the grammar of each sentence and to determine whether a word (such as `ring') is used a a noun or a verb. ConText can also create abstracts or summaries, to any desired level, from the full document text. The use of the ConText software within NDIS is yet to be fully determined, but it will assist in improving the precision of searches by filtering out documents whose main theme is not germane to the search.
To take full advantage of the NDIS at the earliest possible stage, users will require at least a 486 PC with a minimum speed of 33MHZ and a minimum memory of 8Mb. It is also recommended that an NDIS controller be installed at sites of more than a few terminals to optimise performance. More detailed information, on user hardware will be distributed early in the new year.
Major suppliers to CSC Australia for the NDIS project include Oracle, IBM and Novell.
The entire Project is expected to take two years to implement and will replace current library systems such as the Australian Bibliographic Network, Ozline, New Zealand Bibliographic Network and Kiwinet. The new system will provide faster, more efficient document search, ordering and delivery facilities.
The service will allow the National Library and the Australian library community to exploit the latest technology and take advantage of the Internet and other broadband services.
Development Software
Because of the unique nature of the Libraries' requirements, CSC Australia is proposing a purpose-built application, with incorporation of available third party solutions where appropriate and cost effective. To address the risks in this approach, CSC plans to use an object-oriented application strategy which lends itself to the construction of a flexible and extendible application framework.
Object-oriented programming technologies are particularly suited to meet the Libraries' requirements because of the extent to which the data entities requiring to be supported share common properties but with significant variation. An object-oriented approach allows functions to be inherited across classes and sub-classes, with only differences in behaviour requiring design and coding.
AMI users will be pleased to know that AMI will now be updated on a regular monthly basis. However, because of some difficulties with the system since it was transferred from the Department of Health's computer, it has been decided that no updates to the online version of MeSH will be installed in the lead-up to the redevelopment of the online systems.
This means that no 1994 MeSH terms (or, next year, 1995 terms) are searchable in AMI. Records which would normally have new terms (eg. GREENHOUSE EFFECT) will instead be searchable using the 1993 term applicable to the concept (eg. CLIMATE). Records which were being withheld from the online database because of these MeSH difficulties are being revised, to replace 1994 headings with the older terms. When AMI is migrated to the new system in 12-18 months, records will be revised to update the MeSH headings.
The November 1993 NH&MRC sessional report has now been indexed and added to AMI, and citations to most of the abstracts of the September 1994 Australian Society for Microbiology Congress are being added to AMI in October-November. Recent journal additions include the Journal of Law and Medicine, and the Lincoln Papers in Gerontology series.
The thirteenth year of ABN services has now been completed. Warwick Cathro, the NLA's Assistant Director-General, Services to Libraries, reviews the developments in 1994 which aim to improve services to you the user.
For the last few years it has been clear that the key to improving ABN and Ozline services can only lie with the complete redevelopment and replacement of the existing ABN and Ozline systems. Accordingly in 1993 we completed and issued, in partnership with the National Library of New Zealand, a Request for Tender for a new National Document and Information Service (NDIS).
The first half of 1994 was devoted to getting us to the point where we could commence the NDIS Project. We evaluated the five tender responses, decided on a shortlist, undertook a further evaluation including a benchmarking exercise, and conducted preliminary negotiations with the shortlisted companies. Following approval from our Minister, we announced in September that CSC Australia had been selected as Prime Contractor and Systems Integrator for the NDIS Project.
The two national libraries announced the appointment of a Joint Project Director, Jan Rosi, in August, and other NDIS staff were recruited by the two libraries. A contract with CSC Australia, covering the initial phase of the Project, was signed at the end of October, and the Project commenced at the beginning of November. During late November and early December, presentations about NDIS were delivered in Canberra, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane and Melbourne.
At these presentations, it was announced that the proposed solution for NDIS would use the Oracle package of database software, which includes an integrated solution for storing and searching both structured and full text information, together with the capacity to store and deliver multimedia data. It was also announced that the IBM SP2 (Scalable Powerparallel 2), a massively parallel processing platform, would be used to provide the hardware support for NDIS, in conjunction with client processors located at user sites.
