International Association for Sports Information. 10th Scientific Congress Paris 1997.

The Finnish Virtual Library Project as a Tool for Acquisition of Information in Sports Sciences via Internet

Abstract

Mirja Laitinen
Jyväskylä University Library
P.O. 35
FIN-40351 Jyväskylä
FINLAND

As a joint undertaking of five Finnish university libraries there was initiated "The Finnish Virtual Library Project" in May 1996. One of the libraries is Jyväskylä University Library, which is the National Resource Library for Education, Sport Sciences and Psychology in Finland. The project is part of the Ministry of Education's programme "Finland as Information Society - a national strategy". The aim of the project is to improve and increase the use of net data especially in higher education in Finland. The project carries out an inventory of data available on the net and develops user-friendly, subject-specific virtual libraries.

Each party to the project has been assigned a task area in the development of virtual libraries. These include, for example, compilation of material selection criteria, inventory of search robots, 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. At the same time, the libraries involved in the project construct virtual libraries in their own subject areas. Thus the outcome of the project is a host of virtual libraries linked to the home pages of university libraries in 18 fields of sciences, one of them sports sciences. The aim is that these different virtual library pages together form one comprehensive, multidisciplinary virtual library.

The paper describes the results of the user inquiry and the experiences gained from the project Sports Sciences Virtual Library.

Jyväskylä University Library