The National Library's Role in Facilitating Scholarly Communications
Abstract: This paper reviews the role the National Library of Canada plays in supporting effective and efficient access both to current research findings and the scholarly archive of Canadian publications. The impact of electronic dissemination of scholarly information is examined in the context of collections development, services to scholars and researchers, and co-operative initiatives. The paper focuses on emerging issues surrounding electronic publications relating to legal deposit, preservation, standards for encoding, proprietary rights to information, and research services. It also explores the potential for enhancements to the National Library's Canadian Theses Program in the context of an electronic environment.
Résumé: Cet article examine le rôle que joue la Bibliothèque nationale du Canada à assurer un accès rapide et efficace aux résultats de recherche courants et aux archives de publications savantes canadiennes. Il examine en outre l'impact de la dissémination électronique de l'information savante sur le développement des collections, les services offerts aux savants et aux chercheurs, et les initiatives coopératives. L'article met l'accent sur les questions émergentes portant sur les publications électroniques, y compris le dépôt légal, la conservation, les normes de codage, les droits de propriété à l'information, et les services de recherche. L'article explore aussi les améliorations possible au Programme des thèses canadiennes de la Bibliothèque nationale dans un environnement électronique.
From whatever perspective we view scholarly communications, we would all agree that the enterprise as a whole depends heavily on the strength of the individual components of the communications infrastructure, both formal and informal, and the ease with which those components can be called into play to support effective and efficient access, not only to current research findings, but also to what we might call the scholarly archive. In part, the enterprise depends on an informal infrastructure that operates at the level of individual initiative and interpersonal communication. But to a large extent, it depends on a formal infrastructure that functions at an institutional, corporate, and network level, making use of the resources of universities, libraries, publishers, the information technology industry, and telecommunications carriers and relying on their collaborative, as well as individual, efforts.
Among the many institutional players that are part of the Canadian infrastructure supporting scholarly communications, the National Library is a relative newcomer. It was established less than 50 years ago, after many years of lobbying by academics and librarians from across Canada. Ultimately, it was the Massey Commission Report (Royal Commission, 1951) that served as the catalyst for drafting the legislation that established the National Library. The Commission underscored the need for a national institution that would provide more effective access to the whole range of publications produced in this country and ensure the preservation of that material for future generations of scholars and researchers.
The National Library Act (Revised Statutes of Canada, 1952) provided the legislative framework needed to achieve those goals. The federal government has provided the resources to support the institution. Through co-operation with other libraries, with universities and colleges, with publishers, and with the information technology industry, the National Library has been successful in putting in place a number of programs that make it easier for scholars and researchers to know what has been published in their field within Canada. The Library also helps ensure that they have at their disposal a comprehensive resource encompassing both current and retrospective Canadian publications.
Today the National Library, like virtually all institutions that form part of the infrastructure supporting scholarly communications, is faced with adapting and re-aligning its programs and services to the new realities of a digital environment, to the emergence of new technologies for the communication and dissemination of information, and to new relationships between players in the information marketplace. The changes taking place throughout the information environment bring with them a wide range of issues that have to be addressed -- issues that may be technical, legal, or economic in nature. Change also brings with it opportunities for innovation and for new alliances with other players in the infrastructure that will enable the Library to serve scholars and researchers more effectively.
This paper provides a brief overview of three National Library programs that function as important components of the current infrastructure supporting scholarly communications in Canada. It also highlights some of the major issues the Library has to address in adapting those programs to a digital /networked environment and the opportunities that the new environment presents to us. Finally, it identifies, from the Library's perspective, a number of strategic priorities for future development that will require collaborative effort with other players in the infrastructure.
Components of the current infrastructure
The Canadiana collection
Over a period of 40-some years, the National Library has assembled a collection of published materials that includes almost 10 million pieces of Canadiana. The scope of coverage for the collection includes not only works published in Canada, but also works by Canadians and works dealing with Canadian topics published abroad. The collection contains materials in a broad range of formats: books, periodicals, newspapers, printed music, sound recordings, microforms, audio-visual materials, and electronic publications. It is the most comprehensive library collection of Canadiana held anywhere in the country, serving both as an archive of Canadian publishing and as a national resource supporting research in all fields of relevance to Canada's development as a nation -- historical, political, social, economic, and cultural.
