Deirdre Doran January 23th, 2011 May 2010 Travel Course Prague, Czech Republic SILS UNC‐Chapel Hill , NC Professor Barbara Wildemuth
The Czech National Library and the Digitization of Cultural Heritage Materials
I. Introduction: The creation of online digital repositories has rapidly become a priority for libraries and archives, including the National Library of the Czech Republic (NL CR) in order to fulfill the essential tasks of preserving and providing access to holdings of cultural heritage materials. The cultural heritage of a country or people generally includes: “manuscripts, archival materials, cartographic material, printed music documents, pictures, photographs, and audiovisual documents in conventional and electronic format” (Poll, 2008, p. 167). These materials document the shared history of a group that considers these physical manifestations of their heritage to be their mutual property that must be preserved and made available to all members of the group. Cultural heritage institutions like the NL CR are currently taking appropriate measures, such as digitization, to ensure that these materials are preserved and accessible today and in the future. Digitization is the “the process by which analogue content is converted into a sequence of 1s and 0s and put into a binary code to be readable by a computer” (Hughes, 2004, p. 4). Other important cultural materials are born digital, or originate in digital form. Both digitized and born digital materials are part of the digital heritage (Hughes, 2004; Mallan 2006).
In a study on national library websites, Pisanski & Zumer (2005) determined that the inclusion of digital collections is “an important part of a mature national
Doran 1 library website” and that “in the future this is what most of the users will be looking
for” (p. 57). The global proliferation of digitization projects carried out by libraries,
archives, and museums addresses the demand of the internet users of this
information society for the creation of online cultural heritage repositories as the
optimal form of accessibility. Librarians note “an increasing impatience (or,
occasionally disdain) for manual searching” (James-Gilboe, 2005, p. 156) among
researchers, and the abandonment of microfilming services in favor of digitization by
almost all conservation supply companies. Although many different types of
institutions participate in digitization of cultural heritage items, the International
Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) recognizes the importance of national
libraries in this capacity:
[n]ational libraries have special responsibilities, often defined by law, for a country’s cultural heritage. They collect and preserve the national documentary heritage and provide and ensure permanent access to the knowledge and culture of the past and present. They develop central service and take a leading role in the library and information sector. (Poll, 2008, p.164)
As the leaders in the field of library and information services in a country, national libraries must provide an example of how best to ensure access to collections of cultural heritage materials through online digital repositories.
The National Library of the Czech Republic is a leader in the field of digital content production and management in the European Union and in the world. Various programs initiated by UNESCO and the EU Commission on Information and
Communication Technologies have aided the Czech Republic in their digitization projects that have included participation in the Memory of the World Programme, and the current creation of the a National Digital Library (NDK). The NDK consists of the
Doran 2 digital repositories Kramerius, Manuscriptorium, and the WebArchiv, all of which are
created and managed by the Czech National Library. These repositories also provide
content for larger European digital repositories, such as The European Library (TEL) and
Europeana. The future of digitization is largely unknown, with variables such as funding and advancing digital preservation technologies coming into play to create a challenging environment for institutions dedicated to preserving and providing access to cultural heritage materials. The NL CR is determined to meet those challenges and maintain the highest quality national digital library in order to provide users with long-term access to
the cultural heritage of the Czech Republic.
II. History of the Czech National Library
The National Library of the Czech Republic (NLCR) was officially founded in
1777 with the consolidation of various historic library collections (David & Kasinec,
2001, p. 583). The oldest of these collections, dating back to 1348, is the Carolinum
Library of Prague University, later renamed Charles University after its founder Emperor
Charles IV (Marvanová, 2009, p. 17). The original Carolinum Library collection
includes the personal manuscript codices of Emperor Charles IV, which were accessioned
in 1366 (Balik, 1995, pp. 84-87). The collection of another university in Prague, the
Klementinum, is also a prominent component of the current NLCR. The Klementinum was established by the Jesuit order in Prague in 1556 in an effort to curb the growth of the Utraquist movement in Prague. When this Protestant political movement was
defeated in the 1620s the Carolinum and Klementinum library collections were merged at
the Klementinum (Balik, 1995, pp 84-87). Charles University later established a “New
Carolinum” to serve its students, particularly in the fields of law and medicine. This New
Doran 3 Carolinum was first open to the general public in 1726, and witnessed steady grown in
acquisitions and organization during the rest of the century. After the dissolution of the
Jesuits and the Society of Jesus by Pope Clement XIV, the Old Carolinum library was
taken over by the state in 1777, and renamed The Royal Imperial Public and University
Library by Empress Maria Theresa (Davis & Kasinec, 2001, 583; Marvanová, 2009, p.
