IN THE EUROPEAN SPACE
ZUZANNA WIOROGÓRSKA
JACEK WŁODARSKI
1. Polish history – an outline
Poland has one of the most complex history among European countries. Polish borders have changed several times. Thus, first it seems pertinent to briefly describe this complexity in order to give better understanding of how the historical events and displacements of country borders might influence on cultural heritage and (in the case of this paper’s theme) on libraries’ holdings of the country.
In the 17th century a vast Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania neighboured on the South with Ottoman Empire and on the West – with the Habsburg Empire.
This situation changed in 1772 when Austro-Hungarian, German, and Russian Empires started the annexation of some parts of Poland. In 1772 the first partitioning treaty was signed; in 1793 – the second one; and in 1795 – the third one. Poland definitely lost its sovereignty. Polish state ceased to exist and disappeared from the map of Europe for 123 years (Bubczyk, 2011).
In 1918 Poland regained its independence and re-emerged onto the European map. However, only for eleven years.
In 1945 Poland felt under the Soviet control and the communist government, closely allied with the Soviet Union, was formed. Also in 1945 the borders of Poland changed for the last time in this country’s history. The acquisition of some Western (former German) territories and the loss of some Eastern ones – that today are part of Belarus, Lithuania, and Ukraine – resulted in mass migration of people. Poland was under communist governance for over forty years.
The parliamentary election on July 4th, 1989 marked the fall of communism in Poland and enabled the process of decommunisation and building the young democracy. Since 2004 Poland is a member of European Union. Today in Poland there are 38,5 million of habitants.
After the new administrative division of 1999 the country is divided into 16 regions (named voivodeships).
The above introduction was necessary to understand, how the complex history of Poland effected also in cultural heritage and library holdings.
They were changing their owners on many occasions. In the consequence of the World War II many collections were robbed or destroyed. Also, because of borders reshaping, after 1945 some part of holdings originally coming from Russia, Germany, or Czech Republic entered into Polish libraries. On the other hand, for the same reason, several Polish collections were left on the territories of former Soviet Union’s republics and today’s Belarus, Ukraine, and Lithuania.
2. Digital libraries in Poland. From software to a national (and international) federated system
The starting point for a big digital libraries “adventure” was dLibra software, created by Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC) in 1999. The works on dLibra coincided with developing other systems – well-known internationally, systems, like DSpace or ePrints.
However, the latter were aimed first of all on scientific publication, whilst primary aim of dLibra software was to increase the online access to the cultural heritage. Currently, dLibra is the most popular software in Poland for digital libraries creating and the majority of Polish digital libraries use it (Mazurek et al., 2012).
The success of dLibra software has resulted in constant development of this framework as well as in the creation of new features designed by PSNC. The most important areas of development of dLibra software are grouped around constant peer review from back office and front office users of Polish digital libraries. Back office user is a group consisting mostly of digital librarians and network administrators. Front office user is everyone who logs on from one of the digital libraries using dLibra software and uses the digital content. The use experience and remarks of those two groups are constantly collected and reviewed by PSNC Digital Libraries Team to be used for designing new features and improvements.
To name a few, lately dLibra has strongly focused on Web 2.0 features, automated browsing and auto correction, and auto-completing of users’
search queries.
New features created by PSNC Digital Libraries Team are dMuseion, dLab and dArceo. dMuseion is a framework for building digital museums.
It is designed for art institution, that wish to allow the access to their holdings, but maintain mostly visual art holdings, and so dLibra software was not appropriate for their needs. dLab is a system for digitization process management. It helps users organize and monitor the digitization process by allowing the use of reporting systems, tasks assignment and communicating with professional external tools. dArceo is a system for a long-term preservation of source data. It primarily focuses on textual, graphical, and audiovisual content. This tool allows the migration of source data, makes it accessible for advanced users and provides conversion delivery functions to boost the process of creating content in digital libraries. Those functionalities are extremely important when considering the reunification of data in Polish digital libraries. dLibra together with dMuseion, dLab and dArceo make for a complex set of advanced tools prepared for Polish digital librarians and other people engaged in creating Polish digital art collections, which has become very popular among them and boosted the digitization process in Poland.