The National Library acquires a significant amount of the material in its collection through purchase; exchanges with other institutions; arrangements with federal, provincial, and municipal governments; and private donation. But the chief means of acquiring Canadian materials is a system of legal deposit under which publishers in Canada are required to send the National Library copies of all their newly released publications. By statute, the copies must be deposited at the publisher's own expense and within one week of the date of publication. It is largely through legal deposit that the Library is able to maintain the comprehensive scope of its collection of Canadian publications.
The national bibliography
Since 1950, the Canadiana materials acquired for the National Library's collection (and even some that the Library has not managed to obtain) have been catalogued and listed in the national bibliography. Today those records form the core of a database that is accessible on-line to users right across Canada. The database contains well over a million Canadiana records and is the authoritative source for bibliographic information on materials published in Canada as well as on Canadiana published abroad. Records for current materials are used to generate print, microfiche, and electronic products. These records help Canadian publishers promote their new publications, enable libraries to add copies of Canadiana materials to their collections without having the expense of cataloguing the items on their own, and assist scholars and researchers in finding out what has been published in Canada on topics of interest to them. The Canadiana database serves both as a comprehensive register of Canadian publications, and as a key tool to support multifaceted bibliographic access to the content of those publications.
The Canadian Theses Program
In the 30-some years since it was first established, the Canadian Theses Program has created an archive of more than 150,000 masters and doctoral theses submitted to degree-granting institutions in Canada. Currently, with 51 universities and colleges participating in the program, more than 10,000 theses are microfilmed each year. Bibliographic records and abstracts for each thesis are published by UMI in Dissertation Abstracts International (1989) and Masters Abstracts International (1986), and the records can be accessed through the National Library's on-line database as well. The program serves not only as a means of ensuring that Canadian theses are preserved on microfilm produced to meet stringent archival standards, but also as a vehicle for making the results of research conducted in Canadian universities and colleges better known -- not just within Canada, but worldwide. Access to Canadian theses is further enhanced through the publication-on-demand component of the program that is provided through arrangements with Micromedia and UMI.
Issues, challenges, and opportunities
Legal deposit
Most of the legal deposit systems operating today were first established at a time when print was the exclusive, or at least predominant, medium of publication. In some countries, in fact, it was the printer, not the publisher, who was obligated by statute to deposit copies with the national library. It has only been in the past several years that a number of countries have undertaken to revise their legal deposit legislation to make it more inclusive. In several countries new legislation is still pending, and the current statutes still cover nothing more than printed materials. (For a survey of the current status of legal deposit legislation in some 15 countries in Europe, North America, and the Pacific, see Hoare, 1996.)
In order for legal deposit systems to serve as effective instruments for safeguarding a nation's published heritage, it is essential that they keep pace with changes occurring within what might be broadly defined as the publishing industry. But because most systems of deposit were originally developed within the context of a print-dominated industry, it has not always been a simple matter for national libraries to respond quickly to emerging forms of non-print publication. Legislation often needs to be revised, publishers need to be made aware of their obligation to deposit new forms of publication, new procedures for handling acquisitions need to be developed, specialized storage requirements for new media have to be met, and issues relating to access have to be addressed. With the development of new digital and optical media, the emergence of electronic publishing, and the explosive growth of the Internet and the World Wide Web as vehicles for publication, national libraries are faced with what is undoubtedly the biggest challenge they have had to face so far in adapting their systems of legal deposit to current-day realities.
Application of legal deposit statutes to electronic publications
In Canada, the first provisions for legal deposit as such were put in place under the National Library Act (Revised Statues of Canada, 1952, chapter 31, section 11). Unlike many of its European antecedents, from the outset the Canadian statute was intended to be comprehensive in scope. Although the Act uses the term book to indicate what it is that publishers are required to deposit, the Act has always had an interpretive clause that defines the term book to encompass "library matter of every kind, nature, and description" (chapter 31, section 2). The scope of the statute was made more explicit through an amendment in 1969, adding that "book" was to be interpreted to include "any document, paper, record, tape or other thing published by a publisher, on or in which information is written, recorded, stored, or reproduced" (Revised Statues of Canada, 1969, chapter 47, section 2).
Implementation of the statutory provisions for legal deposit in Canada has evolved over the years as new forms of publishing have emerged. Between 1953 and 1969, the legal deposit provisions of the Act were, in fact, exercised to acquire printed materials only -- books, pamphlets, annuals, and periodicals. In 1969, the legal deposit requirement began to be applied to sound recordings. Three years later, the application was extended to educational kits. In 1988, the National Library began applying legal deposit requirements to microform publications, and, in 1993, to published videos and CD-ROMs.
