ISSUES IN AUTOMATION FACING PRIVATE UNIVERSITY AND SPECIAL LIBRARIES: A Case Study of Two Libraries in Ho Chi Minh City
Nguyen Thien Can
English Section
Foreign Languages Department
Van Lang University
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
This paper discusses issues in automation by having case study of two libraries -- the Saigon Times Document Section, and the Van Lang University Library.CASE 1: SAIGON TIMES DOCUMENT SECTION
INTRODUCTION
The Saigon Times Document Section officially opened in 1992 and then two years later, it merged with the Vietnam Asia Pacific Economic Center (VAPEC) Library in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). It serves about 100 reporters and journalists of the Saigon Times Group, which is a group of The Saigon Times Magazine in five versions in different languages, namely, The Saigon Times Weekly and The Saigon Times Daily in English, the Saigon Eco in French, and The Saigon Economic Times and The Saigon Times Marketing in Vietnamese. In addition, its clients include about 30 researchers of VAPEC, who are economists and key government officials.
CURRENT SITUATION
The Saigon Times Document Section has about 1000 books, mainly reference materials on general subjects and economics. These books and about 80 Vietnamese periodical titles and about 30 foreign periodical titles are all displayed on open stacks. These materials are acquired through purchase. A small number of English and Japanese books are received as gifts from The Japan Foundation.
The reference service of the Saigon Times Document Section uses primarily the sources stored in the databases of the internal computer network which serves the reporters. There are about 30,000 records in 8 databases. These are databases of articles printed in the Saigon Times Group magazines and in several other periodicals such as Saigon Liberation Newspaper, The Youth Magazine, Labor Magazine, and the Economic Research Magazine. In addition to these databases, the Saigon Times Document Section buys information through the Pindex databases, which are supplied by the ANDI Information Company. Pindex is an article index of 33 magazines published in HCMC. The Saigon Times Document Center also receives information from monthly "Alert" copies of the Information Resource Office in Hanoi.
In 1995, the Saigon Times Group began to cooperate with the SCITEC Informatics Company to produce a non-print version of the Saigon Times English Language in floppy disk by supplying SCITEC with CDS/ISIS records with citations and key words for each article. In 1997, as a result of users' requests, the annual separate floppy disks were replaced by a CD-ROM combining all articles from 1995 to 1997 of the three magazines: Saigon Times Weekly in English, Saigon Eco in French, and Saigon Economic Times in Vietnamese. It is now available on the information market at the price of 100 USD.
The Saigon Times Document Section uses CDS/ISIS, free software provided by UNESCO to developing countries, for its information processing. The library pays a fee for the installation, technical assistance and maintenance of the computer network. Most of the reporters of the Saigon Times Group, especially the younger ones, can manipulate the CDS/ISIS software well enough to find information in spite of the complexity of the ISIS commands. The Saigon Times Document Section supplies the reporters with a user's guide for searching and has put one next to each computer. The librarian also arranges two or three hours each week to help reporters who can not figure out the searching based on the user's guide alone. All users throughout the Saigon Times Group also have internal email on the computer network.
In comparison with other magazine libraries, The Saigon Times Document Section is an advanced library in terms of automation in HCMC. However, in its reference service, excluding non-reported personal searching on the computer network by the reporters themselves, about 20% of the reference questions could not be answered quickly and directly from the databases as the Document Section. Even several days later only 5% of these questions could be answered after seeking help from other libraries. Fifteen percent of the questions remained unanswered in the end.
PROBLEMS REMAINING
2. The computer network often crashes and the librarians and reporters are not very skillful in dealing with these problems This also causes problems when users are searching on non-network computers as well. Because the computer network is not always available because of electrical outages and other problems, the Saigon Times Document Section also has two printed indexes of the articles: an author index and a title index.
3. The discussion of the problems encountered by magazine librarians and the sharing of resources by each other never takes place because there has never been a conference or meeting organized for the librarians of the magazine libraries or magazine document centers. Consequently, the problems are never solved and the higher level authorities are not aware of the problems. Librarians, personally try to establish a relationship between their libraries, but the exchange policy is not legal, so the exchange does not last long term, especially when the libraries face the changing of leaders of the parent body or the librarians in charge. That was the case of the Saigon Times Document Center and the Youth Magazine Library when they agreed to exchange their databases several years ago. The exchange was going well but it stopped when the librarians of the two libraries moved to other positions. The exchange of information is not a goal set up legally for a long-term policy for magazine libraries and so this exchange ended when the new librarians did not want to continue the exchange.
