hurting those whom the boycott was intended to South Africa, other participants made it clear that aid, resulting in the availability of even fewer re­ the ANC is not the sole voice of anti-apartheid sources for libraries serving black students and forces. As Corinne Nyquist concluded, the impor­ scholars. tance of the session lies not in its resolution of the Audience response reflected the complexity of problem but in its open discussion. The panel will the topic. Several participants strongly supported be repeated at ALA Annual Conference in Dallas exemption of informational materials from an oth­ next summer.—Helen MacLam , Choice maga­ erwise solid boycott. Although the position of the zine. African National Congress is total isolation of

A customized database on Scandinavian government

By Martha L. Brogan and Robert B. Kvavik Assistant to the Provost and Vice President Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs for Academic Affairs University of Minnesota University of Minnesota

Customized bibliographic databases and educational innovation.

T h e development of the Scandinavian political eign policy, Norwegian and Icelandic interest studies database is a joint project of Martha Bro­ groups, and coalition governments in Sweden. The gan, a professional librarian and former bibliogra­ customized lists were discussed with the students, pher for Western European Studies, and Robert B. and research themes were identified which could Kvavik, a political scientist with a specialty in be investigated using materials held by the Univer­ Scandinavian government and politics. sity Libraries. Originally and ultimately intended to facilitate The database also produced a master reading list the compilation of a published bibliography, the for an undergraduate class on Scandinavian poli­ project—while still in its developmental phase— tics. The electronic bibliography saved us, our has already served a beneficial use to support re­ students—and presumably some of our library search and instruction at the University of Minne­ staff—precious time in identifying and locating sota. During Winter Quarter 1988, in a graduate relevant materials. Rather, the faculty member’s seminar on Scandinavian government and politics, energy focused on helping students specify research the database was used effectively to develop spe­ problems, the student’s on synthesizing materials cialized readings lists on such topics as Finnish for­ and formulating positions on agreed-upon prob­