From a legal point of view, the transition in application of the legal deposit requirement from printed materials to sound recordings, kits, videos, and even CD-ROMs has been relatively straightforward. In each instance, the scope of the term "book," as defined in the National Library Act was deemed sufficiently broad to encompass the new medium of production. Similarly, the mode of dissemination was in each instance sufficiently analogous to that used in the publication of printed materials that it was deemed to fall within what the Act defined as "published in Canada," that is, "released in Canada for public distribution or sale" (Revised Statutes of Canada, 1952, chapter 31, section 2).
For electronic publications produced in forms such as tape, diskette, CD-ROM, and CD-I and distributed as individual copies, there has been virtually no question that the requirements of the legal deposit provisions apply. However, for electronic documents that are made public only by means of access to communications networks such as the Internet, the question of applicability of the legal deposit provisions of the Act is not quite so clear-cut. What is at issue is not whether such documents would qualify as books under the definition provided in the Act, but whether or not they have been "published." The National Library is currently trying to establish, in consultation with lawyers in the Department of Justice, whether the definition of the term "published in Canada" (that is, "released in Canada for public distribution or sale") is sufficiently broad to cover public on-line dissemination as a form of publishing. As yet we have no definitive answer as to whether the current wording of the Act is sufficient, or whether we would require an amendment to ensure the applicability of legal deposit to on-line electronic publications.
Copyright and access issues
Assuming for the moment that the publisher's legal obligation to deposit a copy of an electronic document disseminated on-line is in fact confirmed, a number of other questions relating to the National Library's right to provide access to those documents are equally significant.
With other forms of publication -- whether they be books, periodicals, sound recordings, or videos -- access to copies obtained through legal deposit is linked more or less directly to the availability of the physical object. Normally, the deposited copy of the publication is made available to a researcher for consultation on site or through interlibrary loan. In depositing the copy with the Library, the publisher transfers ownership of the copy, and the Library has the right to lend that copy just as it would have the right to lend a copy that it had purchased. However, ownership of the intellectual property represented in the deposit copy is retained by the copyright owner, and the National Library must respect the copyright owner's rights just as any library is obliged to respect copyright in a copy that is purchased. Thus, if a researcher requests the Library to reproduce material in the Library's collection that is protected by copyright, the Library must ensure that the amount of material reproduced and the purposes for which it is to be used are consistent with the uses permitted by copyright law or by any licence the Library may have with the copyright owner or with a collective representing the copyright owner.
With electronic publications, the line between providing access to the physical object and permitted uses of the intellectual property represented in that object is much less clear-cut. Even with an electronic publication issued on diskette or CD-ROM, questions regarding permitted use arise the moment the transaction between the Library and the researcher goes beyond the simple lending of the physical object. If, in response to user needs, the Library loads the publication on to an individual workstation or on to a local area network (LAN) server, there is a form of reproduction involved that is inherent in the way the technology processes the digitally encoded content of the publication. With on-line publications, providing access to the user is impossible without involving, in a strictly technical sense, reproduction.
The argument has been made by some copyright owners that all forms of reproduction, even those that are incidental or transient in nature and are simply a function of digital technology, are potentially infringements of copyright. They maintain that the owner of copyright in the work has the exclusive right to authorize such acts of reproduction. That interpretation has, of course, been challenged by the users of copyrighted works. They maintain that to include all such transactions under the rubric of the reproduction right is tantamount to giving the copyright owner the exclusive right to authorize the "reading" of a work. The issues around the interpretation and extent of the reproduction right and its implications in a digital environment are of significant current concern in Canada, the United States, and other countries throughout the world. The issues were debated at the recent World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) diplomatic conference in Geneva as part of the deliberations over a proposed article in a new copyright treaty aimed at clarifying the extent of the reproduction right in the Berne Convention, but no resolution was reached in that forum.
With the issue of access to electronic publications unresolved in terms of copyright law, a parallel debate has emerged specifically in relation to publications deposited with national libraries under the statutory provisions of legal deposit. On the one side, publishers maintain that access in a digital environment is qualitatively different from access in the analog print environment, providing as it does a significantly greater opportunity for exploitation of a work and the potential for undermining the commercial interests of the copyright owner. They argue, therefore, that the modus vivendi that has been accepted with respect to the use of deposit copies of printed publications cannot be used as a model for the use of deposit copies of electronic publications. Librarians, on the other hand, argue that exceptions provided for in the Berne Convention should apply to digital formats just as they apply to print. They contend that copyright should not limit the user's right to browse or read a work, or to make "fair use" of a work for purposes of research or private study; nor should it prevent a library from lending a work for legitimate purposes, regardless of the format of the publication.