Polish digital libraries use 15-element Dublin Core as a metadata schema for bibliographic description. In some cases the particular digital library modifies Dublin Core schema, by adding additional attributes and sub-attributes that (from the point of view of library’s needs) are missed, or it places the elements in a random sequence. The formats of objects presentation, available under dLibra software are: DjVu, PDF, HTML,
JPG – the choice depends on the library’s policy and needs (Chmielewska et Wróbel, 2013; Mazurek et al., 2012).
The most popular structure in Polish digital libraries is the subject division of content. The digitized objects are assigned to particular collections that can be organized according to different criteria, what in practice gives the possibility for one object to be assigned to several collections (Mazurek et al., 2012).
In general, journals and academic periodical series are the most popular objects found in Polish digital libraries. Thanks to the digitization process, old Polish newspapers are now widely accessible, as well as many current scientific journals what is a significant Polish contribution into Open Access and Open Science movements. The important part of the digital libraries’ collection are also the publications recommended by the libraries. These are the most precious or the most interesting items from their collections.
There are two most popular models of digital libraries creation:
institutional and consortial. They differ in the number of institutions engaged in the project and their responsibility for the individual spheres of digital library, like for example digitization or promotion. (Mazurek et al., 2012).
The noted before division of Poland for 16 voivodships (regions) plays a crucial role in the dynamic development of Polish digital libraries. In many cases, the smaller institutional libraries have started to cooperate within one voivodship and, in consequence, they created a big, consortial, regional library.
Since 2009 the annual conference “Polish Digital Libraries” is organised. It aims to integrate the creators and people interested in use of digital libraries. The use is discussed from two angles: technical (IT, software) and social one (functionality).
3. Polish Digital Libraries Federation (PDLF)
The growing interest and the increasing number of digital libraries resulted in launching of the Polish Digital Libraries Federation (PDLF).
PDLF has been functioning since 2007. Its web portal1 aggregates data and allows to browse from one access point holdings of all libraries and institutions that create their digital content within PDLF. The mission of PDLF is to facilitate the use of holdings of Polish digital libraries and repositories; to increase the visibility promotion of holdings of Polish digital libraries and repositories in the Internet; and to give the Internet users and digital libraries creators the new, advanced Internet service, based on the holdings of Polish digital libraries and repositories.
Moreover, for PDLF members the web portal provides newsletter, reports and statistics, and training materials (Mazurek et Werla, 2012).
What is most worth mentioning, is that PDLF strives to make as many procedures as possible automated between digital libraries. It is possible mostly because all of the PDLF members use the same framework (already mentioned dLibra); however the system is open to libraries using any other software. Everything is built upon open metadata exchange between all the PDLF members, which benefits end-users as well as digital libraries creators. The latters can share the metadata of already digitized materials, publish their digitization plans and cooperate in creating digitization policy. The biggest advantage of this system is its automation; system can verify the digitization plan of any digital library and mark all the materials that are already in the system or declared to be, thus it eliminates duplication of work. Thanks to that procedure currently only 0.2% of already digitized objects are duplicated (Mazurek et Werla, 2012).
The initial aim of PDLF was to divide collection themes among the regions of Poland. The overarching goal was to digitize and publish Polish cultural heritage, thus each library was supposed to choose the objects from its region. This approach has been functioning at the beginning but later it went towards subject collections, not necessarily limited to the region.
Currently, there are 102 digital libraries using dLibra framework and in their holdings there are over 1.9 million of publications (to compare: in all Europeana there are 32,6 millions). The four biggest providers within PDLF are: Polona (see Section 4 of this paper), Jagiellonian Digital Library, Digital Library of Wielkopolska, and Digital Library of the University of Warsaw.
1. Available at: http://fbc.pionier.net.pl [retrieved: 19 August 2014].
Basically, we can classify PDLF libraries into four groups: academic, regional, public, and other. However, this classification does not reflect the real one which is much more complex. Among academic libraries there are both digitized print collections (cultural heritage, old newspapers, etc.) and repositories with doctoral dissertations and/or faculties’ publications. What in fact means that one digital library deals with two types of objects: born-digital and paper (scanned) ones. In some cases, within regional libraries there are also academic and public ones, which have been founders and/or members of the regional consortium.
