3rd National Convention: Infobases'02 – Databases For Science

Citation

Burchard, M. (2002), "3rd National Convention: Infobases'02 – Databases For Science", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 19 No. 8. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2002.23919hac.004

3rd National Convention: Infobases'02 – Databases For Science

Maria Burchard

Introduction

The Polish convention Infobases'02 – Databases for Science took place on 24-26 June, 2002 in Gdansk Sobieszewo, Poland. It was the third convention in the cycle run under the patronage of the State Committee for Scientific Research (KBN), a governmental body set up by the Polish Parliament and the major central governmental source of funds for research in science and technology. In collaboration with Polish scientific societies, KBN has established a strategy for the development of IT infrastructure in Poland. In the years 1995-2000 KBN financed the implementation of "The program for the development of IT infrastructure for Polish scientific circles." This project allowed for the dissemination of the information technology in Poland and led to significant changes in the contacts of Polish and foreign scientific associations through the implementation of its basic aim – providing all scientific staff in Poland with access to the computer network.

The project was followed with the construction of 22 metropolitan networks, several hundred local networks and five high-power computational centers. KBN has also financed above 200 projects concerning the creation and development of scientific databases. Two earlier conventions: Infobases'97 and Infobases'99 became a recapitulation of KBN activity, allowing the participants to share experience, discuss the problems and present achievements of the scientific circles building the databases accessible via the scientific networks. The next stage of development covers the years 2001-2005 and consists in developing the management tools for the data produced in the first stage. Recently KBN has decided to support the initiatives defined by the Polish Optical Internet – Advanced Applications, Services and Technologies for Information Society (PIONIER) project – a new program for the development of scientific IT. The project is carried out within the broader framework of the program "eEurope+ – A Co-operative Effort to Implement the Information Society in Europe" and directed at the development of the basic communication infrastructure between the scientific regions and the rest of the world in agreement with the priorities concerning eContent (the electronic content of the network).

Hosts. Location

For the third time the convention has been hosted by Gdansk University of Technology supported by TASK Computer Science Center and the Institute of Oceanology of the Polish Academy of Sciences with the financial help of the major IT companies (SUN, SOLIDEX, Multimedia) and KBN. As usual, TASK Computer Center has taken care of the convention service and publication of the papers (Nowakowski, 2002). Papers are printed in Polish and preceded by English and Polish abstracts. Komitet Programowy (Program Committee) with the Chairman Professor Antoni Nowakowski, the Head of Medical and Ecological Electronics Department of GUT, gathers the outstanding representatives of Polish scientific circles applying IT in their work. The library circles are represented by Henryk Hollender, PhD, Head of the Warsaw University Library and Michal/ Jagiel/l/o, Head of the Polish National Library.

For the first time, the Infobases convention took place in Orle – the convention and recreation center located on Sobieszewo Island in the delta of Vistula River (the third largest island of the Baltic Coast). The island was formed at the end of the nineteenth century as a result of digging a channel (7.1km long) separating a natural peninsula from the riverbank. The channel was dug in order to facilitate the flow of river water and floating ice and reduce the danger of flood in this region. Located in the pine forest near the beach and providing all the required technical support, Orle Center proved to be a suitable place for holding a convention. Its unique atmosphere encouraged the participants to effectively share experience in numerous discussions and informal talks.

Convention schedule. Special events

Over 100 convention participants have listened to 45 papers and presentations delivered at the plenary session ("Information society"; "From data warehousing to knowledge discovery"; "Virtual library – present state and perspectives of its development in Poland"; "Contemporary research problems in the field of databases") and six subsequent thematic sessions covering topics including: medical databases; technical databases; library databases – preceded by the plenary paper "Virtual library – present state and perspectives of its development in Poland"; spatial information databases; artistic databases preceded by the plenary paper "Contemporary research problems in the field of databases"; and tool databases.

The convention schedule was enriched with an integration meeting at the bonfire on the first day and an evening cruise on Zatoka Gdanska (Gdansk Bay) on the second day of the convention. The participants of the convention visited a picturesque Old Town, shipyard and harbor and watched an enthralling sea sunset.

Convention significance. Conclusions

Papers presented at the convention discussed various projects and bibliographic, index, factual and full-text databases established recently as a response to the general demand for such data and as a result of the increased financial support for these projects. Unfortunately, the data collected are not uniform and their management causes various problems. The transfer of the data between different databases often is impossible or considerably limited. This problem has already been pointed out at the Infobases'99 convention, but only in Sobieszewo did it appear as shared awareness of the need for the transformation of separate factual and bibliographic databases into a uniform archive with common access interfaces and browsers. There are plans to standardize the user access path to all data in parallel to further development of the databases range and content. These plans are supported by KBN in the new project "Virtual library of science" establishing a strategy of development and integration of databases in Poland. One of the basic parts of this project is National Union Catalog NUKat built by means of shared cataloging (there was a separate convention paper devoted to this subject). Several Polish libraries have already begun to cooperate in building the union catalog with the application of Union Authority File, which began in 1993. Shared cataloging will help to arrange and accelerate the process of producing automated catalog data in Poland and UAF sources may be useful in building access to other databases.

Easily observable awareness of the need for cooperation, the shift towards the use of central sources and the search for rationalization of cooperative cataloging speak well of the change of the approach in the library and scientific circles in Poland. Another reason for the rationalization of the production of the electronic data sources is drastically limited financing of these projects – the tendency observable in Poland as well as other countries. We hope to see the Sobieszewo convention as closing down the era of individual, local and limited initiatives and opening new perspectives for well-planned and well-organized projects of more universal character structures intended for a wide spectrum of Polish and foreign users.

The next Infobases convention planned for 2004 will bring the possibility of another recapitulation, an evaluation of the accepted strategy and the development of new strategies to be followed. At that time it will be possible to define the adequacy of our choices and financial solutions in terms of users' satisfaction with the access to information sources.

For further information visit: http://infobazy2002.gda.pl

ReferencesNowakowski, A. (Ed.) (2002), Infobazy'02. Bazy danych dla nauki, (Infobases'02. Databases for Science), TASK, Gdansk.

Maria Burchard (buwmb@mail.uw.edu.pl) is Head of NUKat Center of Warsaw University Library, Warsaw, Poland.