The debate was escalated somewhat in April of last year, when the International Publishers' Association (IPA) passed a resolution urging its members to ensure that systems of legal deposit permit access to deposited publications free of charge only at single sites in the national library's own reading rooms, and that any further use of their deposited publications be permitted only on terms agreed to by the publisher (International Publishers' Association, 1996). In May, the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) issued a position paper on copyright in the electronic environment, asserting the right of the library user to read, listen to, view, or browse copyrighted works in a digital format without incurring a charge or seeking permission, and to copy a reasonable portion of a digital work for personal or educational use. The position paper also asserted the right of libraries to lend works in a digital format for legitimate purposes and to make a temporary digital copy of a work for purposes of electronic document delivery (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, 1996).
Current initiatives
While the debate continues on a philosophical level, and the legal questions remain unresolved, a few national libraries have begun to experiment with the practicalities of implementing deposit procedures for electronic publications. The National Library of Canada notified publishers that they would have to deposit all new CD-ROMs published on or after January 1993. The procedures that were established parallel those for conventional print and recorded materials, and publishers have co-operated fully. The Library of Congress initiated deposit procedures for CD-ROMs in 1994, but has taken the precaution of restricting access to the deposited materials according to the terms of agreements signed with the publishers. Some of the agreements limit access to single, stand-alone workstations; others permit networked access within Library of Congress buildings. If there is no signed agreement with the publisher, researchers are not permitted access to the CD-ROM. The Bibliothèque nationale in France also initiated deposit requirements for CD-ROMs in 1994 under newly revised legislation. Copies of CD-ROMs have been deposited, and policies have been established on access (restricting access to stand-alone workstations within the library and prohibiting downloading), but researchers will not actually have access to the materials until new facilities at Tolbiac are fully operational. The Nasjonalbiblioteket in Norway has also initiated the deposit of CD-ROMs under legislation that was revised in 1990, but researchers are not allowed access, pending the issue of regulations under Norway's new copyright act. (For additional information on these and other similar initiatives, see Hoare, 1996, and Anglo Nordic Seminar on Legal Deposit, 1995.)
Only two initiatives to date have addressed the deposit of on-line electronic publications, one at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in the Netherlands and the other at the National Library of Canada. Both are being conducted as pilot projects, and in neither case is the national library actually exercising the statutory provisions of legal deposit.
The Netherlands, in fact, has no legal deposit legislation. For the past 20 years, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek has operated a voluntary system of deposit that has become effectively comprehensive through negotiation with Dutch publishers. In 1993, the library initiated planning to extend existing voluntary arrangements to electronic publications. In 1995, the technical platform was put in place to support a pilot project, and by the end of the year the library had negotiated the deposit of some 50 electronic journals and 100 other electronic publications. The project is focused primarily on the technical aspects of acquiring, cataloguing, and storing electronic documents. Researchers can access material on a very restrictive basis. (For additional information on this project, see Feijen, 1996.)
In 1994, the National Library of Canada also began a pilot project for the deposit of on-line electronic publications, using hands-on experience to examine issues related to acquisitions, cataloguing, file management, and preservation. By October 1995, a collection of 25 electronic journals had been assembled as part of the pilot project, and the project team had developed some 30 recommendations on both policy and technical matters. (For additional information on the project, see National Library of Canada, 1995.) With the completion of the initial pilot phase of the project, the National Library has continued to develop its electronic collection and has now mounted on its server more than 200 electronic journals and other on-line publications. The deposit of these publications is continuing on a voluntary basis, with priority given to electronic publications that are not available in any other format, particularly publications issued by the federal government. The publishers transmit their publications and updates to the National Library by e-mail or file transfer protocol (FTP), or, in some cases, permit the National Library to "mirror" the publication. As all of the publications acquired to date have been free, publishers have expressed relatively little concern about the National Library providing public access to the documents.
