The General Sciences Library of Ho Chi Minh City, one of the largest libraries in South Vietnam, provides a wide range of services from Ninh Thuan to Minh Hai provinces. It is responsible for collecting and maintaining materials of all kinds published inside and outside the country. With 700,000 copies, the library serves approximately 150,000 users yearly. At the same time, the library performs many other functions. These include providing bibliographic information, helping the provincial libraries compile regional bibliographies, preparing topical bibliographies and a union catalog of books published in South Vietnam and issuing a bulletin called Library Information Bulletin of South Vietnam. Professionally, the library organizes and carries out training courses to improve professional skills of staff and arranges topical conferences for libraries of the districts and provinces.

In the international area, the library is a deposit library for UNESCO, World Bank (WB), Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) documents and has book exchange arrangements with more than 30 libraries and information centers around the world. With such roles and with the mission to expand the learning capacity of the nation in this period of the country's development, the library has to urgently improve the quality of service to meet the user's needs. There are different key enablers to improve the library such as human resources, technology and organizational leadership. Within the NIT Conference I would like to talk about how the librarians in GSL provide their users with scientific and technological materials and the technological tools they use so that they can both meet the demands of readers and manage their work effectively.

2. LIBRARY AUTOMATION

In preparing an automation plan the library first determined what it wanted to automate. The automation of library functions include: circulation, acquisitions and cataloging including the library's database of its holdings. The library also uses computerized, commercially-developed reference databases within the library. It also accesses the remote databases of other libraries. Office automation within the library includes the functions of word processing, accounting and desktop publishing. User services are automated and provide an open access computer center and software applications for public use.

Bibliographic Database

The GSL uses CDS/ISIS software to create bibliographic databases on computers purchased by the Ministry of Culture and Information. The Library is creating a bibliographical database of the titles recently acquired for the library's collection by cataloging recent acquisitions using the CDS/ISIS software. Then the Library is converting its older materials retrospectively into a machine readable database. The GSL has used computers for cataloging new books since 1990 and is planning for the retrospective conversion of materials before 1990.

The GSL is working with the National Library of Vietnam (NLV) in Hanoi to create a machine readable database of Vietnamese publications. The NLV is the legal deposit library. And since the GSL has a very good collection of Vietnamese materials from 1954 to 1975 the Library is working with them to prepare a database of Vietnamese publications. The Library must do a good job preparing the materials for this conversion since this collection is not only important for the users in Ho Chi Minh City, but it is also important for the users in the whole country. Plans are also being made with the National Library of Vietnam to convert the materials prior to 1954 after the materials of the 1954 to 1975 period are converted. The GSL is also doing a retrospective conversion of the foreign books in the library as well.

Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC)

The library has an online public access catalog which is made up of a number of databases. The library users can search the library's databases using keyword and Boolean search strategies. The databases include:

• SACH (Database of books): 53.227 records

• TCHI (Database of periodicals): 2.388 records

• KHKT (Database of abstracts of periodical articles: global science, technique and economy: 14.297 records

• SERIAL (Database of Union Catalog of periodicals with the library of NACESTID: 3.394 records

Databases of bibliography

• TNINH (Database of bibliography for the province Tay Ninh): 651 records

• SGGP (Database of bibliography of abstracts of articles from newspapers "Freed Saigon": 331 records

• Database of bibliography for the 300th anniversary of Ho Chi Minh City: 83 records

• Database for internal use :- BANDOC (Database of readers) : 32.137 records

Accessing the National Library of Vietnam Database

In 1996 a wide area network (WAN) was established for the National public library system. The General Sciences Library of Ho Chi Minh City is one of two nodes in this network and is responsible for taking care of e-mail and file transfer within the system as well as access to the NLV database.

Office Automation

The library uses automation to facilitate the regular administrative functions. A program has been written for personnel management. Word 97 is used for word processing and for desktop publishing such as the library bulletin, the union catalog of books published in the South, a glossary of library terms and lists of new books.

Multimedia Services

The Audio-Visual room is now available in the library. There are 4 computers and 4 CD-ROM players, 5 TV and video players and cassette players. There are CD-ROMs and video tapes about different fields of knowledge and cassettes for language study. It is a very basic audio - visual room but it was greeted by the library users, who now have a chance to work with these tools for study and reference purposes, with great enthusiasm.

3. PRESERVATION PLANS

The preservation of important materials in the library is at a crisis stage. The library collection consists of 700,000 titles of books, 4,000 kinds of periodicals in different languages and 700 current titles. Also it has a rare collection of 9,749 copies and these include materials from Indochina. The collections are visibly deteriorating and a large number of items might not last as long as the library needs them. The bad environment is always a big problem for the library. Until recently we did not have a qualified person in the library who is acquainted with the broad issues of preservation and can do the preservation work. So we still have no preservation survey, no preservation work area, no applied treatment for preserving and/or restoring deteriorated materials, and no solutions for preserving the intellectual content of materials that cannot be saved. Although we are really worried about the collection, especially the rare collection, we do nothing except bookbinding, keeping the books clean, termite proofing, covering the windows with allophone to keep books from sun exposure and having an automatic fire-alarm system. We do not have any professional associations and organizations to serve the preservation field. Because there is so much to be done in preservation, we decided to develop a preservation plan.

Creating and Implementing Preservation Plans for Regular and Rare Books

As a result of the preservation plan and the GSL proposal for preserving library materials, the Ministry of Culture and Information agreed to give the Library the amount of 350 million Vietnam dong to equip it with the necessary equipment for preservation. The Ministry of Culture and Information also asked the Department of Culture and Information in Ho Chi Minh City to fund the GSL for upgrading its infrastructure including the rare books exhibition. The equipment to be used for preservation project includes:

• Computers.

• Air conditioners and a ventilation system.

• Scanners for scanning rare materials to transfer them to another format to preserve the originals and enhance their access.

• Photocopy machines, size Ao, for photocopying newspapers, maps and materials in large size.

• New equipment and supplies for book binding.

• Camera system in the reading rooms for controlling the reader's use and reducing losses of books.

4. THE FUTURE

The Library's plans for the future include implementing the "Library for the Blind" project. The aim of the project is to develop special services to meet the needs of different segments of the population including those who suffered the loss of sight during the long war. The Library received permission and funding from the Department of Culture and Information of Ho Chi Minh City to carry out the project. The Library did a survey of the needs of the blind in Ho Chi Minh City. This information resulted in the decision to build the library. We are planning to open the library at the end of 1998.

A proposal for a children's library was made to ODA. Although the GSL is a public library, it is just a library for adults. A library for children is lacking. GSL has written a proposal to develop a cultural and information center for children, in order to provide access to a wide range of library services and materials, in response to the expressed needs of the children of Ho Chi Minh City. Moreover, it is very important to teach the young generation how to use a library, especially a modern library effectively. This library would provide the following services:

- Reading at site; Book lending; Audio
- visual equipment for education and entertainment purposes; and Book exhibitions.

These are just some of our achievements. They are very humble in comparison to what we must do to improve library services. I am here at the NIT Conference to learn about information technology so that we can implement it in our library and provide better service to our users. On behalf of our library and myself, I would like to express my deep gratitude to the conference organizers for giving us the opportunity to attend the conference, to our Simmons professors for giving us the lectures and to my colleagues for sharing their professional experiences with us.