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Denmark's Electronic Research Library. Annual report 2007

Colophon

Title:
Denmark's Electronic Research Library. Annual report 2007

Summary:
Annual report from Denmark's Electronic Research Library 2007.

Publisher:
Denmark's Eletronic Research Library

Responsible institution:
Denmark's Eletronic Research Library

Author:
Denmark's Eletronic Research Library

Language:
English

URL:
http://www.bs.dk/publikationer/andre/deff/2007/english/index.htm

Digital ISBN:
978-87-92057-34-1

Version/edition:
28-04-2008

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

Publisher category:
statslig

Key subjects:
Denmark's Eletronic Research Library, Research and educational libraries,

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Contents

Preface

Introduction

Organisation

Programme groups

License Groups

Secretariat and steering committee

Architecture & Middleware

Information Supply

THEME: Open Access

Meeting the User

New Institutions

Licenses

Knowledge Exchange

International cooperation

Accounts

Projects

Targets 2008

DEFF-secretariat

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Preface

Introduction

The Government Bill from November 2007 is entitled Society of Possibilities. In accordance with this title one of the main activity areas is a continued focus on realising the globalisation strategy. This involves a considerable increase in investment in research and education, because such investments are considered prerequisites for future competitive power and welfare.

The ambitions include larger grants for research, more researchers and more PhD scholarships. As to education the proposals are equally ambitious and feature the aim of 50% of young people having completed a higher education course in 2015 and a higher priority generally regarding lifelong learning.

These are naturally exciting perspectives for Denmark’s Electronic Research Library (DEFF) and for the libraries taking part in the collaboration. Libraries experience an increase in the use of traditional services within information supply while at the same time getting the opportunity to undertake new assignments.

Research

Over the past ten years Danish research libraries have changed their role considerably in relation to the research process cycle. The library’s traditional role as content supplier of scientific journals for the process has been extended to include offers of ever more advanced search systems to databases and information resources on the internet.

Since the amendment of the university act in 2003 the library has also assumed a larger role in relation to output from the research process, where many universities wish to store and make available the research that takes place within the institution. Finally, the library has gained a larger role in the research process itself between input and output in the form of registration of research activities. Examples abroad show that the task is extended to include assistance in relation to structuring and storing of scientific primary data within escience.

DEFF supports development projects within these areas and try to advance a national agenda that contributes to the development of a coherent research infrastructure. With the large investments in research it seems important to encourage free access to publicly financed research by supporting initiatives within Open Access and inviting the institutions to formulate publishing policies which advance this purpose.

The development within escience indicates that research infrastructure can play an even bigger role in securing a good return on the investments in research. There seem to be interesting perspectives in the development of storage of primary data and access for researchers to data set coupled to other researchers’ publications.

Education

As far as education is concerned, DEFF supports the development of the library’s traditional role as contents supplier of information resources to students. The library has still got several areas of contact with the education programmes themselves in the form of development of both physical and virtual learning spaces and of the students’ information literacy.

The Government’s ambitions within the field of education, including in particular the propagation of lifelong learning, indicate a wish for flexible forms of education and ’blended learning’, meaning a combination of elearning and more traditional courses. These new IT-supported courses of education seem to be a prerequisite for underpinning the massive educational enterprise which the globalisation strategy indicates.

Over the years DEFF has supported many projects with a view to development of IT-supported educational courses. However, within this area there is a lack of strategic prioritisations by the individual educational institutions to enable them to establish appropriate technical and legal frames for e.g. giving students the possibility for access to courseware via the internet.

National initiatives

Activities in DEFF are to a large extent directed at helping to develop individual institutions’ library service to researchers, instructors and students. However, the work also includes support to interesting national initiatives, often derived from concrete projects.

It is thus very satisfying to watch the strides taken in DK-AAI, which is the new joint access management system for research and higher education, developed in a collaboration between the educational institutions and supported by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation.

The two lastmentioned ministries also support the development of the new national research portal videnskab.dk, which is a very interesting joint initiative within research mediation to be launched in the spring of 2008.

The collaboration between DEFF and the Agency for Research and Innovation about exploitation of the common infrastructure for registration of the institutions’ research activity as the basis for the appropriation of grants illustrates how both the individual library and the cooperation in DEFF here too has achieved a more central role in relation to the research process.

The ambitions in the Government Bill and the globalisation strategy will therefore undoubtedly provide the possibility for a strengthening of DEFF’s role in relation to research and education and thereby contribute to the realisation of the Society of Possibilities.

Kim Østrup
Chairman

 

Introduction

The driving force behind the development activities in Denmark’s Electronic Research Library (DEFF) consists of a number of permanent working groups, appointed by DEFF’s steering committee. The working groups are called programme groups, stressing the fact that coherence is aimed at between the activities within each group so that they resemble a programme.

During spring 2007 new programme groups were established, which at the beginning of the summer met with the steering committee in order to discuss working plans for the coming years. It was vital for DEFF to have the organisation of the groups finalised, and it was extremely positive to watch the high level of activity and involvement that characterises the work in the groups.

The groups were divided according to the threelayer architecture which for a number of years has provided the framework for IT-development in DEFF: The lower layer of the architecture consists of data – or Information Supply which to a large extent is shared by the libraries. The middle layer includes functionality such as search engines or access management – or Architecture & Middleware and the upper layer contains the interfaces – or Meeting the User. Based on this division the programme groups cover three areas: Information Supply, Architecture & Middleware and Meeting the User.

Apart from this an independent group for the new institutions in the collaboration was established in connection with the Ministry of Education’s reentry into DEFF in 2004. Finally, the license groups form independent groups with relation to both information supply and the DEFF secretariat.

In September and October 2007 the groups prepared and submitted the first applications to the DEFF steering committee. The steering committee dealt with a number of applications for support to projects and new activities at their meeting in November 2007, where also the working groups participated with a presentation of the programme areas’ action plans.

At the meeting the majority of the applications were approved, while some were recommended for a grant from the appropriation in 2008 on condition of the adoption of the National Budget –which has turned out to take a bit longer than expected.

As will appear from the following the work of the programme groups resulted in a number of projects, theme days and not least the development of new services to the users. In the long term the keen involvement and the action plans of the groups augur well for an interesting collaboration in the future.

Already before the programme groups formulated action plans the steering committee announced that integrated search would be an important action line for DEFF. As the name implies, integrated search is search in materials from several sources simultaneously.

Modern libraries are characterised by being able to offer their users both digital and printed materials from many different systems and institutions. The many possibilities mean that the user is now forced to consult different databases and interfaces in order to gain access to the multitude of books, articles, data and other information.

The idea behind integrated search is to offer the user a system that makes it possible to search all these sources simultaneously and get a userfriendly presentation of the result. It presupposes that data about the information resources are collected from the various sources, adapted and made available for searching.

The data sources can be metadata about other institutions’ materials, information about digital scientific journals or catalogue data on the library’s printed materials. Integrated search thus makes it possible for the user to search in all the material that the library can procure and make available and not only that which the library has actually purchased.

When the library wishes in this way to present the user with materials outside its own collection, cooperation with other libraries on data and document delivery becomes very important.

The programme groups within DEFF work with integrated search as an architecture that includes elements such as data cooperation, document delivery and access management. Thus the programme groups have – as part of their many initiatives – also addressed themselves specifically to integrated search.

In the programme group Architecture & Middleware focus is on the systems framework for document delivery of both physical materials via DanBib and digital materials via document delivery services. There is furthermore cooperation on the systems used for searching, just as the work on access management is of great importance to integrated search.

The programme group Information Supply focuses on the data in information resources that form the basis for integrated search. Work is in progress in the first instance on the establishment of a common data well with data on ebooks and digital journal articles. The possibility of adapting data depends in several cases on permission from commercial suppliers, and it will be up to the license area to negotiate agreements on data deliveries.

In connection with the general work on the charting of target groups, examining patterns of usage and improvement of userfriendliness in systems, the programme group Meeting the User is working with the users’ wishes in relation to integrated search.

The programme group New Institutions has likewise been dealing with integrated search and has provided representatives from the group for the work that goes on in the other groups, so that these libraries also get the chance to offer their users integrated search.

The concept of integrated search contains some interesting perspectives as to cooperation, particularly on data and information resources, and in this way the initiatives are a natural continuation of the library sector’s traditions for cooperation within this area.

This development work will probably go on for a number of years, precisely because integrated search incorporates a broad spectrum of other elements in the libraries’ infrastructure.