Long-term access and preservation
The legal issues related to proprietary interests and copyright are less problematic when viewed in the context of preservation. Publishers generally have little difficulty acknowledging the role that national libraries play in preserving the country's published output. To the extent that the preservation role can be separated from issues related to public access, they are generally supportive of national library efforts to create an archive of the country's published heritage, regardless of whether the publications are in conventional print or recorded formats or in electronic form. Even on copyright issues, publishers have indicated a willingness to permit certain exceptions in legislation that would enable a library to reproduce a rare, fragile, or damaged out-of-print work in its collection in order to preserve its content. They have also shown some willingness to make accommodation in the law for the migration of a work from a technically obsolete format to one that can be used with currently available technology. The debate surrounding the reproduction right and its implications for access is thus somewhat attenuated when put in the context of long-term preservation.
The technical challenge of preserving electronic publications is another matter. The first source of difficulty is the nature of the storage medium. With all its shortcomings, paper (at least alkaline paper) is the most stable medium available to us for the preservation of documentary materials. Rag papers have lasted hundreds of years. Paper manufactured today to standards approved for permanence can also be expected to last 400 years or more. By comparison, the magnetic media used for storing electronic data are much more fragile and susceptible to deterioration over a relatively short time frame. The newer optical media are largely unproven, and unlikely to remain intact anywhere near as long as permanent paper or archival-quality microfilm, 10 to 15 years on average. Therefore, if documents in electronic form are to be preserved over the long term, continuous migration from one store (or information carrier) to another on a relatively short cycle will be a prerequisite. Unless the costs of electronic storage media decline significantly, and the life expectancy of the media increases substantially, the cost of migrating electronic documents for preservation purposes may prove to be prohibitive, even for institutions with a preservation mandate such as national libraries.
Even more problematic is the issue of intelligibility of electronic documents over the long term. Because the intelligibility of digitally encoded documents is inextricably linked to coding schema, applications software, and even operating systems and peripherals, technological development and change in any of those areas can effectively render a document obsolete. Maintaining a museum of outmoded hardware and software is not an option national libraries can contemplate as a means of ensuring the preservation of the intelligibility of the content of electronic documents.
Bibliographic access
The emergence of electronic publishing poses challenges for bibliographic control and access that in many ways parallel the challenges of adapting legal deposit systems to the new modes of publishing. Most national bibliographies, like most systems of legal deposit, were initiated at a time when print was the predominant, if not exclusive, medium of publication. As a result, the scope of coverage for national bibliographies has tended to be centred largely on the print media, and several have retained that orientation even though the volume of non-print publishing has increased substantially over time. Similarly, the cataloguing conventions used to describe publications listed in the national bibliography are strongly rooted in practices developed originally for the description of print materials. Although they have been adapted over time to accommodate the description of non-print materials, the fit has not always been as comfortable as one might wish.
The value of a national bibliography, like that of a national system of legal deposit, is linked in a very direct way to its comprehensiveness. To maintain its value both as a register and as a bibliographic access tool, the national bibliography must ensure that its scope of coverage is continuously broadened to include emerging forms of publication. With new forms of publication, new mechanisms often have to be put in place to capture the data that is needed to create the bibliographic record. Cataloguing rules and conventions have to be adapted to accommodate the characteristics of the new media and new modes of dissemination. And the interfaces between the national bibliography per se and related systems of bibliographic control and access need to be re-aligned and re-tuned.
Registration of electronic publications
Canadiana (1953), Canada's national bibliography, has served as a comprehensive register of newly published Canadian materials since its inception in 1950. Although for the first 20 years it listed only print publications, its coverage has been extended over time, more or less in sync with the extension of legal deposit, to include published sound recordings, microforms, audio-visual, multimedia, video, and electronic materials. Within the last year, records have been added for the on-line journals and other on-line publications acquired during and subsequent to the National Library's electronic publications pilot project.
However, comprehensive registration of Canadian on-line publications can only be achieved if the National Library has a systematic means of identifying all new publications. Clearly, legal deposit of on-line publications offers the potential of providing that means once the legal issues have been settled and the deposit mechanisms are in place. In the interim, the National Library can be alerted to the existence of a new Canadian on-line publication by alternative means.
As the Canadian agency for the International Standard Serials Numbering (ISSN) system, the National Library receives requests from serials publishers who want ISSNs assigned to their new publications. As part of the assignment process, the National Library obtains the necessary bibliographic data from the publisher and creates a record to be reported to the international register of serials. The same data forms the core of the record for that serial to be included in the national bibliography. With the recent extension of the ISSN program to include electronic serials, this system serves at least in part as an alternative registration mechanism. Unlike the legal deposit system, however, the ISSN system is entirely voluntary. Registration is normally initiated only at the publisher's request.