17). Since this time, the library has not been officially affiliated with any university, although often the word university has been in its title, with the collections heavily
utilized by students in Prague’s university system.
In 1781 the head librarians at the NL, Karel Rafael Ungar, established the
Bibliotheca nationalis, a collection of books written by Czechs, printed in Czech lands,
and largely in the Czech language (Davis & Kasinec, 2001, 584). Ungar also
encouraged voluntary legal deposit of all Czech books, an institution which was legally
enforced in 1807 by the Hapsburg Empire, with obligatory legal deposit of all books
printed in Czech lands to the NLCR. Legal deposit facilitated the creation and continued
maintenance of a union catalogue of all Czech books, providing the library the role as
bibliographic center for the Czech Republic. The title of National Library was officially
conferred on the library in 1990, following the end of Communist rule. The library’s
collections survived two World Wars and the Communist era largely intact, although
many of the countries resources were off limits to the general public during the majority
of the 20th century. Currently the library holds around 6.5 million items including:
14,000 manuscripts and rare books, 4,200 incunabulas, and 200,000 old prints (Hutar,
2010). The collections are dispersed around Prague in different University libraries,
monasteries and aristocratic libraries.
Doran 4 III. Functions and Roles of the Czech National Library:
History of National Library Roles and Functions: A consensus on the operational definition of a national library is difficult to achieve. National libraries can vary widely in size, collections coverage, acquisitions methods, as well as the functions, roles and services they offer to meet the information needs of a country. Maurice Line is often quoted for his amusing analogy of national libraries and dogs: “dogs also exhibit an enormous variety, but we somehow recognize them all as dogs” (Line, 2001, p. 44). National libraries are generally recognizable as such due to the sign over the entrance, but what precisely the library offers can differ dramatically from country to country.
Historically, national libraries have been defined by the functions they carry out
(Humphreys, 1966; Line, 1980, 1988,1989). Following discussions with various
International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) representatives, Humphreys
(1966, pp. 159-165) outlined seven essential functions of a national library:
The outstanding and central collection of a nation’s literature Legal deposit Coverage of foreign literature Publication of the national bibliography National bibliographical information centre Publication of catalogues Exhibitions
Humphreys concludes that the national library “should be the prime mover in library matters and should be expected to be the leading library in all fields” (1966, p. 169). This central mandate, that the national library be the head of library services in a country, dictates that the actions of this library serve as a model for the library system of a country. Therefore, the national library should be at the forefront in library services and innovation in the field of library sciences, now including digitization projects.
Doran 5 Maurice Line began an active reassessment of Humphrey’s list of essential
functions in the 1980s, redefining the most important function of national libraries as the
provision of national information and document supply (1980, p. 1). Line worked to create a revised list of national library functions, culminating in his 1989 list (p. 307):
Collection and preservation of documents of national interest and importance Bibliographic needs: creation of and access to records of publications Document provision: the national resource Access to publications Exchange of publications Access to information Services to libraries and information units Leadership and advice to libraries and information units Planning and coordination Education and training Research and development
Line, then the Director General of the British Library Lending Division, was a leading
voice in the study of national libraries, publishing extensively in the field and creating a
journal, Alexandria: the journal of national and international library and information
issues. His focus on lending and document supply by national libraries marks the
transition to the modern conception of national libraries providing access to information
both in the physical national library building itself as well as at other venues.
The emphasis on access evident in Lines’ 1989 list of functions for national
libraries is of central importance for library service today. Recent attempts to a provide a
standard definition for national libraries continue to focus on what functions the library
fills as well as what role the library plays in a country (IFLA, 2009; ISO 2789, 2006; ISO
28118, 2009; Line, 2001; Poll, 2008). The ISO standard (2008) for library statistics
contains the following definition for a national library:
Doran 6 National library = library that is responsible for acquiring and conserving copies of all relevant documents in the country in which the library is located; it may function as a legal deposit library. A national library will also normally perform some or all of the following functions: produce the national bibliography, hold and keep up to date a large and representative collection of foreign literature including documents about the country; act as a national bibliographic information centre; compile union catalogues; supervise the administration of other libraries and/or promote collaboration; coordinate a research and development service, etc.