Organisation

DEFF coordination committee

• Steen Kyed, Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Culture (chairman)
• Jane Johansen Pade, Head of Division, Ministry of Culture
• Line Brøgger, Head of Section, Ministry of Culture
• Hans Müller Pedersen, Deputy Director General, Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation
• Peter Uffe Meier, Specialist Consultant, Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation
• Lars Mortensen, Director General, Ministry of Education
• Trine Ingemansen, Head of Section, Ministry of Education

DEFF steering committee

• Kim Østrup, Vice President, IBM Danmark A/S (chairman)
• Gert Bechlund, University Director, Copenhagen Business School
• Poul Bjerregaard, Director, Aarhus Business College
• Svend Larsen, Director General, State and University Library
• Erland Kolding Nielsen, Director General, The Royal Library
• Børge Obel, Dean, Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus
• Peter Rubeck, Library Director, University College North Jutland
• Jens Thorhauge, Director General, Danish Agency for Libraries and Media
  

 Kim Østrup Gert Bechlund

Poul Bjerregaard Svend Larsen Erland Kolding Børge Obel Peter Rubeck Annette Winkel Jens Thorhauge Nielsen Schwarz

DEFF Responsible 

• Bo Öhrström, Deputy Director, Danish Agency for Libraries and Media

 

Organisation

Programme groups

Achitecture and Middleware

• Chairman: Arne Sørensen, State and University Library
• Anders Christensen, The Royal Library
• Birte Christensen-Dalsgaard, State and University Library
• Tonny Laursen, Roskilde University Library
• Kasper Løvschall, Aalborg University Library
• Ole Michaelsen, Technical Library of Copenhagen
• Peder Lærke Nielsen, CBS Library
• Jakob Heide Petersen, Danish Agency for Libraries and Media
• Mogens Sandfær, Technical Knowledge Center of Denmark
• Ingelise Stæhr, University Library of Southern Denmark
• Bo Öhrström, Danish Agency for Libraries and Media
  

Information Supply

• Chairman: Mogens Sandfær, Technical Knowledge Center of Denmark
• Birte Christensen-Dalsgaard, State and University Library
• Bertil F. Dorch, The Royal Library, Copenhagen University Library
• Per Steen Hansen, Aalborg University Library
• Alfred Heller, Technical Information Center of Denmark
• Karin Lodberg, VIA University College
• Jakob Nedergaard Mortensen, DEFF secretariat
• Anna Mette Morthorst, ASB Library, Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus
• Lars Nondal, CBS Library
• Claus Vesterager Pedersen, Roskilde University Library
• Ingelise Stæhr, University Library of Southern Denmark
• Janne Vendt, DEFF secretariat
  

Meeting the User

 

• Chairwoman: Tina Pipa, Copenhagen University Library – Faculty Library for Social Science, The Royal Library, Copenhagen University Library
• Morten Andersen, DEFF secretariat
• Thomas Hansen, Aalborg University Library
• Karen Harbo, ASB Library, Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus
• Birgit Brink Lund, Tietgen Business School
• Jørgen Madsen, The Royal Library
• Michael Poltorak Nielsen, State and University Library
• Trine Schreiber, Royal School of Library and Information Science
• René Steffensen, CBS Library
  

New Institutions

• Chairwoman: Mai Aggerbeck, cvu vita Holstebro
• Bente Thorup Andersen, The Academy of Professional Higher Education, North Jutland
• Ellen Bolbro, University College Lillebælt
• Kirsten Due, DEFF secretariat
• Lis Faurholt, Profession College, University College South
• Gitte Gjøde, Engineering College of Aarhus
• Niels Hasselgaard Jensenius, The Administrative Library
• Thomas Kjær, University College North Jutland
• Lars Kofod-Jensen, Frederiksberg College of Education
• Jakob Nedergaard Mortensen, DEFF secretariat

License Groups

License Group for Universities and Research Institutions (LUF)

• Chairwoman: Anna Mette Morthorst, ASB Library, Aarhus University
• Birgit Brejnebøl, CBS Library
• Marianne Vadgaard Christensen, State and University Library
• Anne Marie L. Danielsen, VIA University College
• Kirsten Due, DEFF secretariat
• Jette Fugl, Faculty of Life Sciences, Library
• Susanne Jacobsen, School of Education, University of Aarhus
• Niels Hasselgaard Jensenius, The Administrative Library
• Lone R. Katberg, Aalborg University Library
• Lone Madsen, University Library of Southern Denmark
• Barbara Melchior, The Royal Library, Copenhagen University Library
• Lene Stampe Mortensen, Roskilde University Library
• Susanne Preusse, Technical Information Center of Denmark
• Lisbeth Rasmussen, Faculty of Law, Library
• Karsten Roos, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture Library
• Anette Schneider, DEFF secretariat
• Conni Skrubbeltang, Region North Jutland, Aalborg Hospital
• Janne Vendt, DEFF secretariat

License Group for Educational Libraries (LUB)

• Chairwoman: Karin Lodberg, VIA University College
• Lisbeth Andersen, Brønderslev Gymnasium
• Kirsten Due, DEFF secretariat
• Helena Ekelund (sub.), Business Academy Copenhagen North
• Helle Behrens Eriksen, Køge Business College
• Peter Hald, Technical Library of Copenhagen
• Lone Hansen (sub.), University College Lillebælt
• Kristine Hinrichsen (sub.), University College North Jutland
• Benedicte Kirkegaard, Gentofte Libraries
• Connie Kjærgaard (sub.), Odense Technical College
• Annette Grube Lorentzen, IBC Kolding
• Susanne Nielsen, Holstebro Technical College
• Birgitte Sass, University College Sjælland
• Anette Schneider, DEFF secretariat
• Merethe Bloch Stein, Espergærde Gymnasium & HF
• Louise Thomsen, The Academy of Professional Higher Education, North Jutland
• Janne Vendt, DEFF secretariat
• Birgitta Vikstrøm, University College Copenhagen

Secretariat and steering committee

Reorganisation

The activities in the secretariat in 2007 were characterised by the establishment of the new programme groups and the organisation development in the secretariat.

At the beginning of the year two new members of staff, Janne Vendt and Kirsten Due joined the license area which also includes Anette Schneider. The steering group further approved an extra member of staff for this area to start primo 2008.

In May Jakob Nedergaard Mortensen was engaged as a replacement for Julie Kihl who in the spring was appointed controller in the Danish Library Agency.

In May 2007 the Agency made an organisational change with a view to consolidate the efforts to create an even better coordination across the action areas of the Agency’s work and to support the Agency’s strategy for library development.

The change meant that Jakob Heide Petersen, who for a number of years has acted as head of the DEFF secretariat, was appointed head of division in the Agency’s development department. Apart from the DEFF secretariat the tasks of this department include the area Advice and Development, which deal primarily with public libraries, and the work concerning children’s culture in Network for Children and Culture.

At the beginning of autumn 2007 work was going on to determine the new organisation of the secretariat, and it was decided to divide the secretariat into two units.

One unit encompasses license administration and license development, including cooperation with the two license groups. The other unit deals with the remaining tasks in DEFF, including secretariat assistance to coordination committee, steering committee and programme groups. The reason for this division is i.a. that with an annual turnover of about DKK 120 mil. the license area has gained a size that requires an independent management effort. In the dayto-day work there is naturally still close collaboration between all members of staff in the two units.

In October Kirsten Due was appointed head of the license unit, and René Olesen appointed head of the secretariat unit. René Olesen has previously worked with i.a. the transportation scheme and regional libraries in the Danish Library Agency.

Administrative tasks

The large influx of new members of staff in DEFF gave rise to an updating of guidelines and procedures in a number of areas. Within the license area work continued on the administration database which now forms the pivotal point for the license work. Moreover, a lean project was conducted which to a great extent functions as basis for knowledge sharing and competence development.

The secretariat worked on new guidelines for applications and the interplay between programme groups. Despite the many changes in the secretariat’s services, work continued more or less as planned, not least due to the understanding and fine cooperation with both programme groups and steering committee.

Specialist development tasks

Apart from the regular operational tasks the secretariat has throughout the year continued working with various specialist development tasks. In Knowledge Exchange the tasks included i.a. experience exchange at a number of seminars as well as participation in joint tenders within the license area.

Digitisation became an important assignment during the year. It included both participation in the national work with digitisation strategy, participation in the digitisation efforts in relation to EU and work with concrete projects and suggestions. The latter included proposals for a scanning depot, a Danish book search project, inspired by Google’s library project, and assistance to projects on journal digitisation and digitisation of musical works.

During spring 2007 the secretariat cooperated with the consultancy firm Gartner Group about an analysis of the possibilities for consolidation in the library sector. The secretariat also cooperated with library staff on an application to the research infrastructure pool, which is part of the political agreement of November 2006 about implementation of the globalisation pool and a followup on the welfare agreement. The application was unfortunately turned down.

Both members of staff in the secretariat and from the libraries were involved in work on a technical infrastructure for research registration which can support grants appropriation to the universities on the basis of research activity (the socalled qualitydistributed basis funds). The work in DK-AAI likewise continued to be supported by the DEFF secretariat. The secretariat also worked throughout the year with furthering the establishment of a portal for research mediation, videnskab.dk. Parallel with these activities the secretariat continued planning the extension of the DEFF cooperation to include upper secondary schools.