The National Library also acts as one of the two Canadian agencies responsible for assigning ISBNs under the International Standard Book Numbering system. The Bibliothèque nationale du Québec assigns blocks of ISBNs to French-language publishers primarily in Quebec, and the National Library handles assignments primarily for English-language publishers. The ISBN system operates differently than the ISSN system, however, in that normally the publisher is assigned a block of ISBNs rather than a single number for a particular publication, and the assigning agency does not register bibliographic data. Another difference is that decisions have not yet been made at the international level as to whether and how ISBNs should be assigned to electronic publications. At this juncture, therefore, use of the ISBN system as an alternative mechanism for alerting the National Library to the existence of a new on-line publication is not really feasible.
Apart from requests for ISSNs coming in from publishers of new on-line journals, the only means the National Library has of tracking new on-line publications is through monitoring the communication networks -- surfing the Internet, making use of various resource discovery tools, monitoring newsgroups, and even tracking the print media for announcements of new on-line publications. That activity is rather labour-intensive and somewhat serendipitous at best.
Capturing metadata
From a cataloguer's perspective, electronic publications have at least one advantage over conventional print publications. Potentially, a substantial portion of the data required to compile a bibliographic record for the publication can be captured and incorporated into the bibliographic record with minimal effort. Given that the bibliographic record is being created on-line, that certain key elements of the description are normally to be transcribed as they appear in the publication itself, and that it is possible to develop applications that would transfer the digitally encoded data in the publication directly to the digitally encoded bibliographic record, considerable potential exists for minimizing the effort involved in the more mechanical aspects of the cataloguer's task. The potential for reducing the time and level of effort required to compile the bibliographic record is of real interest to the National Library, especially since the resources available for the bibliographic activity are being strained by budget cuts and down-sizing.
To capitalize on the potential savings, however, a certain degree of standardization is needed in the way metadata (data about data) is structured and encoded in a publication. Work in this area is under way on several fronts in both North America and Europe. The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), the development of the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, and the Development of a European Service for Information on Research and Education (DESIRE) project in Europe are among the key initiatives aimed at bringing a greater level of standardization to the encoding of metadata within on-line publications. There has also been some work done in mapping the proposed metadata structures to the Machine-Readable Cataloguing (MARC) format that is the library standard for recording bibliographic data within a machine-readable catalogue record. However, these initiatives are still in a relatively early stage of development and a considerable amount of further work will be required to standardize the encoding of metadata and to promote widespread implementation of the standards. (For a bibliography and directory of reports on current metada initiatives, see the IFLANet Web site [URL: http: //www.nlc-bnc.ca / ifla / II /metadata.htm].) Without a well-defined and reasonably stable standard that is widely used across various sectors of the on-line publishing industry, it will be next to impossible to develop the applications software that would be needed to support the seamless transfer of metadata embedded in on-line publications to the bibliographic records that form the national registry.
If efforts to standardize the metadata embedded in on-line publications are successful, the time and effort that agencies like the National Library currently expend on some of the more mechanical aspects of data capture for bibliographic records can be redirected to the more important value-added aspects of record creation. Cataloguers creating records for the national bibliography add real value through the establishment of uniform headings for the names of authors, the creation of the network of "see" references that assist users in finding works by those authors, the development of thesauri of subject terms, the analysis of document content, and the assignment of appropriate subject terms and classification indices. If more of the data needed to identify and describe the publication simply as a publication can be ported into the record with minimal effort, then that much more effort can be spent on creating data that will assist the user in situating that publication in the context of other related publications, of other works by the same author, and of other works in the same subject area.
Interfacing with indexing services and resource discovery tools
In their original form, national bibliographies functioned as more or less discrete tools. They would be placed on library shelves next to other bibliographies and printed catalogues to be searched seriatim as sources of data to be used in the library's own catalogue, as tools for verifying data on publications requested by users, or to assist the user in conducting bibliographic searches for material on particular topics of interest. With the proliferation of on-line bibliographic databases, the records created for the national bibliography are now part and parcel of a larger, multifunctional data resource. Within the National Library's AMICUS database, the records created for the national bibliography occupy space with records created by the Library of Congress, records created on-line by federal departments and agencies such as the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI), and records created by academic, public, and special libraries right across Canada that have been used to report holdings to the national union catalogue. In addition, the interconnection of bibliographic databases through the Internet and the development of standardized search protocols have served to virtualize the bibliographic data resource, effectively bringing into one shared space catalogue data created by libraries, data created by abstracting and indexing services, and a whole new range of resource discovery tools created to help users navigate the Internet and the World Wide Web.
