Denmark’s Electronic Research Library

The foreign publishers are multi-national companies which in most cases have monopoly status. It is therefore desirable for buyers to join together in consortia when negotiating and purchasing the electronic products. 

”Each individual library needs to think about its distinctive impact and consider whether it needs to spend a lot of time doing things that everybody else is doing pretty much identically. It makes sense to move shared activities into a shared environment, whether this is DEFF or some other approach. At the same time, what added value can be created for local learning and research activities?"

Lorcan Dempsey, Vice President and Chief Strategist of the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), from interview in connection with the project Fremtidens biblioteksbetjening af forskere 

The research libraries’ purchases of electronic resources through DEFF 2001-2008

16 major research libraries’ downloads and loans 2001-2008

Figure 2 shows the development in downloads compared with loans of physical material measured in the 16 largest research libraries in Denmark. It appears that the loan of physical material has fallen during the period 2001-2008, while downloads have increased considerably and now make up about 3/4 of the total loans.

Strategic action lines

Consortia agreements

DEFF’s purchasing cooperation on electronic journal subscriptions and databases means an administrative relief for the individual library. The cooperation also gives the individual library the chance to enter into consortia with other libraries about the purchase of certain information resources.

The consortia agreements make it possible for all the participating libraries to gain access to the collective number of each library’s subscriptions without having to pay for all the journals. It is important because analyses of the usage show that researchers and students to a great extent use articles that are outside the institutions’ own subscriptions. This indicates a considerable interdisciplinarity within the institutions’ fields of activity and underlines the advantage in making consortia agreements.

The Wiley agreement is an example of Big Deal agreement. Via the consortia agreement the individual institutions get access to the collective number of titles. The DEFF license secretariat annually negotiates 250 license agreements for 200 institutions in Denmark.

Open Access

Bearing in mind the large investments in research it is important to promote free access to publicly financed research. This is i.a. done by supporting initiatives within Open Access, including encouraging the institutions to formulate publishing policies that further this objective.

DEFF supports open access-publishing through membership of SPARC. DEFF is moreover generally a central player in the Danish Open Access cooperation and contributes to the international Open Access endeavour.

Integrated search

The basis for integrated search is that data from many sources are collected and processed so that search engines can search in data and immediately afterwards present them to the user in a structured and uniform way. This collection of data is called a data well which to the greatest possible extent is made available to all libraries in DEFF. This work is complicated and technically demanding, and DEFF therefore supports joint cooperation within this area.

”The library has multiple identities. It is a building or buildings on campus. It is collections. It is a set of services delivered in a variety of ways. It is a group of people with particular expertice. Communicating this full spread effectively is difficult but increasingly important.”

Lorcan Dempsey, Vice President and Chief Strategist of the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), from interview in connection with the project Fremtidens biblioteksbetjening af forskere

History

DEFF started in 1998 as a five-year project with the aim to give scholars and students at universities and institutions of higher education easier access to electronic resources. DEFF was established as a permanent activity in 2003 and these initiatives were extended with focus on output from the research process in the shape of research registration, Open Access and the Danish Research Database.

International development and the latest international review of DEFF indicate that the libraries, too, can play a valuable role in the research process. The libraries’ support of new learning processes and of information literacy therefore offers new opportunities to support the actual learning process. In terms of research there is increased focus on the support of e-science and on helping scholars structure and visualise primary research data and couple these onto subsequent research publications.

DEFF was originally intended as a project to help the libraries through a transition from printed media to digital mediation via the Internet. Today DEFF defines itself as a cooperation organisation for educational, specialist and research libraries.

DEFF was launched as initiative 10.3 in the report Info-samfundet for alle – den danske model (The info-society for everybody – the Danish model), prepared in 1996 as the government’s IT-political action plan. Here the vision was that “All literature and other information search ought to be able to happen electronically – and be collected electronically at the time and the place where the scholar needs it.”

A project sees the light of day…

DEFF was established as a five-year project with a total budget of DKK 200 mil. The majority of the means were spent on upgrading the libraries’ local IT-systems, purchasing licenses and digitising the libraries’ old catalogue cards. DEFF supported the upgrading of 122 library systems, license agreements amounting to DKK 45 mil. and the digitisation of 2,5 mil. catalogue cards and about 900,000 references in i.a. Danish Article Index.

In that way the users were offered completely new possibilities for searching in the libraries’ collections and making reservations online. In connection with the support for conversion and upgrading DEFF made it a condition that standards should be observed and data be delivered to the libraries’ common database cooperation DanBib.

