The migration to the higher (14.2) version of our ALEPH500 library integrated system had to be postponed until the mid 2002. There is a close connection between the library system and optimization of library procedures, which resulted in postponing the main goals in this area until 2002, too. The library procedures were evaluated regularly with main attention concentrated on their productivity and rapidity. The library procedures (workflows) design prepared in 2000 proved to be very liveable and no substantial changes were needed. Just some minor changes on the boarders of different department were necessary to make document workflow seamless. Also some minor changes to support understaffed operations were needed.

The internationally applied and proved OCLC/WLN conspectus method was selected for National Library collections evaluation and development strategy. All the most important materials dealing with the conspectus were translated and the method was tested in the National Library environment. The library collections were divided into several groups in order to evaluate them and determine the collections development strategy building: National Archival Collection (with Czech/foreign subdivision), Universal Library Collection (with internal Czech/foreign subdivision) and the Lending Collection (mainly Czech). For some divisions, both evaluation and collection development strategies were completed, for other divisions they will be completed in early 2002. These activities will result in transparent and internationally understandable National Library collections evaluation and development strategy available via Internet. The experience acquired at the National Library will be shared with other Czech libraries in the form of conspectus application guidelines. The application of the same conspectus method in other Czech libraries is highly desirable since their collections have to be described in the uniform and broadly understandable form.

Acquisitions were financed from the regular budget of the National Library (1.385 million CZK, i.e. 0,93% of the whole state contribution to the NL budget) and from the special acquisition grant (15 million CZK). Also some other funds were used from the projects whose aim was improvement of the information environment and services – more in detail see information about the RTD projects.

The whole acquisition activity has been suffering by permanent lack of necessary funds for a long time. The par value of the available funds has been remaining the same, but their real value is decreasing because of growth of prices incl. subscriptions, inflation index, moving exchange rates, postage, etc. In the given financial framework, many concrete needs of our users continue to be unsatisfied as well as the strategic goals of the institution.

All the acquisitions departments had more difficult conditions for their work in the second half of the year because of the fact that the bibliographic weekly Nové knihy (New Books) ceased to be published (October 2001). The current information about the inland publishing activities was insufficient and very difficult to find.

The most important acquisition was especially completion of formerly published Czech titles namely for the National Archival Collection (e.g., outstanding bibliophilic editions of Josef Váchal, private print from the workshop of František Muzika, almanacs from the series Knihovna Levé fronty), optionally for the Universal Library Collection. The collection of manuscripts was enriched with a Latin manuscript of the Czech provenance from the year 1413 – it was a collection of sermons by the Saxon Minorite Konrad Holtnicker. For the collection of handwritten music, three autographs of chamber-music were acquired: works of Vít Nejedlý, Karel Husa, and Zbyněk Vostřák.

Among interesting titles of foreign literature, there were, for example, the critical edition of the works of Franz Kafka in the electronic format CD-ROM Kafkas Werke, German biographic encyclopaedia Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie auf CD-ROM, second edition of the general encyclopaedia of music The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musician, the first volume of the two-volume Czech-German documentation of the Sudeten-German Archives in Munich Odsun – Die Vertreibung der Sudetendeutschen – Vyhnání sudetských Němců, Russian art publications Russkij impressionism and Russkij futurizm, monograph of the contemporary Chinese painter The Art of Chen Ching-jung, Spanish art guide Guía artística de la provincia de Córdoba, French historical publications Le passé d´une discorde: Juifs et Arabes du VIIe sičcle ŕ nos jours, Le yiddish: langue, culture, société, and L´Europe et la Palestine: des croisades ŕ nos jours and many others.

The Slavonic Library acquired a collection of ca 500 volumes of literature published by the Ukrainian Diaspora in the world (mostly Germany, U.S.A., and Canada).

The collections of the Music Department were substantially enriched with critical editions of music works: acquisition of missing of volumes of G. Verdi, Ch. W. Gluck, L. van Beethoven, J. Haydn, and J. J. Fux, parts of complete editions of N. W. Gade and P. A. Locatelli as well as volumes of Verdi’s operas.

The Manuscript and Early Printed Books Department received the database of Christian Latin texts since the period of Tertulianus (2nd century B.C.) until the 15th century Cetedoc Library of Christian Latin Texts.

The library and information science collections were also largely improved, especially thanks to many printed publications, but also thanks to acquisition of several CD-ROM titles: American Dewey for Windows, Library Literature and Information Science Abstracts, and Neal Schuman Complete Internet Companion, British Library and Information Science Abstracts, and German World Guide to Library Plus.

Also the updating of important bibliographic databases on CD-ROM was successful, especially that of national bibliographies from Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain; and that of publishers’ databases having the books-in-print character, such as Global Books in Print, Electre, Verzeichnis lieferbarer Bücher, etc.