By the end of 1994, the analysis and design phase of the Project (Phase Zero) was well underway, with a number of broad design documents already completed.
The improvement of service is linked closely to improvements in the quality and quantity of data, including the development of additional databases which can be carried forward into the NDIS service. We therefore devoted attention to the area of data improvements in 1994.
In the case of ABN, these data improvements took a number of forms. The duplicate record removal software was completed, and a number of contracts for duplicate record removal were let in mid 1994. We also completed a contract with Blackwells to make available through ABN their enhanced MARC records, which include Table of Contents data, and we commenced distributing these records to users in September. We also completed the development of new Batch Holdings Update software, which allows users to regularly upload holdings changes to ABN by producing a change file from their local system.
During 1994 the National Library, as part of a consortium which includes seven other libraries, worked on the development of a National CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) system. This system, expected to be implemented in or after April 1995, will be linked initially to ABN and later to NDIS, to provide nonroman script support until NDIS can itself support these scripts.
In the case of Ozline, we expanded the service to cover 33 Australian databases. This was achieved largely through the inclusion, from July, of the science and technology databases previously made available through the CSIRO Australis service. We also completed the transfer of the Australasian Medical Index to run as part of the Ozline service.
Late in 1994 we commenced a project to copy and store the journal articles which are indexed by APAIS. These articles will be scanned by the Silver Stream company, who will provide them on CD-ROM, but our intention is also to provide these article images through NDIS, under a suitable licensing arrangement, once the first phase of the NDIS service is implemented. This should be the forerunner of a number of other image or full text databases of Australian and New Zealand documents that will be made available through NDIS.
Improvements to Document Delivery & Gateway Services
The NDIS service will place a strong emphasis on document delivery services, and on electronic access to remote document services. To anticipate this direction, we completed a gateway arrangement with the UnCover Company, to provide access to UnCover through ABN, and to provide a competitive pricing arrangement for Australian customers. This new service, called UnCover Australia, was launched in July. As part of the agreement with the UnCover Company, the National Library is providing document support for over 400 additional Australian journal titles in the UnCover service.
In July we also implemented a gateway from ABN to the Internet. This gateway, aimed particularly at those ABN and Ozline users that do not have AARNet membership, provides access to UnCover and other services available on the Internet, such as Medline and the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN).
The early part of 1994 saw the completion of a number of enhancements to the ABN ILL Subsystem. The ILL Payments Service allows libraries to settle their ILL accounts through ABN, instead of through vouchers. The SOFI Order Service allows end users and library staff to create an ILL request as an immediate by-product of a SOFI search. Software called CASPAR (CApture, Sort and Print ABN-ILL Records) allows ILL Subsystem users to download incoming requests into a local system for further manipulation.
The developments in ABN and Ozline which took place in 1994 were consistent with our strategic direction, which is to facilitate nationwide access to documents through the development of a new National Document and Information Service. Apart from the NDIS Project itself, our activities in 1994 were aimed at improving the data to be migrated or added to NDIS, and at making essential pre-NDIS improvements to document delivery services.
While these activities were occurring, we trust that we continued to provide a reliable and responsive service to you, our customers. The year saw encouraging increases in the use of Ozline, Supersearch and ILL services, while our cataloguing services continued to be heavily used, and many users chose to upgrade their membership category.
We wish all of our customers a Happy Christmas and a productive and progressive year in 1995.
What do you do when the cataloguing record you want is not on ABN? From early next year ABN customers will be able to search the RLIN database (the Research Libraries Information Network) and add any record they find to ABN.
RLIN is a major research database in the United States containing records for more than 21 million titles in over 365 languages.
Searching will be at a discounted rate, and, at least for the first year, there will be no charge for ordering a record.