Future activities: DEFF secretariat

The secretarial assistance to programme groups and steering committee continues in relation to standardisation. Together with the programme chairmen, the secretariat endeavours to balance the expectations in terms of secretarial services to the programme groups, just as there are plans to prepare electronic, standardised application forms and payment requests during 2008.

The secretariat also works continually at making it easier to digitise Danish material. Work will continue on the dialogue with ebog.dk, ideas of a scanning depot, a Danish Google print project and sound ’elastic’ regulations in agreements about scanning for teaching purposes.

Bo Öhrström continues as member of the board for the new research portal videnskab.dk as the representative of the Ministry of Culture. He is moreover chairman of DK-AAI steering committee, where collaboration continues with the citizen portal in order to gain maximum synergy effect. Finally, as DEFF’s representative Bo Öhrström is still heavily involved in the further development and running of the Danish Research Database (DDF) through the work in the Danish Agency for Research and Innovation, where DDF will be the common base for the coming bibliometric research indicator.

Future activities: DEFF steering committee

Four steering committee meetings are scheduled for 2008 as well as an annual meeting medio 2008. In April the steering committee will participate in JISC’s annual conference in Birmingham, entitled ’Enabling Innovation’. The conference normally attracts about 700 delegates, mainly from Great Britain and JISC i.a demonstrates its services and advice and development functions in an exhibition area.

The steering committee’s chairman et al. are expected to hold the usual two coordination committee meetings during the second half of 2008. The coordination committee is DEFF’s top management body, and it consists of top management representatives from the Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation and Ministry of Education. At these meetings DEFF activities are being reported on and topical strategic subjects being discussed.

Another activity to be prioritised by the steering committee in 2008 is the preparation of an international review of DEFF. Here a panel of international experts will be invited to go through DEFF’s vision, strategies and action plans, including DEFF’s action lines, and advise DEFF on further developments.

Finally, it should be mentioned that from 14.-19. September the State and University Library will be hosting the annual European Digital Libraries Conference (ECDL). The conference delegates will include researchers, developers, users and many other stakeholders within the digital library, and the conference will be supported by DEFF i.a. via a promised deficit guarantee.

Architecture & Middleware

The main tasks of the group are:

• to build up an IT-architecture that ensures a coherent Danish IT-infrastructure for the libraries in general and the research libraries in particular 
• to ensure an architecture that forms part of a coherent Danish architecture for modern citizen and user services and efficient digital administration 
• to support establishment of actual common com -ponents and common operating solutions for the libraries.

The action plan is divided into five action lines:

Action line 1: Simplification and consolidation in national communities

The action line is directed at the traditional library and the processes applied for physical materials. The handling of physical materials has been – and still is – the most resourcedemanding task in the libraries. As distinct from this we have the users’ wish for more electronic materials and easier access to these. In order to free resources for this it is necessary to carry out the traditional tasks at less expense and using fewer hands. This can happen through consolidations in the form of common solutions applied by several libraries, through common operational procedures, and not least by abandoning special rules for registration and cataloguing of materials at the individual library.

University libraries are part of the universities, and the libraries’ principal task is to meet the universities’ needs. They may vary a great deal, depending on how the universities are structured, and how much attention the library enjoys at the individual university. Therefore, a certain amount of diversity will still be necessary. A few years ago registration level and details in metadata (like e.g. subject words) were among the parameters prioritised differently by different libraries. But concurrently with the diminishing importance of the physical materials, the importance of this is reduced. The organisational basis has therefore been created for – to a greater extent – handling the physical materials together and thereby enjoying considerable collective savings for the libraries by releasing resources for other and more important purposes.

There will continue to be a certain resistance to giving up traditional libraryprofessional virtues and the independence within the area, as can be observed from the competition between existing national solutions and the libraries. Two activities have been

identified in 2007 which are resulting or may result in concrete projects that will take us yet another step along the path to the ’community’.

• Ia: Genuine Danish union catalogue
• Ib: Article service, scanning depot and generic document delivery service.

Action line II: Architecture and interfaces for ’integrated search’

Integrated search has been the object of great attention over the past 1-2 years. The objective with integrated search is that the users experience a single (Google-like) interface to all the library’s information resources, whether these be physical materials, electronic journals, other licensecarrying electronic services or relevant freely accessible data. The aim is for the programme area to define and establish the infrastructure, including interfaces, that facilitates integrated search. Establishment and maintenance of (meta-) data reservoirs belong to the programme area Information Supply and the user angle in the programme area Meeting the User. Three activities that can result in concrete projects are identified in 2007:

• IIa: Protocols and modularity regarding data reservoir
• IIb: Protocols and API to the traditional library system
• IIc: Metadata architecture for digital libraries.

Action line III: User- and access management

The work with user- and access management for research and higher education is now to a greater extent being performed in the special organisation in DK-AAI. See more about DK-AAI at www.dkaai.dk. However, the research libraries still need matching activities. The primary task for DK-AAI is the organisation of the ’identity federation’ i.e. the organisation of the user part. This happens e.g. by coordinating the universities’ databases of users and staff according to uniform rules, and by the universities agreeing on which attributes should be attached to the individual user and a number of other semantic details.

It is, however, still the libraries that are responsible for connections and conditions for agreements in relation to most of the suppliers to whom access should be given, just as the libraries’ own electronic resources in some cases require access management. Three activities have been identified in 2007 which can result in concrete projects:

• IIIa: Attachment of suppliers to DK-AAI
• IIIb: Further development of the traditional, proxybased access solution
• IIIc: Payper-view administration.

Action line IV: The library in digital Denmark

The past few years have witnessed a marked development of digital Denmark. It concerns e.g. a large number of public services which can now be obtained via selfservice over the net – a situation which now seems to be the rule rather than the exception. A fine example of this is SKAT (Tax). The reorganisation of the public sector to digital administration is therefore an important link in the government’s IT-policy. The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation supports the development of digital administration through the establishment of the overall framework for IT-architecture, IT-standards and IT-security. See also Offentlig (Public) Information Online at www.oio.dk.

The imminent quality reform of the public sector will put further pressure on the development and claim that public service institutions, including the libraries, live up to the new demands for selfservice and quick deliveries. Of particular interest to the libraries are:

• B103 of 3 June 2006: Use of open standards in the public sphere is a requirement as pr. 1 January 2008
• Universal, unique and sustained identifiers (a kind of ISSN for digital documents)
• Borger.dk (citizen.dk).

The action line has not been worked out in detail, but the general aim is to support the library’s integration in digital Denmark.

Action line V: Business processes

Gartner Group has (2006/07) prepared a report for DEFF on possibilities for consolidation in the sector. The main conclusions in the report were as follows:

• The business models for the libraries and the underlying processes are to all intents and purposes identical
• The very homogenous business model and consequently homogenous IT-support means that a number of functions and resources are duplicated unnecessarily
• All in all resources from duplicated resources can be reallocated to develop and deliver improved IT to customers
• There is today no sufficient critical mass in the individual IT-units to implement and handle ’state-of-the-art’ processes for development, operation, support and supplier handling
• Greater operational security, stability and efficiency can be achieved by consolidation.

The report featured three different scenarios for development and operation which can realise the above. In the existing organisational context purely interdisciplinary central solutions are not realistic. A model with specialisation and division of labour between the libraries is on the other hand more likely. The technology and architecture that support a consolidation are Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Webservices.

The action line is not fully specified in the action plan. The first activities will be of an examining nature.

Projects in 2007

The programme area produced five concrete project proposals, one of which was accepted in autumn 2007, three were accepted to start ultimo 2007, and one is announced as being accepted when the National Budget 2008 is available in April 2008. The five are (in order of acceptance, Roman numerals refer to the element in the action plan):

• Danish participation in the further development of Fedora (IIc)
• Preliminary study: DanBib as genuine union catalogue (Ia)
• Ezproxy – tools for maintenance and sharing of configuration data (IIIb)
• Preliminary study of business and agreement models (V)
• Connection commercial library services to DK-AAI (IIIa).

The projects were launched ultimo 2007 or primo 2008. There are thus no concrete results in 2007.

Conferences and other activities in 2007

The programme area participates in Knowledge Exchange Access Management Working Group and has participated in two meetings in London. Participation is shared with DK-AAI.

Future perspectives

The projects established in 2007 will be completed in 2008, and new projects are to be defined within the themes of the action plan.

Members of the programme group participate in National IT and Telecom Agency’s architecture conference in April 2008.

 

Information Supply

“If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants”, says Newton about his achievements.

Scientific progress presupposes access to the research results of others, to the accumulated scientific information, which in Newton’s terminology represents the “shoulders of giants”. The programme area for Information Supply concerns itself with facilitating Danish researchers’ opportunity to stand on and contribute to these shoulders.

