We know that to day knowledge is very important for economic development. Maybe the most important factor.

We also know that in the last 10-15 years library and information services has changed and that to day everybody working in the intermediary role also the libraries must define their role and their place in the digital world.

Knowledge is the result of using information. The role of the academic libraries in this process is to create access to needful information to ensure that research and learning not slow up because of lack of relevant information resources.

I am working in The Copenhagen Business School Library and in my speech I tell you about some of the things we are doing and some of the reflections we have in my library and in the Danish library system to meet the challenge.

When I look around in my library I see books, people and computers. First of all I see a lot of users working in the library. Some are sitting alone but most of the users are sitting together in groups. And they talk together. A danish academic library is not a place of silence.

In my library we have nearly all our books and periodicals in open shelfs, we have working places with and without computers, we have a silent reading room and we have two very big rooms with computers only for the students where there are the same access possibilities as in the public part of the library but also some special software especially for education and some special databases which is not for all other users of the library.

Academic libraries in Denmark give free access to information for all people but in some of our services we distinguish between different user groups. As an academic library we have our subject domain and we focus our services to our main user groups which are the researchers, teachers and students at the Copenhagen Business School.

In the last ten years the main user groups have change quite a lot. Mainly two thing has happen. First it is more common that research is payed not only by the annual grant but also by public research funds and by private companies. This means that the amount of research is growing.

The other thing is that the Business School have more continuing education with part time programs to be studied alongside full-time employment and with MBA and MPA programs which makes heavy demands on the students. Lifelong learning is developing and it is more than some refresher courses. Until now it is only a tiny segment of the population for whom lifelong learning is a reality, but this will change and the role of the library in this process will change. I think that a great part of this lifelong learning will be distance education. Therefore the library shall take part of the discussion of how student programs should be designed to create the optimal learning situation for student by using the internet platforms and web-supported learning.

A very important thing to know about the danish higher education system is that even in more traditional institutions problem-oriented teaching and group projects with student-controlled learning is a normal supplement to discipline-oriented teaching with teacher-controlled learning. The role and the function of the library depend on this learning situation. The modern educational principles try to learn the students to use knowledge through problem orientation, group work and project work. The students are learning actively rather than absorbing information passively. In the group project work the students shall learn which information is necessary, where and how do they find this information, how is the quality of the information they find and they shall use this information. This is the core of information literacy.

Technical changes especially the Internet, the World Wide Web and electronic publications have changed possibilities for searching information and they have changed the function of the library in many ways. There are still information objects in paper, but to day a lot of people make use of electronic publications methods and publication on the net. But this do not mean that the access is free. The restrictions on access has changed and it is a part of the libraries functions to ensure access to the electronic information objects. To day we have realized that Alibraries without walls@ is Alibraries with new walls@.

With the Internet it is not the physical collection that decide to which information the library give access and the Internet has also open up for collaboration both nationally and internationally.

With the new technique it is - apparently - possible to access to information independently of the place where the searcher is and where the information is. Apparently because a lot of information is still not electronic and because the information universe is chaotic and the information searcher have to find around in this chaotic world. The library is formed for the purpose of facilitating information search.

Traditionally the role of the library has been collection development where the library select, acquire, store, organize and make accessible information objects, To day the role is access development but still the library select, acquire, organize and make accessible but besides managing the physical ownership of resources libraries are also managing access to digital resources, very often shared digital resources under terms of a commercial licence.

With the Internet the problem about the quality and authenticity of the information resources are growing. Many teachers feel that they now uses more time on discussion with the student, what information is needed, how to find it and what is the quality of the founded information resources. In the old days when the library was the first place to look for information the teachers do not use so much time on discussion how and where to find information and the evaluation of the quality. This is an important thing to know when we as librarians make up our minds about our future strategies. Information resources are available through other channels than libraries and for well educated people who are working in a well known area of knowledge that is O.K. They are able to evaluate the information and have always used other channels besides the libraries, but for students and others moving to a new area of knowledge there are some problems. Even that the library do not own the resources we still select resources which means that we have a quality control function not only when we pay for the access but also when we choose to point at some free resources in the Web context.

The question is how we as a library will operate within new models of scholarly communication and integrate resources in learning. On one side the students will expect electronic access to their course materials, which is not so simple because of copyright problems. On the other side students will expect it to be easy to find resources for their project. What we have to do is to adds value to the process of finding and using information.