This is the current operating definition of a national library approved by the international standards community.
The National Library of the Czech Republic is governed under the Ministry of
Culture, Section of Literature and Libraries. In this section the Ministry of Culture:
“fulfills the task as a central body of state administration for the area of literature, book culture, non‐periodical print and librarianship” (Marvanová , 2009, p. 12). The roles and function of the Czech National Library are governed by the Decree of the
Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic nr. 7/2002 of 25th February 2002. This
Statute outlines the principal purpose of the NLCR, which is in line with the role detailed above for all national libraries. The major law governing Czech Libraries is
Nr. 257/2001, which is known at the Library Law (Ministry of Culture, 2002). This law decrees that:
the National Library is a library with universal library holdings completed with specialized collections, which permanently keeps a preservation collection and a historical one. The National Library guarantees for all an equal access to public library and information services as well as to other services provided by the National Library.
The Decree is easily accessible through the NLCR website in both Czech and English languages, allowing diverse global citizens to understand the purpose of the NLCR.
Doran 7 The Decree also outlines the functions the library will perform in order to meet
the purpose of the Library Law for the National Library. Some of these functions paraphrased from the decree include:
a) it acquires, processes, protects, makes accessible, and preserves a universal library collection of documents published in the Czech Republic b) selectively, it acquires, processes, preserves, and makes accessible a collection of documents published abroad, oriented on needs of universities and scientific and specialized establishments, especially in the field of social and natural sciences, culture and arts with special reference to Bohemical documents, e) it acquires library documents by means of legal deposit copy, purchase, donation and exchange, including international exchange of documents m) it guarantees preservation of library holdings, and restores and preserves things of cultural character, especially from the field of book culture, n) it makes the works accessible via computer network, a) digitization and transfer of documents onto microfilm
It is observable that the National Library of the Czech Republic attempts to follow
international guidelines for the role and functions of national libraries in general. It also
states the intent to use digitization as a means of preservation and providing access to the
important information resources held by the library.
Digitization and the Fulfillment of National Library Functions:
In order to fulfill the functions of preserving and providing access to the cultural
heritage of a country, national libraries are opting to digitize collections. The number of
resources published concerning the creation and maintenance of digital collections is
robust and growing rapidly. The literature invariably includes a section or chapter on the
benefits of digitization that expounds upon the central tenet of digitization— it increases
access to materials (Sitts, 2000; Hughes, 2004; Mallan, 2006; Rieger, 2008). Digital
materials held by national libraries are accessible through any connection to the internet.
Doran 8 This eliminates prohibitive physical distances between users and analogue collections.
Collections are always “open” online as well; users do not have to wait for building operation hours or for staff members to retrieve materials from closed stack sections.
The online interfaces through which materials are retrieved can also increase access by
“searching and cross-collection indexing, afford[ing] the reader the opportunity to make new uses of traditional research resources” (Sitts, 2000, p. 6). Digital images can often be enlarged, brightened or otherwise enhanced to highlight details that would be difficult to see on the original document without exposing the document to unacceptable environmental conditions. This points out another advantage of digitization— it can decrease the necessity of handling fragile original documents that could be harmed by physical handling: “given the current state of analogue media deterioration, creating surrogate copies of a heritage collection is a far better alternative than losing all documentary evidence of that heritage” (Mallan, 2006, p. 216).
The goals of preserving and providing access to materials, as highlighted by Line
(1989) are the basis for recent studies assessing how national libraries can meet this mission through the use of technology, especially digitization. Pisanski & Zumer (2005) examine the websites of national libraries to determine if and to what extent library websites help fulfill the mission of national libraries. The authors conclude that the future of library services is on the internet through the inclusion of digital collections.
The large number of case studies documenting individual national library’s attempts at digitization highlight the recent explosion of projects in this area, for example: Drijfhout
(2007), Marcum (2007), Katuscak (2007), and Andresoo (2009). Each of these studies points out the importance of digitization for meeting the goals of national libraries to
Doran 9 preserve and provide access to the cultural heritage of a country.
