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