Thanks to funds from the RTD and other programmes, it was also possible to maintain the on-line access to foreign electronic information resources and to get new access to the GeoBase, GeoRef, ChemBase, and KnowEurope databases.

(Acquisition of documents incl. statistical analysis is described in more detail in the chapter Statistics.)

There were no significant changes in routine cataloguing after optimization of the workflow. Some significant changes occurred in the area of authority files and cataloguing policy.

One of the most important tasks was co-operation on creation of authority files of names of individual persons and corporate bodies both on internal and external levels. Production and maintenance of the authority files were tested as a routine operation within the Aleph500 system. All the departments involved (National Bibliography and Cataloguing Division, Slavonic Library, Department of Manuscripts and Early Printed Books, Library Information & Cooperation Division, and Department of Music) took part in this activity.

The pilot project referring to cooperation on national authority files on the interlibrary level was launched and thirteen mainly state research and regional libraries tested their co-operation in this field.

In the area of subject authority files, the project Transformation of subject access to information resources – aimed at improving of subject access to information resources in on-line environment – continued successfully. It supposed creation of the subject authority file as an integrated indexing and retrieval tool in which verbal terms of a thesaurus controlled vocabulary would be combined with equivalent UDC notations. A translation of UDC MRF and concordance tables DDC-UDC was published on the subject category level on web pages of the National Library. Since 2001 National Library acted as a member of the Consortium for UDC. Subject categories (Conspectus) were newly applied.

The Board for Cataloguing Policy opened the problem of optimization of the format environment in the Czech Republic. The discussions were completed in December 2001 with the recommendation to change the basic exchange format from UNIMARC to MARC21 in a horizon of ca 2-3 years.

In the area of the Czech cataloguing policy much attention was also paid to the important Czech interpretations of AACR2 for corporate body names (buildings and churches) and personal names (rulers), and to the methodology of analytical cataloguing; both of them were published on web.

There were many card catalogues or other tools containing important information on library collections. Availability of these tools was limited for the place of their physical location. The pre-condition for making these tools widely available and let the library staff - and also users - share the data was their digitization - in different form, completeness and quality depending on their nature - which was completed or started in 2001. The categorization and interpretation of the same items in different library departments had to be unified. The procedure of creating minimal bibliographic records of highly used documents during the circulation procedure was completely re-organized.

In the area of public services, we concluded the last decade of the 20th century very productively. This period was characterized by unprecedented expansion of information technology into direct library services. Implementation of the upgraded version of our automated system – ALEPH 500 – brought more dependable and easier to use on-line lending system, which was instrumental not only for home loans but it also simplified in-house loans to the reading rooms. Our users benefited directly from this trend as well. We have now out of 529 seating spaces 52 equipped with PCs and 30 out of those are connected to Internet. The information technology is concentrated in the Reference Centre and in the Main Hall.

The year 2001 may also be characterized by a growing number of information resources that we can offer to our users. The library secured a financial support for several of its projects in the framework of the umbrella programme of the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic called Information Resources for Research and Development (LI2000). Furthermore, we take part in other projects in this programme as a participant in consortia licenses. Due to this generous programme we have dramatically increased our offer of primary (full text) and secondary electronic resources that are available locally and on-line in most of the National Library reading rooms.

The realization of these projects has already given to the National Library users - mainly those in research and development - richer and more extensive information resources than ever in the areas of social and natural sciences. We were also able to rationalize access to primary and secondary information and speed up access to remote resources. We believe that this is the only means to gradually overcome information accessibility handicap in the Czech Republic.

The Department of Conservation and Preventative Care ceased to exist and the employees concerned with analytical activities were transferred to the Restoration Department, while those specialized in microclimate and prevention against mould and other microbiological agents were transferred to the Department for Care of Modern Holdings. These measures solved the workflow of individual operations in the framework of the Preservation Division, especially as to analytical activities related to restoration of rare books; thus, the conditions were created, which enabled more efficient use of available devices and rooms.

The Restoration Department co-operated on several important exhibition projects: namely Opus Italicum, Sláva barokní Čechie (The Glory of the Baroque in Bohemia), and the exhibition of herbaria to commemorate the anniversary of Pietro Andrea Mattioli. All the prints, manuscripts, and graphic works were examined as to their preservation condition and specialized restorers took also part in installation of exhibitions.

Work on various research projects oriented on preservation of library holdings enabled to acquire new technologies in the domain of reformatting of endangered and damaged documents as well as in that of their storage in protective boxes. It also helped to map the situation in the area of degradation of illuminated manuscripts and to verify the technique of their restoration. All this created the conditions for a new view at the problems of preservation of library holdings. The new strategy is to be formulated in 2002 and it should incorporate new technologies not only for the National Library, but also within the national programmes for other libraries and institutions in the Czech Republic.

