Domsa Károlyné, Fekete Gézáné, Kovács Mária (szerk.): Gondolatok a könyvtárban / Thoughts in the Library (A MTAK közleményei 30. Budapest, 1992)
KÖNYVTÁR ÉS KORSZERŰSÉG – LIBRARY AND MODERNITY
Library automation in Finnish research libraries catalogues produced by the COM-method replaced the old card catalogues which were not continued as in many other countries; Finnish libraries quite simply did not have enough staff to run two parallel catalogues. Users very soon got acquainted with the new catalogues. This procedure continued up to quite recent years and it has enabled 25 libraries to have their catalogues in machine readable form. In addition to library catalogues, the Finnish National Bibliography has from 1977 been produced by using the same software. Recording of new titles in the National Bibliography is, since 1979, carried out as a joint task divided between three legal deposit libraries, the University Libraries of Helsinki, Jyvaskyla and Turku. It would have been much simpler to produce the National Bibliography by centralized input of data, but the chosen solution, cumbersome though it was, was the only way to get the new monographic literature registered in its entirety. The participating libraries did benefit from the arrangement, as they received their local catalogues of new Finnish literature with only a fraction of the total effort. In addition to the catalogues on microfiche several university libraries set up local information retrieval systems mounting their catalogue data on the mainframe computer of their universities. The catalogue information was thus made accessible over the campus without additional costs for telecommunications, which was a distinct improval compared to the old card system. Catalogue databases using the same offline programme package covered also several subject bibliographies and indexes to periodicals. In order to avoid duplication of efforts, a detailed scheme was created for the input of data indicating the responsibilities of participating libraries. Databases of individual subject bibliographies were, for information retrieval purposes, merged into one database and made available online. The family of databases created by using the same software, i. e. library catalogues, the National Bibliography and a number of subject bibliographies are available online in the State Computer Centre under its information retrieval system MINTTU. The library databases KAUKO (joint library catalogues), KOTI (the National Bibliography) and the KATI (special bibliographies'joint database) form the KDOK family, which are the most used databases in the MINTTU system. In spite of recent development of computerized local library systems these databases will certainly for some time still be maintained by the State Computer Centre. The products of this offline approach comprised, as already mentioned, catalogues on microfiche and databases accessible online. A third type of products are printed catalogues and bibliographies, the Finnish National Bibliography being the largest and most demanding of them. A production line for photosetting from magnetic tape was developed in cooperation with the State Computer Centre „ Gondolatok a k onyvt arban " 143