Profile of the programme area

The programme area includes a rather broad selection of action lines, grouped under two main themes. Theme I represents the classical library function, to make available the global scientific information in the local (possibly national) environment, but now on the net and in digital form. Theme II represents the very much more recent function, to assist ’local’ researchers and producers of knowledge in publishing, documenting, meriting and exposing their research results and teaching materials, again on the net and in digital form.

Thus the programme area has dual aim as regards the players in the field of science – as producers of information and knowledge and as consumers of same – as well as servicing these with information such as services based on information skills and information systems.

Theme I The libraries’ digital information supply

a. Data licenses – negotiation, administration, exploitation
b. Import, operation and sharing of national data set
c. Document deliveries based on digitisation on demand.

Theme II The institutions’ knowledge production and knowledge handling

a. Institutional Repositories for research, learning and innovation
b. E-publishing and Open Access
c. Curriculum data, ecompendia and learning objects
d. E-science and scientific primary data
e. Danish Research Database.

The name of the programme area reflects the first theme, while in fact the other theme is just as important. As regards the area of information supply it is to a great extent a question of establishing joint and rational operational functions, while in relation to the area of knowledge handling, it is still very much a question of searching, testing and developing the future roles for libraries etc. in a research landscape which is rapidly moving into the age of networking.

You can follow the work on the website of the programme group, a wiki with the address: https://infoshare.dtv.dk/twiki/bin/view/Informationsforsyning/WebHome.

In the following we shall therefore just deal with the main points of the work so far.

Action plans and roadmaps

The action plan, which can be seen in full on the group’s website, was prepared in dialogue with the DEFF steering committee. The first version was presented at a joint kickoff meeting for steering and programme groups on 20 June 2007, and the next, almost identical, final version was submitted to and approved by the steering committee on 19 November 2007. The foundation for DEFF’s planning and prioritisation of the area was hereby established.

The steering committee as well as the programme group did, however, feel the need for a more detailed clarification of challenges, possibilities and prioritisations of the subareas Open Access and escience and scientific primary data. Both areas are subject to considerable international attention – i.a. among DEFF’s partner organisations in Knowledge Exchange, who are involved in a very large number of projects within these areas. Given DEFF’s very limited project means the question was, in which direction should DEFF focus its projects and which possibilities for international cooperation should be pursued?

The programme group therefore decided to initiate two studies to support this clarification in the form of ’roadmaps’, general notes with an international horizon. On the basis of these ’mappings’ the programme group would be able to prepare more detailed action plans for the subareas. The first roadmap for Open Access has just been completed and will be submitted to the programme group in March 2008. The other roadmap for escience and primary data will be launched during spring and is expected to be completed before summer 2008. The developments can be seen on the group’s website.

Applications and projects

Based on the preliminary action plan and the steering committee’s apportioning of budget, the programme group made a specific effort to stimulate the preparation of project applications that would meet with DEFF’s prioritisations.

The group’s new wiki was exploited intensively as a tool to inform widely to the DEFF landscape about these prioritisations, about applications under way which one could join, as well as ideas for projects one could adopt and expand into applications. Likewise the internal part of wiki was used to currently submit the applications received for the assessment of the programme group and to carry out prioritisation and commenting before dispatch to the secretariat.

At the first application closing date before the meeting of the steering committee in November 2007 the programme group was very gratified to be able to submit a ’package’, containing eleven annotated project applications for the realisation of DEFF’s ambitions within the area. Unfortunately, the general election meant a postponement of the Budget for 2008, which is why DEFF was only able to accept applications within the frames of the 2007 Budget. This meant that a number of the area’s substantial and wellfocused project applications had to await clarification for an unspecified period, which was clearly unsatisfactory for all parties and in particular very unfortunate for the enthusiasm surrounding participation in the solution of DEFF challenges within the area. Something which members of the programme group had been working hard to create widely in the DEFF environment. While a number of major initiatives at the time of writing are thus still awaiting a decision, a number of important ones have been launched.

Under the theme 'The libraries’ digital information supply' work is going on in relation to the following:

• National licenses. Financial means have been granted for the support of the preparation of a new application to the national pool for research infrastructure. The aim is to acquire national licenses for back files from major scientific publishers, on a par with what DFG in Germany has bought off to all universities and research institutions. The backfile concept covers practice from the first digitised journal issue and until about 3-4 years before today’s date.
  
  
• National data wells. In support of the interdisciplinary action line ’Integrated search and delivery’ a national data set is being prepared which will be available to all DEFF’s players and their search portals on equal conditions. The data set consists of a number of ’data wells’ for the different data types which in the first instance will be focusing on journal articles and ebooks. Despite the abovementioned budgetary difficulties a solution has been found, whereby the two projects can soon receive the necessary grants. The steering committee’s wish for an extension of the participants group is likewise underway and the two projects can therefore be launched very soon.

THEME: Open Access

DEFF positions itself internationally

Officially the debate on Open Access (OA) in Denmark has only just begun, while international scholarly communication between libraries, publishers and researchers has been very much on the agenda for several years. More and more international universities, research institutions and scientific councils etc. are joining the Berlin Declaration on open access to scientific information paid for by public means.

International organisations such as SPARC and Wellcome Trust encourage scholars not to renounce all their rights to publishers, but to ensure parallel publishing, i.e. that they can also publish on their own or institutional open archives. OA journals and digital archives are still not very predominant. The majority of international scholarly research results in full text bases or full text journals does not have open access, but carry a license and therefore require contractual agreements and access management. On a worldwide scale there are in fact only 3,187 OA journal titles today, 1,027 of which have full text search at article level – all are in English.

Over the past few years DEFF has been focusing on the development within scholarly research publishing and the increasing need for open access to digital scholarly research results, i.a. with support to research registration and publishing systems.

In 2007 DEFF has – via the Knowledge Exchange (KE) collaboration with JISC, SURF and DFG – obtained considerable results in connection with the EU Commission’s conclusions about OA and also in quite concrete terms via Denmark joining the SCOAP3 project. OA is now an important element in DEFF’s strategy for 2008-2009.

SCOAP3

On 15 December 2007 DEFF officially signed an agreement with CERN about Denmark’s participation in SCOAP3. In its capacity as a research institution CERN has over the past ten years been very actively involved in the international debate on open access to research results paid for by public research funding – called Open Access to Scientific Information. The digital research community is progressing by leaps and bounds and access to digital research results and research data is essential for upto-date international research – especially within the field of high energy physics.

The business model for scientific research today dictates that scholars submit their articles and copyright to the international journal publishers, and the libraries/users pay a license fee for access to reading and using the articles. There is only access as long as you pay the license fee.

CERN wishes with the SCOAP3 model to turn around this business model so that scholar/author/ institution pays for the publishing of their research result incl. quality assessment. The research article thereby becomes freely available.

DEFF & EU

On the basis of the report Scientific Publication Policy on Open Access, published in December 2006, the partners behind Knowledge Exchange and SPARC Europe decided together to initiate a public petition to demonstrate to the EU Commission their support for Open Access. In January 2007 KE therefore opened a web site where all organisations and individuals with a digital signature could sign this petition and thereby express their support for free and open access to European research and the recommendations that were presented in the EU. After one month more than 20,000 signatures had been collected, which on 15. January 2007 were handed over to Janez Potocnik, EU commissioner for Science and Research.

By being able within a relative short span of time to successfully establish a close international collaboration with a very concrete objective and aim, KE demonstrated its strength and effectiveness.

The web site is still open, and at this moment a total of 27,071 signatures have been collected.

In mid-October 2007 KE sent a letter to the chairman of the committee for Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE), Angelika Niebler from Germany. This was done in support of the imminent OA debate which EU’s Council of Ministers opened at the meeting in February 2007 in Brussels, and which was subsequently continued in the EU Parliament under the ITRE committee.

The Council of Ministers published the result of the European debate on 23 November 2007 in Council conclusions on scientific information in the digital age: access, dissemination and preservation. The European Research Council subsequently on 17 December published their guidelines for OA publishing of research results paid for by EU, ERC Scientific Council guidelines for open access.

In this way EU has encouraged their member countries to place Open Access on the political agenda by strengthening national strategies and infrastructures for access to and dissemination of scientific information. The invitation particularly encourages efforts to place focus on publishing policy, financing models for research publishing, costbenefit analyses, scholars’ copyright as well as longterm preservation of research results and interoperability in connection with institutional digital archives –all of them essential subjects in research communication.

This is extremely interesting for DEFF, because the research libraries are an important part of the scientific information infrastructure. Historically speaking, research libraries have always played a major role in connection with dissemination of scientific information. The scientific institution, researcher and the university have always expected the library to acquire the relevant and most established journals within the institution’s subject areas. The libraries have therefore to a great extent ensured the financial basis for the publications by paying the subscriptions. Moreover, the libraries have also ensured the bibliographical registration and indexing of the journals, which has been allimportant for accessibility and dissemination. Another essential task has been to preserve the material for posterity.