December 1988 / 735 lems in the field, and perhaps the librarian’s, on ju­ monographic literature, and Robert B. Kvavik’s dicious selection of new materials to add to the col­ “Scandinavian Government and Politics: A Bibli­ lections.1 ography of Materials in English” (1984). Of course, the strength of the bibliography, no With this intention to fill the nigh twenty-year matter what its format—electronic or in-print—is void, at a time when the English-language social based on the selection of materials it identifies and scientific literature on Scandinavia is flourishing, must be grounded in a thorough knowledge of both we set out to develop a search strategy for Scan­ the subject under consideration and the multiplic­ dinavia in political science. Our efforts were ity of sources where the subject is discussed. While greatly facilitated by the historic strength of the new technologies may simplify some of the tedious University Libraries’ collections in Scandinavian and mundane elements of producing a bibliogra­ Studies. We began with our local collections and phy, they do nothing to guarantee a quality prod­ established from the outset a principle of reviewing uct. The technology permits us to gather, store, each item for its potential inclusion, calling interli­ and manipulate data in new ways— and even occa­ brary loan services to the rescue only in isolated in­ sionally provides “management information” stances where the materials were not readily avail­ about what we have compiled—but the content of able at the University of Minnesota. the bibliography, upon which the ultimate value of Aided by PRO-CITE (in its early version called the tool rests, remains the domain of the subject PBS or Personal Bibliographic Software), citations specialist. This particular project has been espe­ were entered manually from such sources as: cially successful because of the combined skills in Suecana Extranea, Index Nordicus, Scandinavian bibliographic “sleuthing” and subject expertise Political Studies, Scandinavia in English, Books on which we could bring to it. Although it is entirely Sweden in English, Scandinavian Political Institu­ possible for one individual, whether teaching fac­ tions and Political Behavior 1970-1984, Documen­ ulty or professional subject bibliographer, to pos­ tation on Sweden, Nordic Democracy, Compara­ sess the requisite skills, we have found the collabo­ tive Public Policy: The Politics of Social Choice in rative approach to offer more checks and balances Europe and America, and “Scandinavian Govern­ to the project, and, we hope, to result in stronger ment and Politics: A Bibliography of Materials in final tool. English” (see bibliography). With few exceptions, When we began to work on this bibliography in no more than 20 percent of the items from these January 1986, an annotated bibliography of con­ bibliographies was selected for inclusion. Older temporary Scandinavian political science had not and dated bibliographies were reviewed primarily appeared since Sven Groennings’ Scandinavia in for identifying classic studies or works in fields no Social Science Literature: An English-Language longer in vogue. In addition, articles published Bibliography (1970). Although Scandinavian Po­ from 1970 to the present were selectively extracted litical Studies compiled cumulative bibliographies from such journals as Cooperation and Conflict, for the periods 1960-1975 and 1976-1979, they fo­ Acta Sociologica, Scandinavian Political Studies, cused on publications of Nordic political scientists, European Journal of Political Research, and West­ represented extensively the Scandinavian litera­ ern European Politics. ture, and were not annotated. Further, this effort Electronic downloading was done concomi­ ceased with the second cumulation. tantly using Biblio-link. We ran searches on exter­ The more recent work by Kjell Eliassen and Mo- nal databases such as the Online Union Catalog of gens Pedersen, Scandinavian Political Institutions OCLC, the RLIN files of the Research Libraries and Political Behavior, 1970-1984: An Annotated Group, and the bibliographic databases offered by Bibliography (1985), is limited to Norway, Den­ Lockheed Information Systems (Dialog). In the mark, and Sweden, and focuses more narrowly on latter case, we searched U.S. Political Science Doc­ political institutions and elites, political participa­ uments (USPSD), Historical Abstracts, Social Sci- tion, the decision-making process, and the public search, and Public Affairs Information Service sector. Despite its subtitle, it employs a classified (PAIS). Subject headings for politics, e.g., eco­ subject approach rather than annotations and it nomic policy, political parties, were employed for lacks an index. Other less comprehensive efforts each of the Scandinavian countries and with Scan­ have also been attempted, mainly as extended dinavia and Northern Europe; no documents pub­ course reading lists, such as Eric Einhorn and John lished prior to 1970 or in languages other than En­ Logue’s “A Selective Bibliography of Scandinavian glish were requested by the search protocol. The Politics and Policy” (1984), which is limited to entire database was then screened for duplicates and irrelevant materials. We also deleted articles which were felt to be out of date or had been 1The original version of this paper was presented slightly modified and published anew in less com­ at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Ad­ mon and hard-to-find journals. vancement of Scandinavian Studies, April 28-30, 1988, at Eugene, Oregon. The project is supported While the working corpus was being estab­ by a small grant from the Educational Develop­ lished, we began to design the codebook to be used ment Programs office at the University of Minne­ for indexing the citations. The codebook provides sota. access to the database by five broad categories: for­