Many departments with the National Library work together to ensure the long‐ term preservation of digital and digitized materials, as well as prepare materials for public access and assist with the continued accessibility of materials. Some of these departments and their functions as listed on the NL website are here outlined:
2.2.5 Preservation Microfilming Department: provides microfilming of historical, archival and universal collections for their permanent preservation. 2.2.6 Digitization Department: provides digitization of archival and universal collections to preserve make them accessible. It provides the organizational backup for KRAMERIUS National Programme of Preservation Reformatting. 3.4 Photoduplication and Digitization Department: provides preservation and study reformatting of original historical and music documents and provides access to historical and music documents through digital network. 3.6 Manuscriptorium Section: coordinates the content of the Manuscriptorium Digital Library, strategizes further development, and coordinates building the virtual research environment for work with historical collections. 10.6 Digital Preservation Division: responsible for professional activities connected with permanent preservation and accessibility of digital documents. 10.6.1 Web Archiving Department: responsible for registration, preservation, selection and accessibility of the domestic web sources. 10.6.2 Central Digital Repository Section: cooperates in creating and implementing development of CDR and the NL long-term digital preservation. 10.6.3 Section for Standardizing and Coordination of Digital Preservation Processes: responsible for analysing, implementing, support and development of standards in CDR (formats of metadata, unambiguous identifiers, suitable image data formats, costs for long- term preservation of individual types of data etc.). It monitors new trends in this field and implements them in repository operation and cooperation in the whole NL.
As can be seen from this extensive list of departments involved in digitization at the
Czech National Library, this is considered a vital and varied function of the library.
Currently, the Czech National Library microfilms all periodicals and then digitally scans the microfilm. This process may change in the future dependant upon the viable for long‐term digital preservation. All materials are microfilmed at
Doran 10 the Hostivar depository of the National Library, which is a large storage and work
facility located outside of Prague. An archival master of each microfilm is made, and
also several use copies for digital scanning and user access. The library is currently
in the process of developing a state‐of‐the‐art mass digitization center, contingent
upon incoming European Union funds and support of the Czech Ministry of Culture.
IV. Digitization Projects at the Czech National Library
Memory of the World Work on digitization of cultural heritage materials in the Czech Republic
began in the mid‐1990s with the aim of preservation, but also with the advantages
of access and sharing information with users as a secondary focus (Hutar, 2010). In
1992 UNESCO invited the Czech Republic to participate in its Memory of the World
Programme, a global project to digitize cultural heritage materials (Psohlavec &
Karen, 2006, 93). Through the Memory of the World Programme the Czech National
Library succeeded in completely digitizing the Antiphonarium Sedlecense, a 13th century Czech music book by Antifonar Sedlecky. This was the first medieval manuscript to be digitized in the world (Hutar, 2010). Through the Memory of the
World Programme, the digitized materials were made available on CD‐ROM, and disseminated throughout the Czech Republic and the world.
The Memory of the World project was an essential first step in establishing a digitization program in the Czech Republic. It facilitated the set up a digitization department at the Czech National Library and created a precedent for future digitization efforts in the country (Hutar, 2010). It allowed for the testing of new
Doran 11 technologies for database structure, interface settings, and file formatting including
compression, resolution and metadata standards. Rapid technological advances fast outpaced the delivery method of CD‐ROM though, and future projects needed to find a new medium for increased accessibility. Albertina icome Prague, the company responsible for digital scanning and technical support for the National Library, decided to prepare future digitization projects using HTML and SGML files which were software platform independent in order to increase flexibility and ease of
access for future projects (Psohlavec & Karen, 2006, p. 94). Overall the UNESCO
project was deemed a good way to learn about international standards and create
and assess national goals for digitization (Hutar, 2010).
During the Memory of the World Programme, the Czech Republic was an
active leader in the field of digitization, and although it has since fallen behind in
output, the National Library maintains a high level of quality and organizational
knowledge of digitization processes (Hutar, 2010). The Czech National Library now
maintains a National Digital Library (NDK) with three main projects: Kramerius,
Manuscriptorium and WebArchiv. The main objective of Kramerius is the
digitization of periodicals and monographs from the 19th century. Manuscriptorium
focuses on historical books. The WebArchiv works to preserve and provide access
to born digital web content produced in the Czech Republic. These projects utilize systems designed to integrate with other European and global digital libraries such as The European Library (TEL) which combines resources from 35 European
National Libraries and Europeana, which integrates databases from many European cultural heritage institutions.