When you have found a record you can either rekey it onto ABN (for a $A7.00 original cataloguing credit) or order the record to be loaded onto ABN automatically. Automatic loading will not be as quick as rekeying as it requires RLIN to place a copy of the record onto the National Library's computer using file transfer over the Internet, and the addition to ABN will be scheduled with the national agency records.
Other benefits will be:
To access this forthcoming service you can go to RLIN direct via the Internet or you will be able to use the National Library's Internet gateway.
For those of you familiar with RLIN, we will be offering the `Classic RLIN' service.
When Can You Use It and More Information
The service will be available in early 1995. More details about how to join, access, training and pricing will be sent to customers when the gateway starts operating.
The following is a summary of recent CJK Project developments:
![[Photo: CP Tang.]](abn78c.gif)
Murthy Manchella (left), who will be providing systems support for
the CJK project and CP Tang on his first day at work on the National Library
CJK Project
Duplicate Removal - Part of the NBD Quality Improvement Program
![[Photo]](abn78d.gif)
The duplicate removal team: Hsien Wong, Jake Young, Karen Simm, Carrie
Reyn, and Ian Day.
Remember those green (serials) and pink (monographs) duplicate records report slips that you have been sending to the National Library over the years? They have not been sent in vain. At last D day (duplicate removal day) has arrived.
Removal of duplicate records from the ABN database started in earnest in June of this year. While we waited for this day to arrive the NBD & Standards Section staff have been busy. We have sorted about half of the 100,000 slips we have received. In the process of sorting we found many of the slips were duplicates of each other so these were thrown out.
To date 20,000 slips, mostly monographs, have been processed. We decided to start with monographs to gain experience before tackling the more complex serials.
In November we started removing duplicate serial records. Approximately 20,000 serial slips need to be processed. It is anticipated that 79% of the monograph and 50% of the reported serial duplicates will be removed by the end of June 1995.
Experienced people from CAVAL, KATLIB, SMR Scansearch and NBD & Standards Section are working together on the project. Manuals are being used to standardise procedures.
Even with the most experienced staff a record may be accidentally replaced. If this happens cataloguers may re-input the incorrectly replaced record, include a message giving rid and title of the record with the wrong holdings attached and then use VERIFY-M to notify NBD & Standards Staff. All libraries will then be notified by form letter to check their holdings.
If you would like to report duplicate records, please ask us for some blank duplicate records report slips. All slips should be sent to the NBD & Standards Section of the National Library.
Thank you for helping us to clean up the database in readiness for NDIS.
The Australian Conference Database (CONF) covers forthcoming conferences and significant seminars being held in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. Coverage is predominantly in the science and technology fields but many other disciplines are covered. The database is produced by CSIRO Information Services and is updated monthly. If anyone is interested in contributing conference details on any discipline please contact Loretta Ciric on (03) 4187260, fax: (03) 4190459 or email: loretta.ciric@cis.csiro.au. The minimum requirement for listing is: conference name, date to be held, contact name and address and contact number.
Ozline's popular free database of the month program will be continuing in 1995. Each month Ozline users will be able to explore two or more of Ozline's databases free. The offer applies to access via the user friendly SOFI interface or STAIRS but doesn't include off-line prints. The free database schedule is:
February
March
April
May
June
Keep reading ABN news with Ozline news in 1995 for tips on how to get the most out of these and other Ozline databases and for information on further free database offers.
If you aren't already an Ozline customer now is an excellent time to consider joining. For more information please contact:
The Manager, Products & Online Services
National Library of
Australia
Canberra ACT 2600
Telephone: 1800 026155 or (02) 6262 1531
Facsimile: (02) 62731180.