DEFF, therefore, welcomes the EU commission’s statement and invitation and will in 2008 contribute to creating a dialogue between strategic parties about OA and in collaboration with Knowledge Exchange at European level.

What is Open Access? Cut from Wikipedia/Open Access http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access: Open access is a concept used in relation to free, online electronic material. In this context ’free’ is taken to mean that no fee is demanded for usage, i.a. that access to the material is open or free. Open Access journals (OA-journals) are as a rule scientific, peerreviewed journals, and particularly the exact natural sciences have been instrumental in furthering the use of OA. One of the core ideas behind open access is that ideally speaking publishing costs are not levelled at the reader or at a library (via license payment or subscription), but at the authors or their institutions: That is to say – it may cost money to publish in a OA-journal, but not necessarily to read it.

• Full texts in the libraries’ search interfaces.
  A project has been approved which will examine technically as well as legally how digitised books in the publishing world can be indexed in and mediated through the libraries’ local integrated search systems. The project deals with digitisation of printed books as well as with the development of a business model which on acceptable terms makes digital versions available for the libraries’ search engines.

Under the theme The institutions’ knowledge production and knowledge handling work is in progress on the following:

• Roadmaps
  for Open Access and escience and scientific primary data.
  
  
• Conference systems in the libraries’ service interface.
  A pilot project has been approved which will examine systems and challenges in connection with a new service area for libraries. The conference systems also act as proceedings systems, thereby making sure that conference literature forms part of the establishment of Open Access circulation.

• Digital preservation of Institutional Repositories.
  The purpose of the Pindar project is to create a Danish infrastructure that will ensure longterm preservation of material placed in the many institutional archives which are being established at the moment. At the same time the archive must be developed to act as backup, i.e. as opposed to the legal deposit archive the Pindar archive is developed with a view to being able to export the material.
  
  
• Further projects.
  Under this main theme several project proposals are awaiting a final clarification in connection with the publication of the National Budget. Following this, projects are expected to be launched within Open Access as well as the escience subareas.

Workshop

Together with the programme group Meeting the User, the programme group arranged a joint project maker’s day in order to stimulate and extend the work with project applications to more people. The participants had the opportunity to work with various phases and aspects of idea development, partnerships and projects by participating in a number of work stations.

 

Meeting the User

Meeting the User is the DEFF programme group between user and product. The aim is user logic instead of library logic. That is to say that the programme group supports the development of services where the user’s meetings with the library, librarydeveloped products and digital information resources are perceived as relevant, easy to use and understand.

The programme group considers the programme area Meeting the User as being vital for the entire DEFF enterprise, as the user’s needs ought to be taken into consideration and pervade all the development projects during all phases: Both before, during and after, i.e. in idea development, in the production, in implementation and in evaluation.

All project makers are invited to step forward, and the programme group is open to all types of project proposals which in one way or another are associated with the meeting with the user. The programme group assesses the project proposals before passing them on to the DEFF steering committee. Hence it is also possible to get qualified feedback on a project proposal.

Themes for projects

Meeting the User has selected six central themes. They are:

1. Users. Generally speaking, the library needs increased knowledge of the primary users and the different segments in the user group, as well as strategic analyses of the relevant contract partner and stakeholders. Initiatives that deal with compilation and analysis of user data, user groups, user behaviour and patterns of use, with carrying out evaluations, and satisfaction and effect surveys are therefore important.
   
   
2. Information supply. It is a task for the library to be access portal to information. Questions as to which information in which contexts and how it should be collected, made available and presented are central. In the present period there is particular focus on projects dealing with integrated search.
   
   
3. Information literacy. The programme area takes the basic view that the library has an important role in connection with learning and research. Information literacy is defined as being able to search, procure, save, retrieve, select and assess information, and to comply with rules for use of scientific literature and other information. The most important aspect is that the competence is introduced into a concrete educational context. The context concerns the students’ study habits, development, professional quality and efficient literature search, and also the researchers’ knowledge of academic information handling and the complex information infrastructure.
   
   
4. E-learning. Librarysupported learning and mediation of information skills demand continuous development of pedagogics and didactics in the libraries. The programme group sees elearning as a very broad collective term for computer- and technologymediated dissemination, guidance and instruction with a view to supporting user learning. An elearning effort can include actual involvement in the IT- and operational side of virtual learning systems, or can be a production of isolated elearning products.
   
   
5. New expressions, forms of communication and platforms. The programme group supports in particular initiatives that employ (for libraries) new media, (social) technologies and technical platforms which integrate different types of information- and communicationtechnological contact with users. For these purposes support is given to audiovisual and aesthetical forms of communication (non-textual information).
   
   
6. Marketing. The work related to ’the experience of the library’ also has to do with attracting and keeping the attention on the service the library offers, and with getting close to the user. Here Meeting the User supports projects that focus on increased visibility and marketing.

Projects and theme days in 2007

Projects receiving financial support in 2007 were:

• Moving images
  
  
• Usability and integrated search/Primo
  
  
• Web tutorial on plagiarization
  
  
• English translation of UB-test.

The programme group further recommended two projects: a study of chatbots and a study with user participation of mobile communication among the library’s youngest and future users. The two projects did not get immediate assurance of financial support from DEFF. Despite the refusals it is still pleasing to note that three libraries are going to Hamburg in 2008 to examine more closely the experiences gained with chatbots, and that the consortium of three libraries and external experts who got together on mobile communication, chose to launch a project which hopefully can form the basis for a larger application for alternative means. The first results of the studies are already available. It makes interesting reading about the students’ perception of the libraries’ knowledge and the students’ wishes concerning delivery of knowledge, including 12 tales from the future.

With participation by the programme group Information Supply, the programme group held a theme day ’Creative application of data’ which dealt with the national data well and social technologies, as well as an alternative conference entitled ’Project maker day’. Both events resulted in articles in DF Revy, so that interested readers, who could not participate in the conference, were able to benefit from the experiences. The project maker day set a new standard for the work with library development and forms of meeting.

Apart from this, the programme group has accepted all invitations received to participate in other theme days and courses, partly to present the action plan and partly to give talks on concrete subjects within the programme area’s expertise.

Projects and other activities in the melting pot

The projects under way are a survey of what students doing their thesis need from their library, cf. amongst other things the political demand for a thesis completed within six months, a marketing project of eresources and a project on the library in and with the social technologies.

Activities for 2008 have already been agreed upon and can i.a. be seen on the programme group’s wiki at https://infoshare.dtv.dk/twiki/bin/view/MoedetMedBrugeren/WebHome. Here the plagiarization project should be mentioned, which apart from a web tutorial arranges a theme day which brings the library into close dialogue with those responsible for teaching.

The theme day ’Meeting the User’ can likewise be recommended. Even though the programme area is called ’Meeting the User’, this covers a multitude of meetings with them, their different needs and ICT patterns of use. How do we get to know them better?

The programme group also takes a step towards selfevaluation at an internal seminar in March, where

it will be considered what works and what does not work, and which proposals might be put forward concerning future DEFF programme areas.

Quality criteria

Apart from the six central themes the programme group has three quality criteria for projects. They are:

• Collaboration with the users. DEFF projects should include users and stakeholders in equal project partnerships. Also collaboration with library and educationexternal organisations like e.g. private companies are interesting and of benefit to the libraries’ product development and innovation power.
  
  
• Broad use. The programme group focuses on projects being useful to as many as possible, and the development of a new service only becomes a real DEFF success when it is implemented beyond the project partners’ institutions. Usability must be in focus. It is, however, also recognised that experimental projects and innovative development cannot guarantee the result beforehand.
  
  
• Internationalisation. It is an obvious task to examine and collect knowledge about international library development. Knowledge Exchange is an important part in this internationalisation. Inspiration and reuse can be obtained from the library world internationally speaking, but also from other professions.

Finally, the programme group has levelled some internal demands at itself. These concern continuous focus on the programme group’s initiative in relation to cooperation with the other programme groups and other relevant partners, knowledge sharing within DEFF and within the profession. Knowledge sharing and information can happily assume new forms and experiment with the actual expression. Moreover, it is an ambition to contribute to the continued improvement and professionalisation of ideas and project fruition as well as development of processes for knowledge sharing. Both these demands have been of importance for the conference and other activities that the programme group has been working with in 2007.

The programme group looks forward to more exciting project suggestions from all the excellent library staff in the specialist and research libraries.

New Institutions

In 2007 New Institutions was established as a new programme area in DEFF to ensure that also the smaller institutions’ wishes as regards the development in DEFF are taken into consideration. Up till now primarily the development needs of the research libraries have been in focus.