Doran 12
Kramerius “The main aims of the project are to digitise and subsequently make accessible first the modern periodicals and monographs and thereafter also other documents comprising the national cultural heritage (Fortyn, 2009).” The
Kramerius project started in 1997 as a cooperative effort between the National
Library and the three largest Czech regional libraries (Hutar, 2010). The National
Library aimed to preserve and provide access to modern bohemical documents printed on acidic paper, which were mostly 19th and 20th century newspapers in bad condition and therefore unavailable to library users (Hutar, 2010). The staff of the
Kramerius program are able “to [micro]film about 1,000,000 pages of documents annually and to digitize up to 400,000 of them” (Marvanová, 2009, p. 20). Today all the digitized documents created before 1900 are freely available through the
Kramerius Digital Library online (http://kramerius.qbizm.cz). More current documents must be viewed onsite at the National Library due to copyright restrictions. All digitized materials have embedded metadata available for full text search, page turning feature, and the option to save as pdf. Between 2001‐2004 about 400 periodical titles were digitized (4,000,000 pages from 35 institutions) and the most up‐to‐date figures for number of total digitized documents is
7,000,000 (Hutar, 2010).
Digitized materials are stored and accessed through the Kramerius system, which is a Content Management System (CMS). It was developed by the NLCR using an open source GNU GPL license (Fortyn, 2009). Further development of the system has been handled by the Qzbim company (http://www.qbizm.com). Since the
Doran 13 system is open source all other institutions interested in the source code utilized by
the NLCR are welcome to view and borrow from the code. This type of initiative
enables multiple institutions to create systems that can be integrated or cross‐
walked easily, facilitating universal access to the cultural heritage documents. The
Kramerius system is connected to The European Library (TEL), the CZ union catalog and Europeana, with an English interface. Currently, the NLCR is in the process of moving to Fedora SW version 4 which allows more flexibility of document types, is a
widely accepted open source software, and offers the experienced customer support
which the library needs (Hutar, 2010).
Manuscriptorium Manuscriptorium is the Czech digital library of manuscripts, early printed
books, and others historic materials such as maps, charters and printed musical
documents (Hutar, 2010). The name Manuscriptorium refers both to the
digitization program and the digital library itself. The project began in 2001 when
digital images of materials were first created and thumbnail images made available
for the general public to view on the internet (Hutar, 2010). Content for
Manuscriptorium is created by the Czech National Library and managed jointly with the Czech company Aip Beroun Ltd., which also does operation and system tool
design (Knoll, 2009). By 2004, high quality images were online, and
Manuscriptorium was awarded the first UNESCO Jikji Award in 2005. “The Prize
consisting of an award of US$ 30,000 is awarded every two years to individuals or
institutions that have made significant contributions to the preservation and
accessibility of documentary heritage (UNESCO, 2010).” Manuscriptorium played a
Doran 14 prominent role in the Czech Republic’s receipt of this prestigious award for its
innovation in digitization of cultural heritage (Psohlavec & Karen, 2006, p. 95).
Beginning in 2007, the NLCR became the main coordinator in the EU
program ENRICH (European Networking Resources and Information Concerning
Cultural Heritage). The project, which was completed in 2009, involved 18 partner
institutions across Europe with the goal “to create the foundation for a European digital
library of manuscripts and other historical documents” (National Library of the Czech
Republic, 2010, p. 6). The project was successful in aggregating the majority of digitized historical documents in the European Union. Although the majority of European written cultural heritage is not available on the internet, almost all resources which have been digitized in the EU are now available through Manuscriptorium. When
the project began in 2007, “Manuscriptorium contained roughly 180,000 catalogue
entries, something over 3,000 fully digitised documents and approximately 350 full
texts…now it has more than 250,000 catalogued records, almost 37,000 fully digitised
documents and more than 41,000 full texts” (National Library of the Czech Republic,
2010, p. 7). The ENRICH project was successful in greatly increasing the digital
resources available online, not only in the Czech Republic, but in the EU as a whole.