An important chapter in the preservation area was international co-operation and participation in the European co-operative programmes. The traditional co-operation was with the Slovak National Library with which the National Library had been co-ordinating the development of reformatting technologies. The mutual exchange of information took place at the seminar organized by the Slovak National Library in Martin as well as at the training of operators of micrographic devices organized by the National Library, which concerned especially the hybrid reformatting of endangered documents.

In the year 2001, the National Library – as the first one among the CEE countries – became the full member of the EROMM association (European Register of Microform Masters), which had been building the database of archival microfilm masters and providing access to them. Access to the EROMM database is possible through the National Library also for other Czech libraries. In addition, the participation of the restoration centre in the three-year European project IDAP (Improved Damage Assessment of Parchments) will be very important from 2002.

168 new publishers entered the International Standard Book Numbering system (ISBN). The total number of publishers participating in the ISBN system in the Czech Republic as of December 12, 2001 was 3081.

ISBNs were checked in about 14,700 book titles. The Czech National ISBN Agency itself assigned 1340 numbers to books published by publishers not participating in the ISBN system.

The printed directory of publishers participating in the ISBN system supplemented by the list of music publishers participating in the ISMN system (as of December 12, 2000) was published. 24 issues of the bi-monthly O.K. - Ohlášené knihy (Books announced to ISBN Agency) were also published.

Work contacts with the International ISBN Agency in Berlin continued; three updates of the Czech publishers’ database aimed for the international directory PIID (Publishers’ International ISBN Directory) were sent there as well as the list of incorrect ISBNs assigned by Czech publishers in 2001.

The Czech National ISBN Agency presented its activity at the 29th International ISBN Agency Advisory Panel meeting in Luxemburg in October 2001.

Three new music publishers entered the International Standard Music Numbering system (ISMN). The total number of participants in the ISMN system in the Czech Republic was 43 as of December 12, 2001.

ISMNs were currently checked in about 200 titles of music publications. The Czech National ISMN Agency itself assigned 22 numbers to music titles in which ISBNs were not presented.

The Czech National ISMN Agency organized the 9th International ISMN Agency Advisory Panel meeting in the National Library of the Czech Republic in Prague in April. Nineteen delegates took participation in it including the director of the International ISMN Agency Dr. Hartmut Walravens.

In cooperation with the Czech National ISSN Centre (in the State Technical Library) 113 ISSN were assigned to new non-technical serial titles.

In 2001 we completed selection of both national and foreign periodicals of all Bohemical categories of reserve collections. 1,115 meters of shelves were thoroughly checked and 1,600 volumes of periodicals were newly selected.

Works on division of Bohemical reserve collections into titles of Czech and foreign provenance continued. 2,384 meters of shelves were sifted through and 135,283 volumes of Czech titles and 22,027 of foreign ones were newly selected. At the same time further volumes of non-periodical literature were selected and distributed into corresponding categories of reserve collections in total number of 7,963 volumes.

For preservation purpose, special care was devoted to the collections stored in the basement of Klementinum; they were treated by aqueous solution of ethanol (ca 140 meters of shelves). The condition of reserve collections in the Neratovice depository did not need any chemical treatment.

The MASTER standard was implemented into workflow and became the subject of methodical work, so the precondition for building the shared or union catalogue of historic collections was set up.

The steps were taken for the use of the MASTER standard in the programme Memoriae Mundi Series Bohemica and for its interconnection with the future digital library. In this way, the path to the comprehensive electronic-digital environment was opened and the hybrid library was getting its well-balanced form.

The activity of the Union Catalogue of Music Resources attracted increased attention of users, not only of active music performers, but also of researchers, especially thanks to the RTD project Preparation of Thematic Catalogues of Historical Music Collections Preserved on the Territory of Bohemia and Moravia. The usage of the catalogue encouraged cooperation between various institutions and useful partnership for solution of various projects: Museum of Czech Music – preparation of the Tomášek and Mašek thematic catalogues; Institute of Musicology of the Philosophical Faculty of the Charles University and Musicological Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences – New edition of A. Dvořák’s Works, Italian Opera of the 18th Century in the Czech Lands. The Union Catalogue was thus presented on both international and national levels.

In addition, the individual research activity was more intensive and of higher quality, as it met users’ needs especially in the domain of older music. In this regard, special attention was paid to co-operation with the chamber ensemble Harmonia Mozartiana Pragensis.

The cataloguing of printed music concentrated on solution of the problem of subject classification and on methodology of processing of unified titles.

The Library Science Division took part in preparation of a new Library Act and implementation of regulations for the mentioned law. Analytical and comparative studies were compiled and comments were prepared to accompany the draft of the Library Law between libraries.