736 / C&RL News mat (e.g., book, article, serial), country, focus of grating of records from external databases such as study (e.g., whether it was a case study or compar­ the Online Union Catalog of OCLC, the RLIN ative analysis), type of study (e.g., statistics, bibli­ files of the Research Libraries Group, or the biblio­ ography, government publication), and, most im­ graphic databases offered by Lockheed Informa­ portantly, subject. tion Systems (Dialog) and BRS. It is run on an IBM The creation of the topical index in particular PC or compatible machine using DOS 2.0 or proved invaluable in refining the subject scope of greater. It is not practical to use PRO-CITE with­ the bibliography and in improving our search strat­ out a hard disk and less than 640K of RAM. egy. The bibliography covers the following subject The database is created by entering records (ele­ areas: government structure; political thought, be­ ments of a bibliographic citation) into one of havior, and organization; political parties and in­ twenty different data entry work forms, each work stitutions; public administration and policy; insti­ form corresponding to a particular type of mate­ tutional and intergovernmental relations; and rial: book, journal, newspaper, dissertation, letter, assessment of the social democratic state. Thus, we conference proceedings, map, audiovisual mate­ can search singly or in combination with any of the rial, art work, data file, etc. Data is entered into variables included in the codebook. We can look appropriate fields in the data entry form, e.g., au­ for articles on labor unions in Sweden, books on thor, title, publisher, date, abstract. No punctua­ ethnic minorities in Finland, comparative studies tion marks separating elements of a citation are en­ on party systems, articles on parliaments after tered manually. A separate punctuation file 1980, statistical materials on Norway in the Uni­ automatically fills in periods and commas accord­ versity of Minnesota libraries, or for articles writ­ ing to a preselected style sheet. The default style ten by a particular author, e.g., Stein Rokkan. sheet is the American National Standards Institute As of August 15, 1988, the bibliography con­ (ANSI). The APA, MLA, Chicago, and Turabian sisted of 1,739 records. One of the useful features of style sheets are available alternatives; or you can the software is its ability to count the number of en­ define your own style sheet. The software permits tries we have coded for each index category. This the user to change style sheets without having to re­ permits us to monitor our search strategy to deter­ type the entire bibliography, which is very useful if mine whether our results reasonably represent the a publisher demands a style sheet which differs extent of the literature in the field. Currently, the from your preferred format. Up to 32,500 records database is about equally divided between journal can be included in a single database.2 Foreign- articles and books or chapters thereof. Thirty per­ language characters can be entered into the data­ cent of the entries, or 523 citations, are about Swe­ base.3 den; Norway represents about 18 percent of the PRO-CITE has word processing and database database; Denmark and Finland each comprise capabilities which permit the user to create an ac­ about 13 percent. curate, properly formatted, and thoroughly pro­ As to the subject areas, we have 86 citations on fessional bibliography. The editor is easy to use and constitutions and constitutionalism; 139 on elec­ provides typical word processing features such as tions, campaigns, and voting behavior, and 117 on block moves and copying. Bibliographies created political economy. A closer review of this comput­ by PRO-CITE can be printed (even on 3 x 5 cards) erized “management information” leads us to con­ in diverse formats (with headers, with any or all clude that we need to dig deeper for materials on data fields, e.g., with or without abstracts, pagina­ the role of the ombudsman and heads of state. In tion, etc.) or sent to a disk using ASCII characters. the case of studies on the ombudsman, clearly we Files sent to disk can be joined with manuscript have failed to identify the right sources or our files created by Wordperfect and most common search protocol is faulty. In the case of the monar­ word processing programs. chy or head of state, this finding represents an ab­ Records may be sorted on any field (publisher, sence of English-language material on the subject and perhaps suggests an area for some additional research and writing. We must also reconsider our 2For practical reasons, a very large file (e.g., 2,000 citations or more), is cumbersome to work category on housing policy and environment, and with even with a RAM disk and extended memory. more carefully select in the area of political econ­ As databases can be combined and merged, it is omy and elections, campaigns, and voting behav­ recommended that you work with smaller files un­ ior. til you are ready to finish the project. Bibliographic software 3By downloading a file into a high quality word processing program and using a program such as PRO-CITE is a database software package, de­ Turbofonts which permits printing of virtually any veloped and marketed by Personal Bibliographic character (as well as presenting it on the screen), Software, Inc., of Ann Arbor, Michigan, designed desktop publishing of professional bibliographies can be generated readily. Characters which are not to create and maintain properly formatted bibliog­ readily available include: ø , ø, Ð, ð , Þ , and raphies. The major programs include the database þ . Note that Russian-Slavic Cyrillic, Hebrew, Ug- software, PRO-CITE, and its companion Biblio- aritic, Egyptian, Arabic characters are all sup­ Links, which permit the downloading and inte­ ported.