Although Manuscriptorium access originally required a subscription fee, this
fee has been suspended since 2007. Researchers must simply register with the site
and agree to a licensing statement to access Manuscriptorium’s resources.
Manuscriptorium brings together data and metadata from 46 partners by using a
variety of open source software and international standards for information
systems including: OAI‐PMH, Z39.50, TEI5, METS with Master+, MARC21, Dublin
Doran 15 Core, MODS, and OpenM (Hutar, 2010). The user interface for reading and studying
of digital images has the ability to search, turn pages, full text, OCR, make notes, and
save searches in a personal library folder (Hutar, 2010). The present open source software used by Manuscriptorium meets its initial goals of providing the greatest access to historical documents by allowing for divergent use of metadata fields according to institutional variations in expertise, subject focus, and digitization purpose (Psohlavec & Karen, 2006, p. 95). The accessibility, usability, and adaptability of the Manuscriptorium platform was extensively tested and evaluated during its creation in order to determine its full functionality and versatility
(Kligiene, 2009). The Manuscriptorium homepage prominently invites other libraries, archives, and information institutions to utilize their metadata and open source software solutions in order to carry out digitization projects and potentially contribute historical manuscripts to the Manuscriptorium database.
WebArchiv WebArchiv is an online digital archive of Czech web resources collected for long-term
preservation and public access. The project began in 2000 under the direction of the
Czech Ministry of Culture. The WebArchiv ensures that born digital cultural heritage
materials, available solely on the internet, will be accessible to future generations. The
National Library now collaborates with the Moravian Library and Institute of
Computer Science of Masaryk University (WebArchiv, 2010) to collect, preserve, and
provide access to:
Digital documents freely available via Internet Publications with research and artistic focus, news and current affairs
Doran 16 Periodicals, monographs, conference papers, research and other reports, scholarly publications, etc. Textual, and to some extent also visual and sound, documents existing only in digital format
Tools developed by the Internet Archive, and the International Internet Preservation
Consortium (IIPC) are used for web archiving. “From a technical point of view, collecting online documents is an automated process carried out by a set of software tools that harvest, index and save data in the archive according to preassigned parameters. At present open-source software tool (Heritrix) is being used for web crawling”
(WebArchiv, 2010). The harvested content maintains standardized structural metadata approved by the IIPC and is stored using RAID (dedicated redundant disk array). The materials that are harvested are accessible through full text indexing carried out using an open source program called Nutch. Not all born digital materials are publically available online due to complex copyright restrictions in the Czech Republic; although the National
Library has legal deposit for all Czech published materials, this provision does not cover materials published online therefore restricting the ability of the NLCR to provide access to these resources free of charge. WebArchiv materials are catalogued using MARC21 and Dublin Core and will be preserved to ensure long-term use and hopefully eventual amendment to the copyright laws covering born digital content.
The European Library (TEL) The European Library is a digital library that provides access to 48 of
Europe’s national libraries in 35 different languages. The mission of the digital
library, prominent on the website (www.theeuropeanlibrary.org) is: “to open up the
universe of knowledge, information and cultures of all Europe's national libraries.” TEL
was established in 2005 through European Commission funding and has since carried out
Doran 17 several major initiatives to promote the creation and inclusion of digital content from
Europe’s national libraries (Foltyn, 2010, p. 39.). The NLCR participated in a recent TEL project, TELplus, which concluded in 2009. TELplus “aimed to OCR more than 20
million pages of content in many languages, to make library data OAI compliant and
therefore harvestable, to address usability issues through improved presentation of
search results and to make improvements in semantic interoperability including
multilingual search and retrieval” (TEL website, 2010). The NLCR pledged to contribute to the project aim of expanding optical character recognition (OCR) resources from the Czech Republic with a total contribution of 2,400,000 pages of monographs and
1,000,000 pages of periodicals (Foltyn, 2010, p. 40). The TELplus project aims coincided with the Kramerius project, allowing for increased access through the provision of full text searching.
The final results of the project show that the National Library contribute
3,496,824 OCRed text files to the project (National Library of the Czech Republic,
2010), quite a substantial amount and more than originally pledged. The success in
aggregating these files into TEL as well as Kramerius demonstrate the NL’s ability to function technologically as well as socially in international endeavors. The project also
addressed the challenges of font variation for OCRing, with the creation of a database of
font types that can be used in future OCR projects (Foltyn, 2010, p. 41).