On the other hand, public digital libraries can be either a “digital mirror”
of the library or may contain digitized copies of some public documents (e.g. city archives). Very often public digital libraries were co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in the frame of the project
“Digital resources. Priority 1. Digitization of library collections”. We can also distinguish digital libraries established only for the purpose of one short-term project, like for example Digital Library of Polish Ephemera of 16th, 17th, and 18th century2; or Digital Archive of Agnieszka Osiecka (1936-1997, Polish poet, songwriter, journalist, theatre and TV screenwriter)3. The latest (international) example of this kind is Europeana 1989 Digital Archive – the repository of memorabilia related to the events of 1989 in Eastern and Central Europe4.
Two examples of significant cultural heritage items accessible in PDLF may be Liber fundationis claustri Sancte Marie Virginis in Heinrichau (Pl.
Księga Henrykowska) and De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. The first one is a 13th century Latin chronicle of Cistercian Abbey. It contains one Polish sentence that used to be considered as the oldest known Old Polish sentence. Księga Henrykowska is a current Polish candidate for inclusion in the list of UNESCO “Memory of the World” (so far, 12 Polish documents are registered there). It can be found in FIDES – The Federation of the Theological Libraries. The second treasure is one of the works of Nicolaus Copernicus. De revolutionibus… is Copernicus’ fundamental publication in which he announced his model of the universe. This one can be found in Kujawsko-Pomorska Digital Library.
2. http://cbdu.id.uw.edu.pl/ [retrieved: 19 August 2014].
3. http://www.archiwumagnieszkiosieckiej.pl/dlibra [retrieved: 19 August 2014].
4. http://www.europeana1989.eu/en/ [retrieved: 19 August 2014].
PDLF is a natural partner for international cooperation of aggregators thanks to the open communication standards. Currently, it collaborates with: Europeana (since 2009), DART-Europe (European Doctoral Theses), ViFaOst (Interdisciplinary Portal for East European Studies, launched and hosted in Germany), KARO (distributed catalogue of Polish libraries, working under Z39.50 protocol). Besides, the bibliographic records of PDLF are visible in WorldCat (see Fig. 1).
Figure 1. PDLF – an outline of principles and work environment (Source: http://fbc.pionier.net.pl/pro/informacje-ogolne/)
PDLF’s cooperation with Europeana is another activity most worth mentioning because of it is automated process. One of the biggest issues during establishing that cooperation was the metadata transcription.
Europeana uses a metadata schema called Europeana Semantic Elements. It
is a Dublin Core based application profile with local terms added to support Europeana’s features. Submitting PDLF’s metadata to Europeana would result in limited functionality and hindered usage of Polish digital objects, that is why designing a transcription algorithm was crucial for the success of this project. What is also important, PDLF decided to make the transfer of metadata between the systems bidirectional. Thanks to that, not only Europeana users can easily browse through PDLF’s holdings, but also the latters can be directed to Europeana to find more objects corresponding with their data query (Mazurek et Werla, 2012). The only issue that could be troublesome for end-users is that data between these two systems are being updated only four times a year, meaning that users can miss out on newly submitted materials.
Thanks to automation being the main imperative for all the data processing between PDLF’s members, the international cooperation between PDLF and other initiatives is not only possible, but fairly easy and convenient. While the whole system is operable and can serve as an example of well-designed digital library framework, the holdings of Polish digital libraries are still unsatisfactory for many users. This can be illustrated by the numbers reflecting PDLF’s cooperation with DART- Europe. Thanks to the extended network of Polish digital libraries there is a total of 34 Polish Universities providing data for the system, which stands for 10% of all universities cooperating with DART-Europe.
However, the number of Open Access research theses submitted by those universities constitutes only around 1% of all the accessible metadata (Mazurek et Werla, 2012). This clearly shows that system is ready and works well; however there is still insufficient amount of data offered by Polish digital libraries.
It should be noted that evaluation of the development and functionality of Polish digital libraries and other initiatives connected with e-reading is not an easy issue. The main reason for that is a complicated and unique history of Poland, mentioned already at the beginning of this paper. That it is why it seems difficult to find another country with similar history or political situation that could serve as a reference for Polish initiatives.
Comparing Poland to any of its neighbours could give a false impression about the condition of Polish digital libraries. As a result, it is easier and more trustworthy to analyze digital libraries’ impact, functionality and potential for development in comparison to other digital and social
initiatives from Poland, rather than comparing them to foreign digital libraries.