December 1988 / 737 author, title, date of publication, call number). tion and the rapid developments in the area of arti­ Text searches can be made in any field. Duplicate ficial intelligence and expert systems, however, are records can be identified and deleted. This feature bringing this type of academic support service is especially useful when downloading records closer to reality for faculty and students. From the from several external databases which invariably perspectives of this Scandinavian Studies faculty overlap or duplicate one another. Using communi­ member and librarian, it is an exciting and gratify­ cation software such as Crosstalk, the various ing prospect. Developments that promote research Biblio-links, written especially for use with PRO- and writing in the undergraduate classroom are CITE, download citations from external databases fundamental to quality education. Lastly, infor­ and enter the data into the appropriate fields in a mation management systems will create new link­ PRO-CITE database. An indexing feature sup­ ages and divisions of labor between professional li­ ports the creation of subsets or mini-databases, brarians and the research community and a clearer e.g., to create a bibliography of materials on politi­ recognition of the centrality of the library to the ac­ cal parties from a larger bibliography on Scandina­ ademic enterprise. via. We are pleased with the system but would cau­ Sources tion potential bibliographers of the following cave­ ats. Allardt, Erik. Nordic Democracy: Ideas, Issues, First, the system is expensive for those just start­ and Institutions in Politics, Economy, Education, ing out. The software costs approximately $1,000 Social and Cultural Affairs of Denmark, Finland, and the hardware requirements run on the top-end Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Copenhagen: Det of the PC market. Danske Selskab, 1981. Second, although successive releases of the soft­ “Cumulative Bibliography of the Research Lit­ ware are increasingly flexible, PRO-CITE is still erature, 1960-1975,” Scandinavian Political Stud­ limited strictly to the production of bibliographies. ies 12 (1977): 185-288. It is not applicable as a general file or database Documentation on Sweden. Stockholm: Swed­ management package. ish Institute, 1968, 1975-1982. Third, despite the promise of downloading, the Einhorn, Eric S., and John Logue. “A Selective system is still extremely time-consuming to use in Bibliography of Scandinavian Politics and Policy.” the initial phases of development. Each Biblio- [Amherst]: International Area Studies Programs, link, whether to OCLC, RLIN, or to specific Dia­ University of Massachusetts, 1984. log databases, has to be especially configured for Eliassen, Kjell A., and Mogens N. Pedersen. the search so that the appropriate fields are trans­ Skandinaviske politiske institutioner og politisk ad- ferred correctly. Virtually every downloaded rec­ ferd 1970-1984: En kommenteret bibliografi / ord, even if successfully transferred, requires addi­ Scandinavian Political Institutions and Political tional editing, thus reducing the potential gain in Behavior 1970-1984: An Annotated Bibliography. cost efficiency. For example, author’s names may Odense: Odense University Press, 1985. appear in varying forms in different files, and they Groennings, Sven. Scandinavia in Social Science have to be edited to a standard form; call numbers Literature: An English-language bibliography. for the local collection have to be inserted manu­ Bloomington: [for] the International Affairs Cen­ ally; and foreign diacritics do not transfer cor­ ter [by] Indiana University Press, [1970]. rectly. Heidenheimer, Arnold J., et al. Comparative Fourth, the integrity of downloaded records is Public Policy: The Politics of Social Choice in Eu­ wholly contingent on the reliability of the original rope and America. 2nd ed., New York: St. Mar­ input. A prudent bibliographer is wise to verify the tin’s Press, 1983. authenticity of each record. Kuhnle, Stein, and Lars Svåsand, comp. “Nordic Fifth, PRO-CITE’s editing capabilities, while Political Science 1976-1979: A Bibliography,” improving, do not compare in sophistication to Scandinavian Political Studies 4 (1981), supple­ those of familiar word processing packages. Edit­ ment. ing is limited to a line-by-line basis and cannot be Kvamme, Janet, comp. Index Nordicus; A Cu­ performed on a screen or compiled text basis. Help­ mulative Index to English-Language Periodicals ful procedures, such as global “search and replace” on Scandinavian Studies. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1980. commands, are not available. Kvavik, Robert B. “Scandinavian Government Sixth, as explained earlier, no matter how “ex­ and Politics: A Bibliography of Materials in En­ pert” the technology, it cannot replace knowledge glish.” [Minneapolis]: University of Minnesota, of the subject and familiarity with the sources, [1984]. whether those of the local collection, the interna­ Larson-Fleming, Susan, comp. Books on Swe­ tional book trade, commercial database vendors, den in English: In-print as of January 1, 1983; or specialized research institutes abroad. Translations, Non-fiction, Swedish-Americana. In effect, we have developed a prototype with all Edited by Lena Daun and Marna Feldt, New York: of the problems and promise such projects involve. Swedish Information Service, [1983]. The changes that are occurring in library automa­ Suecana Extranea: Books on Sweden and Swed­