Europeana:
The Europeana website (www.europeana.org) links users with digital libraries
from a multitude of cultural heritage institutions across Europe, including museums,
Doran 18 libraries, and archives. Europeana is a type of meta digital library which helps users to find full digital files from diverse member institutions. The NLCR contributes metadata from Kramerius and Manuscriptorium to Europeana in order that these digital resources will be included in metasearches through the Europeana search interface. Europeana claims that “ Users today expect content to be integrated ‐ to be able to see videos, look at images, read texts and listen to sounds in the same space. Users don't expect to have to enter new search terms at separate sites to bring together related content (website, 2010).” All members of The European
Library are associated with Europeana, therefore projects like TELplus are benefial to Europeana as a means of updating website usability though the implementation of TEL recommendations.
V. Financing Digitization at the Czech National Library Financing digitization projects is one of the largest obstacles an organization can face when challenged with the task of digitization. Initial start up capital for digitization projects around the globe is often supported by grants that are specifically aimed at funding beginning digitization projects. The NLCR obtained start up funds from the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme. The Kramerius project that grew from this UNESCO program was subsequently funded as national program VISK 7, which is not an annual part of the NLCR budget (Polišenský, n.d.).
These national program VISK 7 funds are often too low to meet all of the goals of the
Kramerius projects in terms of digital scans produced, digital objects catalogued, and items available on the web. Besides the production of scans and salaries for scanning technicians, cataloguers, and systems technicians, the budget also has to
Doran 19 cover the expenses of maintaining or updating existing hardware and software to
create and support the digital repository. The VISK 7 funds required an annual
application to determine distribution, although this funding system is currently
going through a revision. The NLCR plans to have a budget line in the NLCR budget
to insure continued funding of the National Digital Library.
As a member of the European Union, the Czech Republic is also eligible for
funding through Norway Grants and European Economic Area (EEA) Grants. The NL
has previously been awarded over one million Euros in financial support to digitize
non‐periodical documents on acidic paper from the 19th century bohemical
collection. The Norway Grants provide 83% of the funding for Kramerius, with the
Czech Republic contributing the other 17%, for a total of 1,2 millions EUR or 36
millions Czech Crowns (Polišenský, n.d.). According to the 2009 NLCR annual
report, the NLCR received roughly 6,000,000 Czech Crowns (or 245,000 Euros) from the Ministry of Culture in 2009 (2010, p. 36). The NDK is also funded through the
EEA by the IOP (Integrated Operational Programme), which are structural funds for
EU member nations entering the union since 2005. The total budget of IOP funding
received by the Czech Republic is 13 million Euros (Hutar, 2010).
VI. The future of digital archives at the Czech National Library:
It is a testament to the importance of digitization and digital preservation to the
mission of the NLCR that the projects and programs concerning these fields are the first
attended to in the 2009 Annual Report of the NLCR (National Library of the Czech
Republic, 2010, pp. 4-13). Digitization does pose a number of challenges concerning
Doran 20 access and preservation of digitized materials. A major issue in access is the ability to
connect to the internet. Currently, the internet is not universally available on a global
scale, connection strength can be limited in other areas, and the time necessary to
download large image files of digitized materials may be prohibitively long. According
to the website Internet World Stats, internet penetration in the Czech Republic is
estimated at 65.5% as of 2010. This high percentage of internet users and internet
availability in the Czech Republic suggests that the National Digital Library will be
accessibility to the majority of Czech citizens, although access to Czech cultural heritage
may be limited in other parts of the world.
Also of high concern with digitized collections is the issue of preservation, or
“accessibility over time” (Rieger. 2008. p. 2). According to Teper (2005, p. 33), some of
the challenges of preservation include: “Media decay, technological obsolescence, and
human fallibility.” The NLCR is responsible for preserving the materials they digitize,
and many resources exist to aid in the long term preservation of digital materials, such as:
The Digital Curation Lifecycle Model (Higgins, 2008), the Open Archival Information
System (OAIS) Model (CCSDS, 2002), and the Preservation Management of Digital
Material Handbook (Jones & Beagrie, 2008). A few of the issues involved in digital preservation are: maintaining the hardware and software required to access digital materials, migrating and reformatting materials onto current software and hardware platforms, creating and updating standard metadata for materials, educating and training staff to preserve materials, integrating digital preservation into everyday library
operations, and creating and following a long term strategy for preservation. Even given
these many challenges, information professionals believe they can meet the challenges in
Doran 21 order to provide the best possible access to cultural heritage materials (Rusbridge, 2006;
Rieger, 2008).