New Institutions wishes to encourage the integration between the library function and the professional education environments. The programme group therefore endeavours to consolidate the education libraries in New Institutions as well as the library function in the educational institutions within the mediumlength higher education courses, the shorter higher education courses and youth education programmes. The consolidation must include both operation and development.

The members of the programme group are recruited from library and education associated with the abovementioned institutions.

Main points of the strategy and development plan

The strategy and development plan in New Institutions should be seen in the context of national requirements levelled at the courses of education, including their accreditation and new qualification framework for higher education. The aim is therefore to create interdisciplinary projects between library and education which will highlight where and how the library function can contribute positively to innovation and optimization within educational courses as a whole.

The programme group has listed the following five action lines:

• Communication
• Information supply
• Information literacy
• E-learning
• Knowledge management.

Formal visibility and new dialogue fora

Each action line is described and motivated explicitly in connection with the criteria to which the education programmes are accredited. The following criteria of particular relevance to the library function should be singled out:

• Demands for knowledge sharing and knowledge production between theory and practice
• Demands for new and experimental forms of learning
• Demands for development of information facilities, including easy access to physical and electronic resources and inclusion of the latest research from home and abroad in educational programmes.

In concrete terms, this means that the programme group launches projects which firstly develop common operational solutions, increased digitisation and consolidation of the educational libraries, and secondly challenge the traditional perception of library and education. This is done by consciously taking the library function into new contexts, thereby opening up for new dialogue fora for DEFF. This must happen with due regard to the special needs of the individual education programmes.

In order to avoid parallel development and to encourage common idea development and experience transfer, New Institutions is aware of the library function’s possible coupling to existing projects. These can for example be rooted in the profession colleges’ knowledge centres.

Stakeholders

In order to secure anchorage between the programme group’s action lines, library and education, project ideas should as far as possible be generated and developed in close dialogue with the stakeholders.

The programme group works actively to support this through vigilant communication and in the development of the projects.

Projects in 2007

• From theory to practice: development of a communication strategy for New Institutions. An overall success criterion for the consolidation of New Institutions is that DEFF is anchored in the institutions which the programme area represents. The way to this anchorage goes through the development of a communication strategy in close cooperation with the stakeholders. Consequently, the communication strategy should be developed on the basis of a stakeholders’ analysis and empirical studies. In the collection of data (focus group interview) focus will be on the stakeholders’ view of and expectations in relation to DEFF, including what New Institutions can contribute with in relation to the demands levelled at the education programmes. The project group consists of representatives from New Institutions and DEFF. An external consultant has also been invited.
  

•  In spring 2008 the programme group arranges a theme day for librarians and educators with focus on knowledge sharing, information literacy and establishment of networks. The theme day is to be the first of two.

The extension of electronic resources within some of the specialist areas that New Institutions represents, is still comparatively modest. Subject to the adoption of the Budget 2008, financial support has been granted for the project Support to e-resources for the educational libraries within MVU, KVU and youth education programmes, the purpose of which is to disseminate knowledge about these resources.

Conferences and other activities in 2007

• External stakeholders
  The programme group has started a formalised cooperation with a number of external stakeholders with interests in common. The stakeholders are thought to be able to contribute positively to the development and consolidation of the library function. 
  
  
• Professional Forum
  Theme day ’Evaluation of the PHS libraries’ reality’ At a meeting with the steering committee in Sep-tember 2007, New Institutions presented the programme group’s action lines. Professional Forum was very positive towards the programme group’s initiatives, and subsequently an agreement was made to the effect that New Institutions can communicate via Professional Forum’s newsletter. Collaboration about a joint theme day was also established which were to put focus on evaluation of the library service at the profession colleges. The purpose of the theme day was partly to draw the attention to the documentation of the libraries’ activities, partly to contribute to the development of an evaluation culture in the libraries. 
  
  
• KnowledgeDenmark
  KnowledgeDenmark and New Institutions are planning a number of joint activities. The first initiative concerns the possibility of establishing a knowledge group for information literacy within the framework of KnowledgeDenmark in spring 2008. Know-ledgeDenmark will also be involved in theme days, programme meetings and as a partner in relevant projects. New Institutions will furthermore produce three to four articles for the KnowledgeDenmark Newsletter every year, and KnowledgeDenmark will advertise the programme group’s arrangements. Finally, DEFF’s logo will be presented on the front page of www.videndanmark.dk in order to highlight the collaboration. http://www.videndanmark.dk/   http://www.videndanmark.dk/Aftaler-og-samarbejde.94.0.html.
  
  
• ASB Knowledge Communication Lab
  ASB Knowledge Communication Lab has from the Ministry of Science, Research and Innovation been granted DKK 7 mil. for an ICT-based project, VidNet, which will form the basis for an interdisciplinary national (and international) cooperation about knowledge exchange and experience transfer. The project also contributes at a higher level to developing the interplay between places of work and educational institutions.
  
  In concrete terms collaboration has started on the development of a digital and national knowledge-sharing and research portal, where knowledge is collected, and where educational institutions, production environments and companies will have access to structured, commented and validated knowledge within a number of areas. The project group consists of representatives from the programme area, from the educational institutions and from the Royal School of Library and Information Science.
  
  
• Steering committee for project ’Vidnet’
  A steering group has been appointed for VidNet, whose role i.a. will be to further network portals and new possibilities for cooperation between research, education and business life.
  DEFF is represented here via New Institutions.
  
  
• National Knowledge Centre for ICT and Learning
  In cooperation with the National Knowledge Centre for ICT and Learning the possibility for developing an e-learning module in knowledge search will be examined. The aim is for the knowledge search module to be part of a collective modular e-learning and senior lecturer qualifying project.
  
  During the spring the Ministry of Education will be petitioned to let the e-learning project qualify as a merit- and competence giving educational programme at the profession colleges.
  
  
• Project Bibteach anchored at Herning Regional Library
  New Institutions is accepted as cooperation partner in the ’Bibteach project’, which focuses on e-learning, mobile technologies and new possibilities for working with learning across library types.

 Future perspectives

In the long-term perspective, the programme group aims at selecting new models for the future library function, which can provide the framework for development initiatives both regionally and nationally. The models are supposed to be generic and consequently can be adapted to the individual educational institution and the individual learning environment. These models can challenge the traditional roles of the library function and thereby help to point to new possibilities for the function in relation to the areas of knowledge and learning.

Licenses

Two license groups were established in DEFF at the beginning of 2007:

• License Group for Universities and Research Institutions (LUF) with Anna Mette Morthorst, ASB Library as chairwoman. The group consists of representatives from universities and research institutions as well as five appointed participants from Management Forum for Special- and Research Libraries (LSF).
  
  
• License Group for Educational Libraries (LUB) with Karin Lodberg, VIA University College as chairwoman. The group consists of representatives from the business colleges, technical colleges, upper secondary schools, LSF and Professional Forum.

Mandates, lists of participants, meetings and minutes can be seen at www.deff.dk.

As a main rule the license groups hold four annual meetings. In 2007 this was supplemented with a joint over night meeting in June, where the themes were the action plan for 2007-2008, marketing and common future activities in relation to price models, statistics, transfer etc. within the license area.

The annual DEFF consortium day was held in Sep-tember 2007, this time at Tietgen Competence Centre in Odense, where about 100 persons participated. The programme included an introduction to the four DEFF programme areas and some web 2.0. This was followed by workshops dealing with such topics as: Ebog.dk, Remote access to DEFNet and Marketing.

The licenses

The establishing of the new regions has resulted in a number of offers within the license area via DEFF. From Danish Regions a sum of money was set aside for the entire health service, so that they could gain access to a number of e-resources. As from 1 Janu-ary 2007 this access was opened to hospital staff in the five regions and all practising doctors in Den-mark. This means access to a basis package of electronic journals, databases and reference works for the national health hospitals in the country – but also that practising doctors have now been given this opportunity.

The first months of the year were spent on the last renewals and settling of bills, so that the institutions would not miss access to the electronic resources. There are, however, still often problems in this connection, and the license secretariat is therefore currently working on improving the work processes. Over the summer the license secretariat unfortunately had to close for access for new customers and licenses on account of the large workload. This was, of course, rather unfortunate, and i.a. the new position established in the license secretariat and the completed lean project should hopefully ensure that this situation will not reoccur.

The major task during the autumn has been renewals. The plan was for this to happen via the new license database, but unfortunately it was not ready in time to handle the task. The renewals have therefore been sent out and returned via mail like in previous years.

A letter of orientation was sent out primo December 2007 to all participating libraries and institutions explaining the new method of handling invoicing in 2008. From now on a license and price overview will be sent out each year to everyone on 1 March. Following this the first invoice of the year will be sent out on 1 April, and the second invoice on 1 October. This is expected to provide clearer information about licence titles and prices for the individual institutions.