4. Polona - National Digital Library
Polish National Digital Library - Polona deserves few paragraphs of description as well. It was launched in 2006 (almost ten years after its French equivalent, Gallica) as a natural consequence of planned digitization of holdings that has been carried out since 2003. The main aim of Polona is to present Polish cultural heritage – the most important works, shaping and conceptualizing national identity. The important issue is also to facilitate the access to holdings for scientific research, cultural or educational activities and creative works. Subject collections are created with the idea of familiarizing the users with Polish history, culture and literature. Thus, each collection of digital objects is introduced by the description of the nature and subject of this collection with focusing on the particularly interesting objects. For example, there are collections dedicated to Frédéric Chopin, literature in Yiddish, September 1939, or Polish chronicles. The majority of documents available in Polona have the copyright expired and are in the so-called “public domain”. There are some documents still protected by copyright and are digitized; however the digital version of these documents is accessible only in the reading rooms in the building of National Library in Warsaw and not online (Potęga, 2012). Also, thanks to existence of those collections, various international theme portals are posting those materials (or links) on their websites. Thanks to that Polona’s holdings can be found on websites like Yiddish Suorces (yiddish-sources.com) or International Children’s Digital Library (childrenslibrary.org).
The international visibility of Polona tends to be much bigger than the visibility of other Polish digital libraries. It is caused by the fact that technically Polona is only one of the collections of Polish National Library, thus the information about it is shared and transferred along with information about other physical holdings of this institution. As a result, metadata from Polona are not only transferred to PDLF (and further to Europeana, DART-Europe, ViFaOST and others), but also to online international library catalogues that Polish National Library is cooperating with, e.g. The European Library (TEL).
5. Conclusions
The terminological differences between: digital library, electronic library, and virtual library that can be found in the literature seem to be not so important in practical work with digitization and they can be treated as synonymous terms. The most important is to create good digital libraries, that do not have to be linked with the holdings of one or several cooperating institutions (Woźniak-Kasperek et Franke, 2007).
As Chmielewska and Wróbel (2013) write, “digitizing processes in Poland are more and more popular. More and more scientific and cultural institutions are joining this current: universities, libraries, archives, museums, and research centers. The greatest number among those institutions are libraries” (p. 330).
Undoubtedly, digital libraries shortened the time of access to literature and facilitated researchers’ work. Nowadays, digital libraries are one of the most appreciated tools for those who use library holdings intensively.
Even though currently, digital libraries in Poland are still very similar to traditional libraries – they store the digital versions of printed materials and their main focus is to provide access to these publications. But in future they will probably also play different roles, that will go beyond browsing and reading the content (Górny, 2012).
The majority of Polish digital libraries can be described as hybrid libraries. It means they are functioning within traditional libraries which give access to the part of their holdings in digital format. The hybrid libraries are strongly connected with the physical space in which they exist, and the digital libraries are strongly linked to the institution that is responsible for their creation and management (Włodarski, 2013).
The abundance of digital libraries in Poland, according to Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) places the country on the sixth position in the world (see Fig. 2). Taking into account the economic and demographic parameters, this is a very good result (Hollender, 2013).
Finally, the question about the usefulness of digitization of historical resources can be raised. Who will use it? Will they reach the mass audience? In the light of the survey conducted at the break of 2008/2009 (Mazurek, 2010) the answer seems to be optimistic. A three-month survey aimed to explore who are the users for whom e-collections are created, and
to describe the users’ profile. This was the basis that helped draft the characteristics of the recipients of the content provided by Polish digital libraries. The research sample consisted of 964 respondents, 20% of whom were students, and 17% - academic staff. Data analysis showed that 49% of users live in big cities, and 31% are at age 20-30. More than 50% of users have completed tertiary education, every tenth user has at least doctoral degree. These results prove that digital libraries in Poland are of use mainly in academic environment, what is a positive sign as the majority of them was established by academic and scientific institutions in order to support educational process and to contribute into European Research Area.
Figure 2 OpenDOAR. Proportion of Repositories by Country – Worldwide (Available at:
http://www.opendoar.org/onechart.php?cID=&ctID=&rtID=&clID=&lID
=&potID=&rSoftWareName=&search=&groupby=c.cCountry&orderby=Ta lly%20DESC&charttype=pie&width=600&height=300&caption=Proportion
%20of%20Repositories%20by%20Country%20-%20Worldwide)
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