To ensure the long‐term preservation of digitized materials, the NLCR is
participating in an EU project called Digital Preservation Europe (DPE). The goals of
DPE are:
1. To create a coherent platform for proactive cooperation, collaboration, exchange and dissemination of research results and experience in the preservation of digital objects. 2. To increase prevalence of preservation services and their viability and accountability. 3. To improve awareness, skills and available resources.
The project, financed by IOP funds, will utilized newly digitized Bohemica materials to
test diverse preservation methods. Around 26 million pages will be digitized by the
completion of the project in 2014, as well is new data about the viability of digital
preservation (National Library of the Czech Republic, 2010, p. 32).
The NLCR will continue its work on the National Digital Library (NDK) in the
coming years. The 2009 Annual Report lists over ten research projects aimed at the
development of the NDK, including extensive work on the Kramerius and
Manuscriptorium projects. As detailed above in the section on financing, Kramerius is benefitting from grant funds from the Norway Grant and from EEA monies to digitize
19th century Bohemical book collections printed on acidic paper: “the suppliers ensure
for us the preparation of an archival and registry negative, microfilm scanning and data
modification, i.e. cutting and straightening, OCR data conversion into text format and file
conversion from the JPEG to the DjVu format” (National Library of the Czech Republic,
2010, p. 13). The NLCR is rapidly expanding the number of digital files available for public viewing in the Kramerius system.
Doran 22 Simultaneously, the NLCR continues to develop the Manuscriptorium project as
well, with work on the standardization of the internal formatting of the Manuscriptorium
system which allow for greater interoperability of the diverse systems providing content to the database (National Library of the Czech Republic, 2010, p. 9). This includes work on creating a multi-language ontology in order to bring up relevant entries across the many European languages present in the system (p. 9). The tools available on the
Manuscriptorium homepage to assist in the creation of digital libraries which will be
interoperable with Manuscriptorium will hopefully attract additional contributors from
across Europe to this cultural heritage digital repository. One project underway meant to
enhance EU cooperation is the REDISCOVER (Reunion of Dispersed Content: Virtual
Evaluation and Reconstruction) project which will integrate existing digitized content
and create interactive exhibitions in four European countries: Lithuania, Poland,
Romania and Czech Republic (REDISCOVER website, 2010). All digitized materials
and exhibition information will be made available through Manuscriptorium.
One of the most difficult challenges to digitization projects is securing
funding for ongoing projects like the National Digital Library (NDK) of the Czech
Republic. A hopeful sign for the future of the NDK is the acceptance of the NDK as a
strategic priority by the Czech Ministry of Culture and the Czech Government. This
strategic priority status enables the NDK to be eligible for European funding
through the IOP (Integrated Operational Programme). This IOP funding will allow
the NLCR to accelerate the rate of digitization through the creation of two modern
digitization centers in Prague and Brno. The funds will allow for:
Doran 23 • Digitisation of the documents published in and since 1801 (540,000 documents, 137 million pages (1060 TB of raw digital data in one locality, 60 TB fast access for users) • Digitisation of historical documents published until1800 ( 20,000 documents, 9 million pages (50 TB of raw digital data in one locality, all fast access for users) • WebArchive: harvesting and archiving of 5 billion files (221 TB of raw digital data in one locality, all fast access for users) • Trusted digital repository (certified by internal as well as external audits) • User-friendly and customised access to digital content for various users.
The total budget of the project should be 29 million EUR with 85% from European IOP funding and 15% from the Czech Ministry of Culture (Marvanová, 2009, p. 22). The determination and commitment of the National Library of the Czech Republic is key to overcoming the obstacles inherent in digization projects, so that the NLCR can create a
National Digital Library that will ensure the long-term accessibility and preservation of the Czech cultural heritage.
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Doran 27