Assisting the user in conducting searches that cross from one bibliographic data resource to another has been part of the rationale for integrating bibliographic control activities such as the assignment of ISBNs and ISSNs with the creation of the national bibliographic record. Even before the on-line database became the primary tool for conducting bibliographic searches, it was recognized that single-key, unique identifiers such as the ISBN and ISSN could serve as very useful devices to help bridge the different bibliographic conventions used in different sectors of the information industry. They provide a key link between publishers' databases, abstracting and indexing databases, and library catalogues. It is important to ensure that those same systems are adapted where possible to accommodate electronic publications, and that new systems are devised to accommodate new types of information objects that cannot be accommodated by the existing systems.
Canadian Theses Program
When the Canadian Theses Program was initiated in 1965, only four universities participated. Within a relatively short period of time, the number of participating universities grew substantially. Today, 51 universities and colleges take part in the program. With 10,000 theses being microfilmed each year, the program is estimated to cover about 85% of all theses currently accepted for degrees in Canada at both the masters and doctoral level. Maintaining, and if possible enhancing, that level of comprehensiveness is a key program objective.
Up until now, all theses covered by the program have been submitted in a paper format. The manuscripts and accompanying documentation are sent directly by the participating universities and colleges to the National Library's agent, Micromedia, and filmed to archival standards. Preservation copies of the microfilm are stored in vaults at the National Library, and service copies are produced both for the National Library and for the originating university or college. Micromedia operates a publication-on-demand service, responding to orders from within Canada. Orders from outside Canada are filled through arrangements with UMI.
The widespread current use of document processing software to create thesis manuscripts has prompted university administrators and librarians to consider the potential for integrating electronic theses into the systems that serve to facilitate access to theses, both at the local campus level and more widely at the national and international level. Several Canadian universities have begun to experiment with the practical implications of accepting theses in a digital format and making them available in that form through their libraries. The Electronic Theses Project Team at the University of Waterloo has recently undertaken a survey to determine how other universities are dealing with policy and procedural issues, intellectual property issues, and technical matters related to access, distribution, storage, and preservation of electronic theses. (For details on the questionnaire, see the University of Waterloo Electronic Theses Project Team, EDT Questionnaire [URL: http: // library.uwaterloo.ca /~uw-etpt /survey.html].) In the U.S., a number of universities participate in the Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Project, which is aimed at exploiting digital technology to make the production, collection, and storage of theses more efficient and to enhance user access to graduate research results. (For additional information on the project, see the Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Project Web site [URL: http: //etd.vt.edu /universities /description.html].) UMI has also recently expanded its program to encompass digital dissertations. (For a description of the service, see the ProQuest Digital Dissertations pilot site [URL: http: //www.lib.umi.com /solutions / 22.1.1.html].) The partners in the Canadian Theses Program -- the universities and colleges, the National Library, Micromedia, and UMI -- have also informally begun to assess the potential for the integration of electronic theses into the program.
As with other electronic documents, however, the real challenge will be in finding ways to ensure the preservation of electronic theses and to guarantee the intelligibility of their content over the long term. Until the viability of long-term archiving of digital theses can be assured, it will be essential to maintain the archival microfilming component of the program.
Strategic priorities
From the National Library's perspective, three key issues among those outlined above are of strategic priority and require collaborative effort among the various stakeholders in the scholarly communications enterprise.
First is the need to address the issues relating to public access to electronic publications acquired by the National Library through legal deposit. Inasmuch as the copyright issues around digital materials are not likely to be resolved in the near future, especially given the recent pace of copyright revisions in Canada, it is critically important that publishers, scholars, and the National Library work together to establish mutually agreed guidelines governing access to electronic publications deposited with the National Library.
Second is the need to develop and implement standards for recording metadata in electronic publications that will facilitate new modes of access to those documents and more efficient means of porting data from the documents themselves to the bibliographic databases that serve as key research support tools.
Third is the need for collaboration between Canadian universities, the National Library, and service providers to develop document standards for theses in digital formats and to expedite the integration of digital theses into the Canadian Theses Program.
References
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