An Example of Multinational Cooperation with a Special View on Multilinguality and Interoperability Hagelin, Ritva and Myllys, Heli, Viikki Science Library, University of Helsinki

Viikki Science Library, University of Helsinki a new scientific library that was opened in September 1999 the biggest scientific library in its field in Finland 9 subject areas: agriculture * biosciences and biotechnology * ecology, systematics and environment * economics and social science * food * forestry * general science * home economics and consumer research * pharmacy collections and services are available to everyone

What is NOVAGate? Organizational structure Technical structure Contents / Subject structure Cooperation with other SBIGs

Nordic gateway to information in Forestry, Veterinary and Agricultural Sciences Subject-Based Information Gateway, a so-called SBIG Quality controlled collection of Internet- accessible resources free access references (800 Nordic resources) Aimed at: higher education & research

Organizational (1/5) : NOVAGate is the best example of the IT-projects of 7 libraries of the NOVA University NOVA University – ”the university without walls” established 1995 veterinary & agricultural universities from 5 Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden cooperation with the Baltic countries Information Management Group = directors of the NOVA libraries

Organizational (2/5): 7 libraries of the NOVA University Denmark: The Danish Veterinary and Agricultural Library Finland: University of Helsinki, Viikki Science Library Finland: University of Helsinki, Veterinary Medicine Library Iceland: Hvanneyri Agricultural University Library Norway: The Library of Agricultural University of Norway Norway: The Library of Norwegian School of Veterinary Science Sweden: The Libraries of Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Organizational (3/5): A brief history of NOVAGate Initial project proposal: 1996 Initial funding: Nordic Council of Ministers in some other national funding service was launched in July 1998 evaluations (1998 internal, 1999, 2000) cooperation nationally and internationally 1998-

Organizational (4/5): Communication project web site (WebGuide for Cataloguers, Reports, Mail archive...) occasional meetings (1-2 / year) & telephone conferences

Organizational (5/5): Task allocation Project management (rotating between countries) Technical maintenance & webmaster (Sweden) Subject structure of DB & WebGuide for cataloguers (Finland) Marketing (Denmark) Evaluation (Norway)

Technical (1/2): A web-accessible, central database located in Sweden Decentralized input from 7 NOVA libraries via web ROADS software (Resource Organisation and Discover in Subject-Based Services) –Web interface fully designable –Good browsing and searching facilities –Cross-searching other SBIGs

Technical (2/2): User interface in English Browsing –By subject categories –By english keywords Searching –Simple free text searching –Combination of search terms & limiting the search (field, country, type of resource) Help & FAQ & What’s new & Feedback

Contents (1/4): Quality-assessed: selection criteria based on DESIRE and SOSIG Subject area: Forestry, Veterinary and Agricultural sciences... also horticulture, food science, environmental science... Resource types: Organizations, databases, directories, resource guides & training material, electronic documents Initially: a comprehensive coverage of Nordic resources …and also selected European resources and those of international organizations

Contents (2/4): multilingual description of resources English (all resources) The methodology of FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations) –classification scheme : the main subject categories (17) + 1 extra category –keywords : Agrovoc-thesaurus A short description (abstract)

Contents (3/4): multilingual description of resources Local Nordic language (not all resources) –Title / alternative title (different languages) keywordsabstract Denmark++ Finland++ Iceland-+ Norway-+ Sweden--

Contents (4/4): multilingual access English (all resources) –International cooperation Local Nordic language (not all resources) –Local language – more comprehensive description –Searching ”local resources” –Cooperation with national SBIG initiatives, for example Finnish Virtual Library Project (user-interface both in Finnish and in English)

Cooperation (1/3): with national SBIG initiatives Finnish Virtual Library Project (FVL) references covering 56 subject fields List of subject fields  field-specific searching Cross-searching between 5 separate FVL databases + EELS + NOVAGate (based on WHOIS++) Discussions going on with DEf subject portals (Denmark) Bibsys subject portals (Norway) Svesök (Sweden)

Cooperation (2/3): with International SBIGs Renardus: academic subject gateway service in Europe –Funded by EU during January 2000-June 2002 –12 project partners from 7 European countries –Pilot service is expected to be ready in May 2001 Cross-searching : based on Z39.50 Cross-browsing : based on DDC mapping –Viikki Science Library as a representative of NOVAGate A special interest: metadata interoperability and multilinguality (taskplan under development) –

Cooperation (3/3): Discussions going on with other international agricultural gateway activities, for example FAO –Multi-Host searching of traditional bibliographic AGRIS input –Cooperation between agricultural gateways EIARD InfoSys –The information system of the European Initiative for Agricultural Research for Development (EIARD) –

FAO/AGRIS : Meta Database with links to different database systems standards and development of tools ARTO - articles eViikki: - bibliographic data Helsinki University, Viikki Science Library LINDA / HELKA - monographs and serials “ AGRIS view” to the Finnish agricultural data browsing and searching by 1) AGRIS main subject categories 2) AGROVOC – keywords Fig. 1. Proposal for data production system of the AGRIS/CARIS Resource Centre in Finland NOVAGate : gateway to other than bibliographic data Z39.50 (in future ) Voyager (in 2001) Renardus : academic subject gateway service in Europe Current research information systems (project databases...) Law and administrative.data Extension, education Data types : Bibliographic data StatisticsOther data EIARD InfoSys