738 / C&HL News ish Literature in Foreign Languages. Stockholm: Allen Press, 1975. Published as Scandinavian Stud­ Royal Library, 1963-1976. ies, vol. 47, no. 4, supplement. Tiblin, Mariann, ed. Scandinavia in English: A Tiblin, Mariann, and Susan Larson-Fleming, Bibliography of Books, Articles, and Book Re­ eds. Scandinavia in English: An Annual Bibliogra­ views, 1973-1974. Compiled by Kaaren Grimstad, phy of Humanities and Social Sciences. Minneapo­ et al. [s.I.]: Society for the Advancement of Scandi­ lis: Center for Northwest European Language and navian Study; Lawrence, Kan.: [Available from] Area Studies, 1980.

French university libraries in 1988

By Joan McConkey Assistant Director for Administration University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries

The observations of an American librarian on sabbatical.

For three months I was in France visiting li­ public reference library, is very popular with uni­ braries and meeting with French librarians during versity students who enjoy its free access to materi­ the winter of 1987-1988. My program was ar­ als, special services, and extended hours. The ranged by the international relations office of the multi-media collection using the latest library tech- Direction des Bibliothèques, de Musées, et de l’ln- nology of the Médiathèque reflects the science and formation Scientifique et Technique (DBMIST) of technology emphasis of the City of Science and In­ the French Ministry of National Education. It is dustry where it is housed. more usual to go to France as an exchange librarian The university libraries I saw included the ven­ through a program sponsored by ACRL and the erable Sorbonne Library and the Bibliothèque Franco-American Exchange Commission. My po­ Sainte-Genevieve, whose history goes back to a sition in administrative services does not lend itself pre-revolutionary abbey library, both in the his­ easily to exchange, because of the nature of the re­ toric student quarter of Paris; and the modern li­ sponsibilities and the rarity of similar positions in braries of the postwar University of Paris X (Nan- French university libraries, so I was pleased to terre) and the still newer University of Technology learn that an independent visit to a number of li­ of Compiègne. A three-week stay was barely time braries during my sabbatical leave was possible to absorb the complexity of the Interuniversity Li­ through the same sponsors. brary at Montpellier which serves 40,000 students My itinerary included several days at DBMIST in three universities with six libraries. In Montpel­ for an overview of organization and new develop­ lier I also spent half days in the public library, ments in French university libraries and visits rang­ which has marvelous rare book collections and a ing from one or two days to three weeks in a variety very modern media center, and at the departmen­ of university libraries. In Paris I also visited the tal archives of Hérault, which are rich in regional Bibliothèque Nationale and two modern public li­ history. braries, the Bibliothèque Publique d’Information A week at the library school in Villeurbanne, a (BPI) at the Centre Georges Pompidou and the Mé- suburb of Lyon, gave me an opportunity to learn diathèque de la Villette. BPI, a comprehensive about the curriculum, to attend an interesting all-

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