CatSkill is the new interactive multi-media cataloguing training package which was launched recently at a reception at the National Library. CatSkill provides integrated training in the use of Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (2nd edition 1988 revision) and MARC (ABNMARC, CANMARC, UKMARC or USMARC). The package is designed for students and beginning cataloguers, and as a refresher for experienced librarians. CatSkill is published on CD for use on either Macintosh or Windows computers. The price for a single copy of the package is $A995. Site licences for multiple users are available. CatSkill is the product of InfoTrain, a creative partnership between DocMatrix Pty Ltd, tel/fax: (06) 2477446 and Learning Curve Pty Ltd, tel: (02) 62815899 or fax: (02) 62815909, from whom further information can be obtained.
The Police database, produced by the Australian Federal Police Library, aims to support the information needs of people working in the area of federal law enforcement and community policing. It also aims to provide a valuable information resource to the broader community.
The database covers police operations, management and training as well as other disciplines related to modern policing - law, criminology, social sciences, public administration and occupational health issues.
Currently the database contains 3,000 records and is updated four times per year.
The database commenced in 1991 and selectively indexes articles from Australian and Overseas journals, individual chapters from books as well as conference papers.
One of the most important, and enjoyable, aspects of the work of the Network Services Marketing Section is meeting ABN and Ozline users at trade exhibitions and other events. Trade exhibitions also provide us with an opportunity to offer advice on how to get the most out of using of ABN, Ozline and UnCover Australia, and to spread the word about new services including the latest news about the NDIS Project.Marketing staff spend a considerable amount of time organising and attending trade exhibitions and look forward to meeting you at one soon.
During 1995 we will be part of the exhibitions at the following conferences
(If you would like to visit this trade exhibition but aren't attending the conference please phone Rob Walls on 008 026155 or (02) 62621657 for a free exhibition pass)
Moore Theological College Library
Moore Theological College Library has been an ABN member for about five years now and has steadily moved towards Full Service membership which was accomplished in June of this year.
It is one of Sydney's historic libraries. Founded as part of the College in 1855 the library lays claim to holding Australia's oldest public library collection in a collection of pious books. These books were brought out to Australia in 1809 by the Rev. Samuel Marsden.
The library's collection also includes the 18th century Diocesan collection. All the library's pre-1800 material has been added to ABN as part of the Australian Book Heritage Research project.
The librarian, Kim Robinson and his 3 full time and one part time staff members manage some 120,000 monograph and 1000 serial (500 current) titles on their Dynix system.
The collection services the College and is a general theological collection with strengths in Biblical Studies, Puritan Reformation research and Anglicanism. The collection also contains a Rare Book collection (containing one bible concordance brought out on the First Fleet) and an Australiana collection (consisting of both religious and secular history).
We warmly welcome them as ABN Full Service members.
Blackwells TOC Records on NBD
The Blackwell Table of Contents (TOC) records are now being routinely loaded to the NBD. Sample records may be viewed by searching the following RIDS: 93-60225, 93-75006, 93-86142. A problem has been reported which affects a small number of records which were loaded in the first batch. The headings in these records appear to be missing, because the system has masked them in online displays. Meanwhile, if you would like to view the headings in the affected records, use the `s1$,x' command.
The headings will automatically be included in any MARC records which are downloaded from ABN. To receive the headings in weekly MARC tapes and other products they should be keyed in online. The affected records will be reloaded soon to the NBD so that they will display all fields. If you have any questions please contact Bemal Rajapatirana on 1800 025 155 or email brajapat@nla.gov.au
9 November, 1994
Changing "DUP" Rid Records
As previously stated, all deliberate duplicate records and their parent records have been given a "dup" rid prefix. To date more than 3,000 records have been assigned the "dup" prefix.
In 1991 we started to assign "dup" prefixes to deliberate duplicate records. These records were created to accommodate the overflow of holdings from the parent record. This was extended in May 1994 when "dup" prefixes were assigned to all parent and deliberate duplicate records. Holding records that had reached the maximum number of holdings could now be readily identified as well as their deliberate duplicates.
The main benefits of having a "dup" prefix is to assist users in readily identifying these records when adding holdings and changing bibliographic data. It also prevents the duplicate removal team from replacing deliberate "dup" records.
