The Finnish Virtual Library Project

http://www.jyu.fi/library/virtuaalikirjasto/

Nordic-Baltic Seminar on the Role of Educational Resource Libraries
17th October, 1997

Mirja Laitinen
Jyväskylä University Library
email: mlaitine@bibelot.jyu.fi

The number of users of the Internet and the amount of web-sites have heavily increased during the past few years, during the period the World Wide Web has actually existed. There has been many national and international efforts to create easy ways to find valid information in various fields of science, and especially the librarians have been worried about the disorder prevailing on the Internet.

Also in Finland, the Internet has become very popular during the past few years, and Finland is actually the leading country when the amount of the Internet users is compared to the number of the inhabitants. The Finnish Internet-users often find the global subject indices and search engines too general to satisfy the needs of the Finnish scientific community. Therefore, there was need for more specialized services. The virtual libraries constructed by the Virtual Library Project form a foundation for a Finnish field-specific subject index or subject gateways.

The Virtual Library Project was born at the end of the year 1995 when the Finnish Ministry of Education launched the programme "Education, Training and Research in the Information Society - a national strategy".

There were at first five Finnish university libraries in this project in 1996. The grant for the project was 393 700 FIM for the year 1996. There came three new partners at the beginning of this year; so the libraries involved now are Jyväskylä University Library; Kuopio University Library; Oulu University Library; Tampere University Library; and in Helsinki: the University of Art and Design Library; Helsinki University: Forestry Library, and Agricultural Library; and Helsinki University of Technology Library in Espoo. The grant for the year 1997 is 664 000 FIM.

The aim of the project was to improve and increase the use of net data especially in higher education in Finland. The project carried out an inventory of data available on the net and developed user-friendly, subject-specific virtual libraries.

Each library has its task area in the development of virtual libraries. During the first year of the project, 1996, these included, for example, compilation of material selection criteria, inventory of search engines, development of net data indexing, improvement of the user-friendliness and communicativeness of interfaces from a visual point of view, and evaluation and development of structural models of virtual libraries.

In 1997, the objectives of the project are, for example, to test various database solutions on the virtual library pages; to examine the cataloguing, indexing, i.e. metadata of the web-documents; to investigate the intelligent agents; to make a cost analysis of the Virtual Libraries; to create an English version of the document; and to develope interactivity of the pages.

At the same time, the libraries have constructed virtual libraries in their own subject areas. Thus the outcome of the project is a host of virtual libraries in 40 fields of sciences, which are: Agriculture, Applied linguistics, Archeology, Architecture, Art education, visual communication, art and design, Clinical nutrition, Cultural studies, Ecology, Education, Educational technology, Environmental health, Environmental protection technology, Environmental technology, Finnish history, Food science, Forestry, Geography, Geology, Geriatrics, Gerontology, History of ideas, Household, Information processing, Information technology, Library and information science, Mass communication and journalism, Molecular medicine and gene therapy, Neuroscience, New media, Nursing sciences and health care, Nutrition, Pharmacy, Physics, Psychology, Sami language and culture, Social policy, Social psychology, Sociology, Space research, and Sports sciences. These different virtual library pages together form one comprehensive, multidisciplinary virtual library.

In this national project Jyväskylä University Library has been responsible for the project management and reporting, and of the virtual libraries of education, educational technology, psychology, sports sciences as well as applied linguistics, cultural studies and gerontology. Our special duties are user enquiries, development of interactive help services of the Virtual library pages, as well as the translation of the pages into English.

Virtual Library: Education: http://www.jyu.fi/library/virtuaalikirjasto/kasvatus/

At the moment the language of the project is Finnish, but the continuation project 1997 will create an English version of the Virtual Libraries. However, most of the names of the documents included are in English, and some parts of the pages have been translated into English for presentation purposes. Though our Virtual Library is targeted to Finnish students, people from other countries can make use of it, as well.

According to the Project's decision the visual appearance of the pages of the Finnish Virtual Library is rather bare and simple without images and frames except the small logo of the project . Thus the pages work with the most modest hardware and interfaces (PC, Mac, Unix), and with various browsers.

The material types which are collected and evaluated are:

1. Journals and other electronic publications
2. Databases, Information Services and Libraries
3. Expert Organizations
4. Conference calendars
5. Newsgroups and mailing lists
6. Electronic simulations, video and image files
7. Link collections

This structural model is common to all virtual libraries of the project. Each link has been accompanied by a short description and an assessment of its contents in Finnish language.

The material included in The Finnish Virtual Library pages is evaluated according to previously determined criteria by the Project. Only material of a sufficiently high standard is included.

USER EVALUATION

Finnish Virtual Library pages were opened for the public at the beginning of September 1996. The pages are updated and modified continuously. The availability of the links is regularly tested. An essential task of the project was to collect feedback from the visitors. The project constructed an electronic questionnaire which consisted of 17 questions. The respondents were asked to give some background information and general matters of their use of the Internet. Finally, they could evaluate one of the subject-specific virtual libraries. The Virtual Library pages were visited 6500 times during the four months' period by the end of the year 1996. The whole number of visitors between September 1st, 1996 and September 30th, 1997 is 23 500.

During the evaluation period between September 1st and November 18th, 1996, altogether 218 responses were returned. A majority of the respondents (80%) were from within science community. Thus they were highly representative of the main target group for whom the virtual libraries were constructed. The questionnaire shows that the Internet is still men's world: 60% of the respondents were males, and 40% females.

The questionnaire gave a lot of statistical information about the respondents' use of the Internet. Only some results are presented here. The distribution between the various use purposes is quite even:

The respondents were asked how often they use the Internet for finding information in their field. Nearly half of the whole amount of respondents use the Internet as an information source daily, and 32% several times a week! The respondents could also give free comments of their experiences of the use of the Virtual Library pages. The feed-back was mainly positive. Many users appreciated the fact that the links included in the Virtual libraries are evaluated, categorized and updated by information specialists. The Virtual libraries made it easier to find useful data on the Internet. Here is one comment:

"I think that the net services offered by the libraries help you find reliable and useful data from the chaos of the net".

There was also some negative feedback. The virtual libraries were criticized for presenting the information in the form of lists. The selection of scientific fields (13 virtual libraries in 1996) was also considered too limited. The Project has tried to solve these problems during this year. It is not very difficult to construct new virtual libraries but the database solution instead of lists is not very simple.

Just now (15th September - 31th October, 1997) there is the second user inquiryon the Virtual Library pages. The same questionnaire is still in use but there has been added some new questions dealing with the use of intelligent agents and the help services of the Finnish Virtual Library. The results will be informed in the next report of the Project at the beginning of 1998.

CONCLUSION

The Virtual Libraries are used in real information searches, but they are also very useful as self-study materials of the net. They are a guided way to learn the networks and may also encourage independent information searching. They are an efficient and easy-to-use way to learn networks and electronic materials. Learning by doing is more efficient than lectures and demonstrations.

Presumably, the Project will continue in 1998. There are many Finnish special libraries which have expressed their willingness to join the project. There are also some big and difficult problems related to net-information unsolved; e.g. database solution and cataloguing and indexing of net material.

Providing net-information has become a new duty to the libraries. The virtual libraries are one way in which libraries can meet future challenges in a world of increasingly networked and digitalized information.

The Finnish Virtual Library Project is a good example of national cooperation between libraries representing various fields of sciences. The cooperation may even be international concentrating to a certain subject. As an example, Helsinki University Agricultural Library is simultaneously working in this Finnish Project and cooperating with the Scandinavian agricultural libraries to create a Nordic agricultural subject gateway.

Jyväskylä University Library