With the opening of bibliotek.dk in 2000 all Danes were thus given the chance to search in materials from all Danish libraries and order materials for delivery at the nearest library.

The digital access to the libraries’ book collections was supplemented with a considerable effort to secure access to electronic journals and databases through the purchase of licenses. Today this license cooperation has developed into a purchasing cooperation with 200 participating institutions and an annual turnover of DKK 128 mil.

The use of licenses was to begin with limited to the libraries’ physical locality, but due to a jointly developed system for access management, DEFF was in 2002 able to give all Danish scholars and students access to electronic journals and databases round the clock from any computer with an Internet connection.

During the project period DEFF also conducted a large number of projects.

When the project ended the libraries’ transition process was well under way and the vision about digital access to the libraries’ materials realised. However, the government decided that DEFF was still needed as were the common solutions, and DEFF was therefore established in 2003 as a permanent activity with its own entry in the national budget.

DEFF becomes an item in the national budget

The initial part of the operational period was naturally influenced by the consolidation of those initiatives that had been developed during the project period.

There were thus extensive activities to consolidate the user databases and systems which were used for access management and to link them to the universities’ other systems. DEFF supported the establishment of central authentication systems (CAS) in the universities and the development of the pay-per-view administration system which today is being used by 130 libraries in Bibliotekernes Netmusik.

Apart from this, DEFF focused a great deal on a service-oriented architecture based on web services. This happened i.a. with the development of the archival system Fedora in collaboration with Cornell University. The period was however particularly characterized by an increased focus on the output from the research process and on the use of library materials in educational contexts.

DEFF worked for a better mediation of Danish research, and supported the development of the research registration system PURE, which today is the standard system for registration of research. The system was supplemented with institutional archives with the possibility to deposit digital editions of the universities’ production. DEFF also continued the development of the Danish Research Database as a comprehensive registrant of Danish research. This effort was supplemented with the preparation of a proposal for a national research portal – what was later to become the portal www. videnskab.dk (www.science.dk).

Concurrently with these activities the license cooperation was extended. Like in the case of DEFF’s other activities this work included from 2004 institutions within the Ministry of Education’s area as these became a part of DEFF. In the international field DEFF further developed the cooperation with the establishment of Knowledge Exchange.

As far as the libraries’ patrons are concerned, the most significant result was probably a well-functioning access to even more electronic journals and databases. By the end of 2006 digital development had reached the point where 2 out of 3 loans from the research libraries were digital. The establishment of digital repositories in Denmark and abroad can in time become an equally valuable information source for both students and scholars.

DEFF today

The efforts to improve access to digital information have gradually increased DEFF’s focus on open access – activities whose purpose is to give free access to research results which today the publishers control. This happens through the working out of publishing policies in the institutions and by developing the infrastructure of institutional archives where scholars can expose their research results. Another initiative to improve access is the effort to offer students and scholars integrated search.

Apart from this DEFF works to consolidate and streamline the digital information supply which continues to form the libraries’ most important contribution to supporting research and education.

The general upper secondary schools, adult education centres and social and health colleges entered DEFF on 1. January 2009. With about 160 new institutions DEFF is facing new and exciting challenges which will undoubtedly give the libraries as well as the educational institutions a positive lift.

”The librarians, the knowledge workers need to recognize that their future is as much about the management of knowledge on networks as it is about the management of resources in a physical library.”

International cooperation

DEFF’s international involvement includes four main elements:

Mediation: DEFF uses new knowledge from abroad to launch initiatives among the research libraries and mediates Danish experiences abroad

Profiling: DEFF profiles the cooperation between Danish research libraries abroad

Benchmarking: DEFF compares Danish results with results from abroad in order to ensure current improvements

Coordination: DEFF coordinates initiatives with overseas countries in order to avoid duplicate development

Knowledge Exchange

Knowledge Exchange (KE) is the result of a formal international partnership between the German DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft), British JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), Dutch SURFfoundation and Danish DEFF. KE has a secretariat, placed in the Danish Agency for Libraries and Media. The overall KE-vision is to make a layer of academic and scientific content freely available on the Internet. Through KE the four partners coordinate and develop their national initiatives.

The vision is supported through a number of action lines:

• European Commission 
• Strategy 
• Interoperability 
• Libraries in the Digital Age 
• Licensing 
• Open Access 
• Primary Research Data 
• Virtual Research Environments

Theme: Access to digital information

"Information resources need to be more clearly embedded in the workflow of researchers and students or be at their point of need. You can’t tell them to build their workflow around the library."

Lorcan Dempsey, Vice President and Chief Strategist of the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), from interview in connection with the project Fremtidens biblioteksbetjening af forskere

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