Libraries and Library Consortia in Poland

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Libraries and Library Consortia in Poland

• Presentation prepared for the 5-th E-ICOLC
• Denmark 22-25 October 2003

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Few data Public Libraries

• The number of public libraries about 8850.
• Out of these, 2697 are libraries and 6152 are
  their branches.
• The unquestionable majority of public libraries
  (over 5,5 thousand) is situated in the country.
• Public libraries book collection reaches 133,7
  million volumes (since 1990 it has decreased by 3
  million volumes).
• About 7,5 million people borrow each year about
  140 million books and consult about 19 million in
  the reading rooms.

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Few data Academic Libraries

• 1225 academic libraries (including 989 university
  ones).
• 9 460 employees.
• Their collections about 58 million volumes of
  books, about 16 million volumes of periodicals
  and about 26 million units of special
  collections.
• Academic libraries recorded over 2,1 million
  readers and over 17 million loans annually
  (average).

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Library ConsortiaNasty Reality

• No library consortium in Polish law
• Lack of the tradition of cooperation
• The word consortium has been appropriated by
  publishers who organised groups of libraries to
  purchase their products

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Nasty Reality yet....

• Libraries form consortia in order to realise many
  collective goals through various associations,
  agreements create consortia de facto, though not
  de iure
• ExamplesVTLS group, HUG utilising software (ILL)
  coming from the same producer.

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Examples cont.

• share the hardware (computer systems) and/or
  software (Krakow, Poznan, Lodz) which results in
  collective management and administration of these
  resources
• NUKAT Polish Union Catalogue
• Polish Virtual Library common access to
  electronic journals

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Examples cont.

• The only one that has legal entity
• Established in 1996 by academic and research
  libraries in Poznan
• 10 universities 2 public libraries that have a
  status of research library

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Poznan Foundation of Scientific Libraries Mission

• Create and maintain a structure that will
  provide access to information for research,
  academic and educational environment of our town.
  

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Poznan Foundation of Scientific Libraries Vision

• Organize remote access to metadata about all
  resources kept in member libraries
• Provide access to the most important electronic
  journals
• Organize remote access to full-text monographs
  and textbooks
• Organize remote access to cultural heritage of
  our region

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Poznan Foundation of Scientific Libraries Actions

• Organizing tenders (purchases of software and
  hardware, access to e-journals)
• Installing hardware and implementing software
• Servicing and maintaining systems
• Organizing trainings
• Publishing manuals
• Organizing marketing, promotion and fundraising

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Poznan Foundation of Scientific Libraries where
are we now?

• 69000 patrons, more than 500 PCs
• Country coordinator of eifl project
• 52 libraries cooperating within Coalition for
  Library with horizon -Virtual cataloque KaRo
  became the most popular tool for Polish
  librarians
• Digital Library www.wbc.poznan.pl
• and more...

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Thank you!

• Jan Andrzej Nikisch
• Poznan Foundation of Scientific Libraries
• www.pfsl.poznan.pl
• nikisch_at_pfsl.poznan.pl