4. The exchange of databases will result in the saving of money among the library systems because each library will not have to create the same databases. The existence of the CD-ROM of the database of articles from three of the Saigon Times' magazines, which was created to meet the demands of the marketplace, does not remove the need for magazine libraries to exchange information and databases. Information production is like other kinds of commodities, the producer can sell it to make a profit. But the essential spirit of the exchange is the idea of working together, cooperating to reach the goal of serving the readers by finding information in several libraries. The question raised in discussing the exchange process is that some libraries think that the exchange is unfair if the number of issues published by the magazine is different between the two exchanging magazines.
Now, more and more special libraries are becoming equipped with computers. This is an understandable and unavoidable trend in the evolution progress of the world. And sooner or later, it will lead to all libraries using digital information. In a developing country like Vietnam where there is no official organization like a Library Association to act as an authority and to be responsible for all library activities, automation will go forward slowly. This is especially true of the special libraries who have no affiliation to a library system and do not receive guidance from a higher level and who have no linkages with others at the same level.
Recently, through many government reports, people know that the Government Information Agencies greatly develop both in technology and in databases. To some extent it can be said that Vietnam is developing simultaneously with many other countries in the region, but the national information system of the country in general, including the library system, can not take advantage of this development because of the lack of cooperation between the most modern information agencies and the less developed agencies. And, the overall lack of an intermediate organization to pull all these agencies together to help them in sharing their experiences and activities mean that there is a lot of duplication of effort.
CASE 2: THE VAN LANG UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
CURRENT SITUATION
The Central Library of the Van Lang University has 100 seats with 3500 books in Vietnamese and foreign languages and about 1500 issues of about 30 Vietnamese periodical titles. The books are classified by the Dewey Decimal Classification System and input into the computer using the CDS/ISIS software. The Central Library uses the old version of the CDS/ISIS software. The library has no article index of its periodicals. The clients are 5000 students and around 100 Professor and Lecturers of the University. They are assisted by a staff of 4 people including the Head of the Library. Materials are circulated only within the library for students. Only the professors and lecturers can borrow something from the library.
Because the University does not have one campus for all its departments, some departments are located in other places in other districts throughout HCMC. Those departments have their own Reading rooms with books supplied by the Central library. The budget reserved for acquisitions for the Central Library is about 20,000 USD, including the distribution of 500 USD for each reading room for each of five departments: Tourism, Finance, Business Administration, Trade & Commerce and Applied Sciences. In addition to the materials purchased the library receives gifts from the Vietnamese-French Association, Oregon University and the Japan Foundation.
The library has two computers but they are not available for the students to search. The students must use the printed indexes to locate the materials they want to use.
PROBLEMS REMAINING
The Central Library wants to create a library within the University but it can not decide what kind of software to use. The problem is that the CDS/ISIS software is unfriendly to use and the version being used is old but it is a standard among many libraries particularly the public libraries. Some of the university libraries are using ACCESS instead of CDS/ISIS. It is a very difficult decision to make when there is not one to consult and no one to ask for assistance. Setting up a computer network is not a problem because there are a lot of computer engineers who are willing to assist in setting up the network, but getting good and cheap information processing software is very difficult. Knowledge about good information processing software must be learned from a librarian not a computer scientist. The standardization of software enables sharing and the exchange of information and that is important for library activities.
Another problem deals with staffing. Should the library employ a student who has graduated from computer science and then give him training in Library Science instead of hiring a library student who does not know about computers and must be trained in computers. This question has arisen because of the difficulties faced during the library automation process. Most of the librarians who are in charge of libraries have no knowledge in information technology and computer science. Therefore, when the library automates a lot of problems arise because both the head librarian and the employees have not knowledge of it. The cost of the training is not the problem. The problem is that the training is not offered anywhere. The curriculum of Library Science is not good enough to supply adequately qualified students for the automation of libraries.