Fusions

During the most part of 2007 work has been going on with fusions – first within the field of universities and research institutions, then in the CVU and profession colleges area. This has naturally to a large extent affected access to e-resources for the institutions and has brought major changes within the licence area.

A university or a profession college with 24,000 students cannot possibly pay license on full student number, which means that the license must be priced according to relevant users. Many details have been negotiated and explained to the publishers, as the composition of students and educations have changed from previous negotiations. By the end of the year the universities as well as three of the profession colleges were completely fused as far as licenses are concerned. The last fusions within the area of education will take place in 2008.

The license dataset

The first version of the license database was opened for web access just before summer 2007. Via this base all libraries that are members of the DEFF consortium can log on with user name and password and see the information registered about them in the license administration database. They can see the license agreements to which they have access, read license contracts, see title lists as well as more factual information such as contact persons and ip-numbers.

Knowledge Exchange

In Knowledge Exchange an EU tender has been carried out in 2007 for the four member countries for the purpose of trying to create common access to selected e-resources. The emphasis has been on alternative business models, including Open Access models.

23 offers were received from interested publishers, of which 10 were invited to an initial round of interviews. Five of these were selected for the work on:

• BioOne
• Multiscience
• The Scientific World
• ALPSP
• Wiley/Blackwell books.

A contract was signed with each publisher, and the four member countries, Holland, Germany, Great Britain and Denmark, are committed to mediate products and agreements to the countries’ libraries.

Other activities

In collaboration with Architecture & Middleware a project has been launched concerning testing of Shibboleth in practice. Shibboleth is an access management system (http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/), and a number of publishers are working on introducing this.

As mentioned in a previous paragraph the Agency for Research and Innovation in spring 2007 announced a round of applications to the research infrastructure pool as part of the political agreement of November 2006 concerning implementation of the globalisation pool and a follow-up on the welfare agreement. In cooperation with a number of universities DEFF applied for means to be spent on the purchase of back files (data from start of publication up to about 2006). Unfortunately the application was refused, but further work now continues in the programme area Information Supply with a view to the next round of applications.

Development in number of licenses and participants in the license cooperation

 

The number of licenses in DEFF has been rising since 2000. During the first years the licenses were mainly acquired by the universities, in the 90s the research institutions started to participate in the cooperation.

From 2004 the Ministry of Education’s institutions joined the cooperation, and subsequently in 2006-2007 it became possible for the upper secondary schools to participate.

Turnover DKK million

The collective turnover in the license area for license agreements is likewise steadily rising. The number of license agreements goes up as the number of participating institutions signing on rises.

Knowledge Exchange

Knowledge Exchange (KE) is the international knowledge-sharing collaboration, of which Den-mark’s Electronic Research Library (DEFF) over the past two years has been an active part. The partners in the KE-initiative are Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in Great Britain, Deutsche For-schungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in Germany and the university organisation SURF in Holland. The four organisations are very different, both in terms of organisational structure, commission and mission. However, common to all of them are their role and visions as regards establishment and development of a coherent Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and information structure for researchers and students. During the first three-year cooperation agreement from August 2005 to August 2008 DEFF has conducted the chairmanship and housed the joint office with the KE secretariat.

Status

The partners in KE have a common mission that has to do with creating the optimal virtual environment for students and research in the form of sound ICT-solutions and thereby creating value nationally and organisationally for the participating partners. Through this cooperation the KE-partners wish to gather together their joint competences and strengths, and based on the national strategies they have developed a common vision:

To make a layer of scholarly and scientific content openly available on the Internet.

In order to achieve this goal the partners will support existing and new programmes at national and international level by coordinating their efforts within the following areas:

• Building an integrated repository infrastructure
• Exploring new developments in the future of publishing
• Facilitating integrated management services within education and research institutions
• Supporting the European digital libraries agenda.

With this vision at international level KE expects to obtain and create lifelong learning via free access for students and instructors to a broad variety of teaching materials of high quality, digital collaboratives, scientific information resources and technology of high quality.

It is not possible to deliver ’Knowledge Exchange’ on demand, but it is possible to facilitate ’Knowledge Exchange’ through the development of knowledge-sharing networks and joint projects. Over the past 12 months KE has been working continuously with the establishment of expert fora, contact meditation between the organisations and their experts. KE has participated in several conferences with papers and arranged larger workshops. Here ’tasks not talks’ has been the objective with the result that the KE-partners have received several reports with many interesting recommendations and activity suggestions concerning technological infrastructure, interoperability, standards and competence exchange. In 2007 KE has achieved many results that can all be viewed at www.knowledge-exchange.info. Some of the more spectacular successes should be mentioned here.

Petition and Open Access

In December 2006 European Research Advisory Board published the report Scientific Publication Policy on Open Access, in which the following important statements on Open Access (OA) were emphasized: “EURAB recommends that the Commission should consider mandating all researchers funded under FP7 to lodge their publications resulting from EC-funded research in an open access repository as soon as possible after publication, to be made openly accessible within 6 months at the latest”.

The KE-partners and SPARC Europe, all of them well-known organisations in connection with e-publishing and scholarly communication, decided shortly after the turn of the year to work out a petition in order to show the EU Commission their support for OA. On 17 January 2007 KE launched a web site, where organisations and individuals could sign this petition and thereby give their support to free and open access to European research and to the recommendations presented in the EU. On 15 February KE, i.a. represented by Bo Öhrström and on behalf of DEFF, presented a handsomely bound folder with about 20,000 signatures to Janez Potoc-nik, EU commissioner for Science and Research. The KE-initiative hereby proved its strength and impact by in a relatively short time being able to establish a close international cooperation with a very concrete goal and aim with a significant result.

National licenses in joint tenders

The license area enjoys considerable attention in all the four KE organisations. In July 2006 the top management of the four organisations met and agreed on trying to bring an influence to bear on the European agenda related to future scholarly publishing and role distribution between publisher, scholars and libraries and to find new license and financing models. In this context the four KE partners invited international publishers to exploit the possibilities and challenges which a common cross-institutional and common international tender have to offer.

The purpose of a common license tender is i.a. to judge which major gains the KE partners can obtain by working closely together in terms of economy, transparency in contracts and different and better product offers. At the same time KE hopes to stimulate the market by developing new business models and new products that can support research and teaching. The tender focuses particularly on electronic journals, databases and multimedia. The KE partners are already now able to say that a large part of their vision has been realised as the market has reacted positively to the tender.

In February the partners received 28 offers from publishers and aggregators. 10 publishers were chosen who were all invited to an interview in connection with the UKSG conference in Warwick in April.

In the second round in September nine publishers replied with prices and conditions, and five publishers are selected for further meeting activity with a view to entering into framework agreements. It is expected that during the first quarter of 2008 a normal round of tender will be conducted in the individual countries for five products.

Plans

Following tender KE has chosen consultants who have subsequently evaluated the KE initiative itself. The evaluation has formed the basis for the KE partners’ assessment and decision about a future cooperation, including form, organisational structure and extension of the member circle. JISC, SURF and DEFF have already agreed to a new three-year period of cooperation, while DFG is expected to reach a positive decision about participation. In the meantime KE continues its work on knowledge sharing with workshops, expert networking as well as launching of project proposals and recommendations.

International cooperation

Since 2007 DEFF has been involved in a number of international fora. Apart from that, the licence staff in the secretariat has been in regular contact with mainly foreign suppliers who normally attend negotiations in Denmark. The DEFF secretariat annually negotiates a large number of contracts based on a contract portfolio of more than 175 contracts. In 2007 the volume of contracts reached over DKK 120 mil.

International fora

In March 2007 DEFF participated in JISC’s annual meeting in Birmingham. The meeting provided a unique opportunity to follow and learn from the activities in the largest and broadest programme for digital instruction and research in Europe.

In April 2007 DEFF participated in the annual conference in UKSG (United Kingdom Serials Group) at the University of Warwick, where apart from inspiration from talks and workshops the possibilities are excellent for meeting suppliers and cultivating networks.

DEFF participates in a few publishers’ Library Advisory Boards. At the moment DEFF has a seat at Cambridge University Press and Springer. In April 2007 DEFF participated in Springer’s Library Advisory Board meeting.

At Nordic level the purchasing partnership concerning electronic information has continued through meetings to exchange experiences, continuous contact between each country’s organisation via a mailing list as well as exploitation of each other’s negotiating experiences with the same suppliers. A joint meeting was held in Finland in September.

DEFF participated in the first meeting in European Forum for Information Literacy (EFIL), held at the Ministry of Culture in Madrid in October 2007. Delegates from 13 European countries, UNESCO and NFIL and National Forum on Information Literacy in USA attended. The meeting yielded a number of visionary suggestions for digital development within libraries, learning and digitisation, and EFIL should be seen as the beginning of an umbrella organisation for information literacy in Europe.