For users searching information there are two problems both the scatter of potentially relevant information and the risk of information overload.

Information technology has made magnificent progress in the last decades. We can communicate worldwide. We have easy access to millions of information resources. But little has changed for better in the case of subject access and of searches for topics. Automated digital libraries can clearly help with the mechanics of searching, but information seeking is more complex.

We have the web search engines and we have library catalogues. Both is needed in information search but for different things. The value of both depends on what the users are looking for and how well the users can navigate through this information universe.

User orientation is central in libraries strategies today but libraries have no money for individual services. It is part of the strategy of my library that our library is a self-service library concerning practical functions and concerning information searching we want our users to be self-sufficient.

To make our users self-sufficient we focus in the work at the information desk on not to find the information but to show and explain how to find the information. In practice this is not so easy because it has to be a flexible process where we have to find out what are the user really asking for, which sort of information is needed and how are the users responsiveness. It is very important what our users go to the information desk. If we are too teaching, I think they stop to ask. On the other side when we walk around in the computer area in the library, we got a lot of question which the users do not find important enough to ask at the information desk.

Bibliography databases have often very good data and very good search functions but also very difficult search functions. We know that our users do not use all the opportunities there are in the databases. By using the bibliographic data especial subject data, the possibilities in web-design and focus on user groups and/or on special subjects, the library can make it easier for users to search for information. We do not want to make reference lists but to do something to make it easier to search.

In OPACs it is possible to write in a field fx.. a subject field in natural language and then we technically can make a translation to our subject representation data and use this data in a complicated search string. Or the user can choose a special subject in a list and then again there can be a complicated search string behind this subject name. In the long run we can also make the search at the same time in different databases in a seamless search using one interface and maybe also using the same keyword independent of the subject representation systems used in the different databases. If we do not find a way out of the problem that we have different subject representation systems then users can only make free text search.

We have in my library no satisfactory solution on what to do and how to do to help our user to subject search. Until now we have ideas and plans and try some different things. We try a lot of different things in the danish academic libraries. I have chosen some examples.

The user choose first among

• Humaniora
• Nature
• Social Science
• Interdisciplinary Subject

Under Social Science there are 19 narrower terms. Under each of this there are prepared search after both physical and electronic resources divided in:

• Bibliographies
• Handbooks
• Books and Periodicals
• Subject Headings
• Internet
• Neighbouring Subjects

When the user choose Books and Periodical and make a search then this search is in a part of RUB catalogue. It a dynamic and up to date part because the limit of the relevant part is done in the search together with the users search.

As you can see from the first option RUB is a universal library so it is important to use the starting point especially when words are used in the searching.

They have another very popular thing in their catalogue. When the user has found a book in the catalogue, the user can se whether the book are on the shelf or it is out and he can click on a plan to se where it is physically placed in the library. Using UDC as signature in the shelving system this is a success.

At the Copenhagen Business School Library we have another solution to organize our access to all our different resources. It is - I am sorry to say - for many of our users very confusing. To day we have access to a lot of different things. Our users do not always know where to look for which information and they find it difficult to make out the difference between bibliographic searching, full text searching and fact searching.

• Hermes-Cat : A catalogue of all the materials of the Library. Hermes-Cat registers books, periodicals, annual reports, AV materials, Internet resources etc. - and a selection of articles in books, journals and newspapers.
• Research@CBS : CBS' research database.
• Hermes-CD : A description of the Library's CD-ROM databases. Access from the Library and in-house computers at CBS
• Hermes-Web : Databases via the Internet. Full-text periodicals, working appears, etc. Access to some bases is only for CBS staff or from the Library. (Among others: ABI/Inform, Britannica Online, Polinfo and Social Science Citation Index)
• Hermes Internet Directory : A directory of Internet resources in the subject areas relevant to CBS. (Some text in Danish only, but a lot of useful English links)

Please notice that we in our catalogue have also Internet resources and a selection of articles in books and journals. We have decided that it is not the form of the information resource but the content in and the quality of the information resource that determine which resources shall be part of our catalogue. It means that in our catalogue is also information resources not owned by the library and information resources not Aplaced@ in the library. We want our catalogue to be a main point of information access for our users. We have selected, evaluated and value-added the information resources in the catalogue.