When changing a "dup" record libraries are encouraged to change both the parent record and the deliberate duplicate(s). For example, if a closing date is added to a "dup" serial record, the change should also be made to the other rids listed in the linking note. The linking note appears in the first holdings statement against the three asterisk symbol (***). In this way all libraries benefit from your change.
The new NDIS system will accommodate unlimited holdings and do away with deliberate duplicate records.
18 November, 1994
US MARC Format Integration
Libraries which receive MARC records from ABN will be interested in two publications on format integration which have been prepared by the National Bibliographic Services Branch of the National Library. We expect to start distributing format-integrated records through the ABN service shortly after the Library of Congress implementation date of 1 January 1995.
ABN Technical Bulletin no. 51, which discusses format integration on ABN, is currently being distributed to all Full Service and Search & Products users. This bulletin lists all the new and changed MARC data elements. The list may be used to determine which new tags and subfields libraries may wish to load to their local systems.
A Summary of Changes to manuals for cataloguers has been prepared, containing details of the changes to the ABN data preparation manuals. This will be distributed to cataloguers. It will assist cataloguers to understand and use the new range of fields when cataloguing on ABN.
Questions relating to the distribution of these documents should be directed to Ruby Dutta via the ABN/Ozline Help Desk on 1800 026155. For questions relating to the integrated MARC format, contact Ian Dunn on the above number, or by email to idunn@nla.gov.au
23 November, 1994
AARNet Gateway Access to NLA Online Services
The capacity of the AARNet gateway has been increased and users should not experience the annoying `select' problem when they telnet to abn.nla.gov.au. The address abnx.nla.gov.au, which was set up as a temporary solution, still works.
25 November, 1994
Tips for ILL Suppliers
Returning loans - suppliers are reminded to RTR and HIS when loans are returned. This not only clears up the ISUM screen for both libraries, but ensures that the statistics included in the ILL batch reports are accurate.
ILL Payments Service - suppliers should waste no time in updating a request on the subsystem when they supply an item. Help desk recently heard of a case where the supplier faxed an item and then discovered that the requester had RCVed the request before they had a chance to issue SEN! As you know, SEN captures a request in the Payments Service, If the requester issues RCV before SEN, all is not lost! The requester can UPDATE the request and issue BCK i. This returns the request to the previous item status, thus allowing the supplier to enter a charge if they wish and to issue SEN.
Tips for Requesters
Cancelling requests - if you have ROUed a request and then find you no longer want the item, please check the ROU list and either telephone or fax the library where the request is located to let them know you no longer need it, before you cancel the request. We have had some cases reported to us where the supplier was ready to send the request only to find that it had been cancelled!
29 November, 1994
National Bibliographic Database Statistics - October 1994
Bibliographic File 10,801,484 Holdings statements 21,091,744 Authority File 1,372,925 Original cataloguing 1,553,567
ANB 1972 - present LC BOOKS 1968 - 26/9/94 LC SERIALS 1973 - 7/9/94 LC FILMS 1972 - 7/9/94 LC MUSIC 1984 - 7/9/94 LC MAPS 1973 - 7/9/94 LC CJK 1988 - 7/9/94 USGPO 1976 - 30/9/94 USNLM BOOKS 1984 - 7/12/93 USNLM SERIALS 1984 - 7/12/93 BNB 1971 - 4/10/94 CANADIANA 1974 - 7/9/94 NZNB 1982 - 27/9/94 SNB 1967 - 30/6/94
Total Bibliographic Records 10,371,271 Interims 522,057 Full Bibliographic Records 9,849,214 Books 8,493,758 Serials 985,725 Nonbooks 891,788
Cartographic materials 220,750 Sound recordings 217,100 Motion pictures & videos 161,201 Music scores 153,578 Pictorial materials 34,913 Filmstrips 25,496 Manuscripts 22,193 Slides 16,617 Kits 5,931 Transparencies 2,820 Charts 1,595 Games 1,520 Other 22,584
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