Libraries on the Web
| Pages | 117-121 |
| Published date | 01 February 1996 |
| Date | 01 February 1996 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045454 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Focus Interview
Libraries on the Web
What motivates a library to go on the World Wide Web in the first place? What can
it do once it's there? What problems have to be overcome and what advantages are
there?
Three librarians from very different parts of
the
world told us of their experi-
ences.
Vic Elliott is University Librarian at Victoria University of Wellington, New
Zealand (http://www. vuw.ac.nz/library); Yosef Branse is Systems Librarian at
Uni-
versity of Haifa Library, Israel (http://www-lib.haifa.ac.il); Lim-Yeo Pin Pin is
leader of the Web team at the National University of Singapore Library
(http://www.nus.sg).
What was the initial thinking behind
your library's going on the Web?
What
advantages or extra services did
you think it would make possible that
hadn't been there before?
YB:
Setting up a Web server was
a natural outgrowth of the library's
long experience with providing com-
puter-based information services.
When we started to think about
launching an information server, Go-
pher was still in its heyday, and I had
that in mind when I began planning.
By the time we actually carried out the
idea, however, the Web was growing
by leaps and
bounds.
To some extent, I
guess we were drawn along
by
the tide.
Israel is a very computer-literate and
Internet-savvy country, and there has
been spectacular growth in the last few
years,
in terms of both the academic
community and commercial provid-
ers.
Every other university was joining
the parade; we had to, also, or risk be-
ing left behind.
I believe that we were the first li-
brary in Israel to have our own Web
page.
This is a result of our being the
only university library in Israel with a
dedicated computer that is located
within the library and maintained by
the librarians (in other institutions, the
library computer, even if dedicated, is
located in and maintained by the uni-
versity's computer centre).
VE:
When planning began, the
guiding principle was that the pages
should form a key means of communi-
cation between the library and its vari-
ous constituencies within the univer-
sity community. It was expected that
in time they would replace the plethora
of printed documentation issued to us-
ers,
and in particular the comprehen-
sive Library Guide. In the meantime
the new electronic medium was seen to
offer enhanced opportunities for com-
munication, both in terms of interac-
tivity and of the depth, breadth and
currency of the material available. Al-
though we recognised the public rela-
tions potential of the Web site in rela-
tion to the wider world, both national
and international, the focus at this in-
itial developmental stage was firmly
on meeting the known needs of the li-
brary's primary user groups
on the
uni-
versity campus.
The Web site, as a home page, was
also seen to provide a solution to a per-
ennial
problem:
how to provide simple
transparent access to electronic re-
sources across the network in a manner
that was independent of location or
time.
At present
this
has been achieved
through invoking a telnet client and,
where appropriate, providing login
prompts. Although this is a marked
improvement on previous procedures,
it is an area in which further develop-
ment is urgently required. The elec-
tronic resources to which access has
been given are either local systems or
remote proprietary databases to which
subscription access has been negoti-
ated.
No attempt was made in this first
stage of development
to
offer links to a
smorgasbord of external Web re-
sources, apart from explicit links to
other New Zealand and overseas li-
brary catalogues, and largely aca-
demic library Web sites.
LYPP: NUS Library was initially
featured on the NUS Web pages,
maintained by our Computer Centre.
The library wanted
to
maintain its own
Web pages in order to provide a more
direct and immediate access to our
services and publications.
How was funding for the
initial
set-up
managed?
YB:
I don't believe there was any
special funding required. The comput-
ers that have housed the server have
been the same ones used for other fac-
ets of the library's automated systems.
Purchase of new PCs comes from the
annual equipment budget.
In terms of software, both the
browser software (Netscape and
Lynx) and the server (OSU Dec-
Threads) are freeware, so we didn't
have to allocate any money for them.
VE:
All costs were met from ex-
isting budget resources: the estab-
lishment of the pages was not treated
as a standalone project and did not
constitute a separate budget item. The
main additional cost arose from the
employment of a Computer Science
graduate who provided the necessary
initial expert assistance: other infor-
The Electronic Library, Vol. 14, No. 2, April 1996 117
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