License work at European level continues to take place through the organisation ICOLC (International Coalition Of Library Consortia). The conferen-

ces change biannually between Europe and North America, and DEFF took part in October 2007 in the conference in Stockholm. The programme was composed of a number of specialist subjects such as license conditions, purchase of e-books etc. as well as a number of interactive supplier sessions. DEFF presented a paper on the handling of licenses in connection with fusions.

DEFF participated in Elsevier’s 5th Library Connect Forum in November 2007 in Oslo.

In late November DEFF participated in ’Online Information 2007’ in London Olympia. Apart from networking collaboration the sole purpose of participating in this annual event is to hold a large number of meetings with suppliers about prices, contract conditions and current unfinished business regarding electronic resources.

In November 2007 DEFF applied for membership of Coalition for Networked Information (CNI). CNI introduces itself as follows: The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity. Some 200 institutions representing higher education, publishing, network and telecommunications, information technology, and libraries and library organizations make up CNI's members. For several years DEFF has been following the work in CNI with great interest and has now chosen to join like the others partners in Knowledge Exchange. CNI holds two conferences in USA each year and every other year a joint conference with JISC in Great Britain.

DEFF supports Open Access publishing through membership of SPARC, just as DEFF through membership of COUNTER works for standardised and comparable specifications of electronic resources. DEFF also participates in the Transfer cooperation. Transfer cooperates with publishers and libraries in order to secure standards, so that journals changing publisher, must continue to be available to those who have paid for access. Finally, in December 2007 DEFF signed a declaration on interest concerning participation in the SCOAP3 initiative under CERN’s management. Today 11 European countries are backing the initiative.

Accounts

At the end of 2006 DEFF carried forward DKK 0,3 million to 2007. DEFF’s ordinary funding under the Finance Act amounted to DKK 17,5 million.

In 2007 the funding under the Finance Act for DEFF was divided between funding for operational expenses (DKK 8,5 million) and a subsidy grant (DKK 9 million). The operational grant under § 21.31.06 included four sub-accounts: salary (DKK 4,5 million), other operational costs (DKK 3,7 million), Knowledge Exchange Office (DKK 0,3 million net) and licenses. The latter account is expenditure neutral. The funding for operational expenses is placed under § 21.31.05. These means have all been spent on grants for projects.

The grants were apportioned by the steering committee on the basis of applications from primarily the programme groups. The difference between the grants for the different programme areas thus reflects the steering group’s prioritisations, but also a difference in the number of applications.

Particularly the programme area New Institutions was an innovation within DEFF and the group has therefore spent some time on defining its needs.

Financial statements 2007	kr.
FA-funding Carried forward 2006 Reverse transfer 2007	17.500.000 300.000 -
Total funding	17.800.000
Costs programme areas
Architecture & Middleware Information Supply Meeting the User New Institutions Licenses (funding for educational libraries) Outside programme areas	4.021.000 4.194.000 1.040.000 396.000 750.000 200.000
Total costs programme areas	10.601.000
Costs operation
Knowledge Exchange Other expenses (conferences, travel, publications etc) Secretariat (incl. rent etc.)	338.000 1.118.000 5.500.000
Total costs operation	6.956.000
Total costs	17.557.000
Carried forward to 2008	243.000

 

The general costs for travel, conferences etc. are separated from the programme areas.

The item covers the costs for all participants in all programme areas, steering committee and secretariat. The costs of ca. DKK 0,3 million for the development of web interface for the license database also figure here.

Total expenditure amounted to DKK 17,557 million and DEFF carries forward DKK 0,243 million to 2008.

 

Projects

The overview covers solely projects that are completed or started in 2007 – or planned for 2008. A collective overview of DEFF projects can be seen at www.deff.dk.

Completed projects

Architecture and Middleware

• Basis organisation
• Implementation of open data services for Danish Research Database and DEFF Global ePrints
• Shibboleth preparation of user databases.

Information Supply

• Digital preservation of Institutional Repositories
• Mediation of payment resources on DEFF’s subject portals: Juraportal and Bizigate
• Project maker day in cooperation with the programme group Meeting the User
• Development of national research portal.

Meeting the User

• Analysis model – a web tool
• Biblioteksvagten (Ask a librarian)
• DELA: Digital Education Library Access
• Subject portal for Archaeology and History
• Creative Application of Data (theme day)
• Project maker day in cooperation with the programme group Information Supply
• Is students’ information literacy increasing?

New Institutions

- Evaluation of PHS libraries’ reality (theme day).

Projects started

Architecture and Middleware

• Ezproxy – tools for maintenance and sharing of configuration data
• Feasibility study: DanBib as genuine union catalogue
• Preliminary study of business and agreement models for services
• Further development of Fedora.

Information Supply

• Purchase of back files from ISI database
• Conference systems – system review and pilot projects
• PINDAR
• Grants for research registration
• Support for application to national pool for research infrastructure
• Development of business model for the use of data for digitisation.

Meeting the User

• Moving images as marketing tool
• Translation of UB test
• Web tutorial on plagiarization.

New Institutions

• From Theory to Practice: Development of communication strategy for New Institutions
• Knowledge sharing regarding information competences (theme day).

Licenses

• Support for purchase of back files at university fusions
• License purchases for educational libraries.

Other projects

- Tools for integrated search.

Planned projects

Architecture and Middleware

• ITIL & DS484 for libraries
• Connection of commercial library services to DK-AAI.

Information Supply

• “CRIS-OAR interoperability” & “Electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) compound objects and interoperability”
• Data well for articles – clarification project
• Data well for e-books – clarification project
• Determination of national data format for project registration and specification of further development of PURE/Orbit
• Public access to Danish research.

Meeting the User

• The programme group aims at holding further theme and conference days in 2008.
  

New Institutions

• Support to e-resources for educational libraries within MVU, KVU and youth education programmes.
  

Other projects

• Participation in Knowledge Exchange Partnership 2008-2011
• Establishment of common library system for the University of Aarhus
• Campaign for Open Access principles and License to Publish / 2. introduction to a series of workshops on “Best Practice for e-journal publishing”.

 

Targets 2008

The ’new’ DEFF has got into its stride since the reor-ganisation. With the adoption of the programme groups’ actions plans in November 2007 the foundation stone and the strategic basis for DEFF’s further work have been laid.

Activities and the attainment of the target in DEFF are very often dependent on prioritisations in the participating libraries and in those educational and research institutions which the libraries service. Last year’s report reflected the expectation that 2007 would bring increased focus on Open Access, policies for publishing in the universities and improved agreements on scanning. This would give DEFF the chance to launch new activities within scanning, e-learning and further development of university repositories. However, it turned out that a longer time perspective within these areas was necessary, but these activities will continue to play an important role in DEFF’s work.

In 2007 the organisational frames for DEFF’s work were finally worked out. The programme groups have prepared plans for their work and the most important task in 2008 will be the completion of the many projects that have been granted financial support by the steering committee.

One central target is the preparation of a roadmap for Open Access to indicate activities and milestones on the path towards increased public access to Danish research. Naturally this roadmap must be linked to the activities within Nordbib and Knowledge Exchange.

DEFF also has to pinpoint the kind of role that the libraries can play in relation to integrated search. In 2008 the work will include the description of the common data well which can form the basis for integrated search. Two projects within this area have already been launched.

Another important element in relation to integrated search is the integration with other systems and with document delivery. The programme group for Architecture & Middleware must find out how digital document delivery can be linked to integrated search and also examine the possibility of strengthening the data collaboration with DanBib which is the basis for document delivery of physical materials. Moreover, the group will be working at connecting more services and libraries to the new access management system.

The programme group for Meeting the User will continue work on improving user benefits in terms of the library services on offer. Activities include usability projects, but also possible plans for a tool-box for user studies and user inclusion.

As to the programme group for New Institutions the broadening and anchorage of the cooperation in the individual institutions will continue to be an important task. The adoption of PURE as common system for knowledge registration is expected to be a sound basis for collaboration between the libraries at the profession colleges.

Organisationally, DEFF’s coordination committee must prepare the appointment of a new steering committee by the end of the year. The framework and the composition of the programme groups are expected to remain relatively unaltered. The coordination committee is also expected to enter into an agreement on the extension of the DEFF cooperation to also include upper secondary schools. Finally, 2008 will see a continuation of the work in Knowledge Exchange within new frames.

DEFF-secretariat

DEFF responsible:

Deputy Director Bo Öhrström

Secretariat:

Head of secretariat René Olesen
Consultant Morten Andersen
Consultant Lise Mikkelsen
Consultant Jakob Nedergaard Mortensen
Secretary Lotte Pantawapirom

Licenses:

Head of secretariat Kirsten Due
Special consultant Anette Schneider
Consultant Lotte Sterup
Consultant Janne Vendt

Knowledge Exchange:

Special consultant Hanne Marie Kværndrup  

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This page forms part of the publication 'Denmark's Electronic Research Library. Annual report 2007' as Entire publication with graphics

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