Basic data and analyses were processed for preparation of the Programme of Funding of Regional Functions of Public Libraries as well as relevant governmental guidelines. A workshop for librarians working in libraries of district towns was organized in connection with the preparation of the above-mentioned programme in Prostějov.

The library science SPOJ database was transferred from the system ISIS into the ALEPH500 library information system under the title KKL – for the time being with no loan module – the database is now available on Internet.

In connection with realization of the project Improving Access of Users of the Library and Information Science Literature Library to Information Sources, the reconstruction of the study rooms was initiated. In addition, the subject card-file of this library was scanned.

Publishing agenda of the NL was represented by 80 publications – 15 mono-graphs, 65 issues of 5 periodicals (see the List of the published titles on the page 97); a lot of advertising and information materials (leaflets, postcards, and folders) about the databases and events in the National Library were also issued.

The National Library – Library Science Revue was periodically published in both paper and electronic versions. In co-operation with AiP Beroun Ltd. 12 issues of the Czech National Bibliography on CD-ROM were produced.

A collection of the NL books were presented on in-land and foreign book fairs and important library congresses. The Contract on co-operation with the Karolinum Publishing House was signed. The library participated in the professional activities in co-operation with the Association of Czech Booksellers and Publishers.

By the end of 2001, the Union Catalogue contained more than 1,021,300 monograph records from 57 participating libraries.

The Cubus in-house system built on the ORACLE database has been used since 2000. The testing and de-bugging procedures were completed by the end of 1999 for monograph records, by the end of 2000 for special documents, and by 2001 for serials. The Cubus system brought substantial improvements such as better administration, much faster import of records, new automatic UNIMARC test, new and more efficient testing for duplicities detection, and a tool for shared cataloguing and interlibrary services. Those libraries, which were active in contributing their own records to the Union Catalogue, could download records or create new records directly inside the catalogue itself. The preparatory steps were taken to use the union database of national authorities in the Union Catalogue. The Union Catalogue is accessible in a user-friendly application interface at URL: http://www.caslin.cz.

The Union Catalogue of Foreign Periodicals has been available on Internet since 1994 under the title KZP (Foreign Periodicals Catalogue). In 1995, the retrospective conversion of this Union Catalogue was launched. By December 31, 2001, the database contained almost 65,765 titles published between 1527 and 2001 – from them 4 titles published in 16th century, 38 titles published in 17th century, 688 titles published in 18th century, and 6,877 titles published in 19th century. The data-base was also prepared for conversion into Cubus system.

By December 31, 2001, The Directory of Libraries and Information Institutions provided data on 2900 institutions – 91 institutions updated in 1999, 941 updated in the year 2000, and 813 updated in 2001. The Directory has been available on Internet as the ADR database since 1994.

With regard to cooperation with foreign institutions, the Slavonic Library took significant part in building the union catalogue called Russian Book 1918–1926 prepared by the Russian National Library in Sankt-Peterburg.Two acquisition librarians visited Bosnia and Croatia and they were very successful in acquiring a valuable book collection from this region. The improvement of co-operation will bring further results in other activity areas, especially exhibitions.

The Slavonic Library participated in two projects of the Public Information Services of Libraries programme. Within the framework of the project Access to General Catalogues of the National Library, the Slavonic Library continued the retrospective conversion of its general catalogue (completed 45 000 records). It also took part in the project Cooperative Creation and Use of National Authority Database.

The project The Slavonic Library Newspaper Collection: Assembly and Microfilming concentrated on safeguarding the most endangered and most valuable newspaper titles from the former Russian Historical Archive Abroad. Financial support was obtained from The Czech Grant Agency in the end of 2001. There will be 150,000 pages microfilmed in the period of 2002–2004. This project is continuation of the similar one sponsored by the Open Society Institute Budapest and Czech Grant Agency in the years 1998-1999.

The project called Lesja Ukrainka’s and the family Kosač’s Correspondence prepared further processing of this rare collection. The Ukrainian National Women’s League of America provided a scholarship for a researcher from the Crimea State Humanitarian Institute to do special research of this collection. A comprehensive study completed with illustrative letters will be published which will enhance the knowledge of the collections of the Slavonic Library abroad.

A number of events and exhibitions were organised, the most important of which were the following ones: the colloquium Czech Legions in Russia accompanied with the exhibition Life and Cultural Activity of Czech Legionnaires in Russia in 1914–1920, symposium Avant-garde: Relationship between Czech and Russian Avant-garde – accompanied with the exhibition Russian Artistic Avant-garde, opening of a course East European Historical Seminars at the Slavonic Library, and the exhibition Contemporary Bulgarian Bookplate and Book Graphic Art.