As one example I will mention full text periodicals. We have different packages with full text periodicals and this packages are accessible on Hermes-Web but the most important periodicals for our special subject area have also a bibliographic record in our own catalogue and from this record the user can click to the database with the full-text periodical.

In Hermes-Cat there are three starting point for search:

• Menu Search
• Index Search
• Word Search (CCL line)

In the Menu Search there are three fields

• Author
• Title
• Subject

If the user file in a word in the subject field then the search will be done in both the title data and subject description data. We have logged searching in Hermes and from that we know, that very few users use our keywords in Athe librarian way@ but as part of there free text searching. So we have drawn the conclusion and make that practical solution, that the best thing is to make a keyword search in the title and subject description data in the records from the subject field.

The Hermes-Cat records are described with keywords in Danish, but usually the first record

of the search result will give a translation from an English keyword to the correct Danish phrase to be used for further subject searching

We do not have special subject starting point yet but we are working on some solutions to improve the subject search. Among those are to use the keyword in our thesaurus in a dialogue with the user in the search process, the possibility to search seamless in both our own catalogue and other databases and to make special subject starting points.

We uses in our own catalogue keyword as subject representation data and have our own thesaurus. Most users are unfamiliar with concept hierarchies and users only rarely make uses of them and their benefits. This both means that they lose all resources which are more specific than those specified in their search request and also resources where you have to use search statements which is more general in their search request.

This is from our catalogue where the controlled vocabolarium is part of the catalogue and show other keywords which can be good to use too.

SUBJECT Budgeting

LOCATION 473

BROADER TERM Budgets

NARROWER TERM Zero base budgeting

It is very few academic library catalogues were the controlled vocabolarium is searchable. We are working together with our system designers to make use of the subject description system in a system dialogue with the user so they can choose to limit or to expand a search using the controlled vocabolarium.

Our IT-department are working on to find out how to make it possible to search seamless in both our own catalogue and in relevant others databases (also commercial). There is no solution yet.

DEF

My library is a member of Denmark`s Electronic Research Library called DEF. The DEF project is the result of a cooperative effort by the Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Research and Ministry of Education with Aquick of money@ from the State for the years 1998-2002. DEF is the vision of a virtual library for researchers, students, lecturers and other users of Danish research institutions. The DEF gateway will allow users to search across libraries and it will be possible to order printed material which can be collected at the users local library or print out electronic articles from the users own computer.

bibliotek.dk

Bibliotek.dk is a new service for all people in Denmark. It is the Union Catalogue for all academic and public libraries in Denmark. There has been public access on the Internet from December 2000. It give access to all what has been published in Denmark, and what is available in the Danish public and academic libraries. The user can order books, periodicals, music, articles etc. from Public and Academic libraries for collection at the user´s own library. It has been a bigger success than even the most optimists expectation.You can forget everything about the death of the printed book.

DECOMATE

To day it is possible to search a multiplicity of networked databases using fx. z39.50 because of standard codes for the catalogue data, title and author, but there are problems with subject data because there are so many different subject representation systems both classification systems, subject heading systems and thesaurus.

Even in Denmark each academic library are using there own classification system and/or controlled vocabularies. This means that even if it was possible to search in more catalogues at the same time it is not possible to make subject searching using the subject representation data. We can make a concordance among the different subject representation systems but this is expensive if it has to be Ahandmade@ In a report to the DEF Committee about the possibilities to make subject searching the authors point at a project where Roskilde University Library and Department of Informatics (Oslo) match subject description by quantitative method. (Se also VINE Theme issue no.114 1999 p.56-66)

To day where access to information are directly the question is wether libraries have a place in the information universe in the future? My answer is yes if we in the libraries are able to organize information so the users save time using the library to find and get access to the needed information.

Anita Soerensen

Msc (economics), Copenhagen University in 1975

Research Librarian, Royal School of Library and Information Science, Copenhagen 1980

1973-1975 teaching Department of Business Studies, Aalborg University

1975-1984 teaching Department of Sociology, Copenhagen university

1975-1977 teaching Basic Education programme: Social Science, Roskilde University

1977-1990 research librarian, Roskilde University Library

1990- research librarian, Copenhagen Business School Library

1995- chairman The DanishCatalogue Committee, The Danish National Library Authority

1998- member The Danish National Bibliographic Committee, The Danish National Library Authority