Speaker
Nikol Stepan (Swiss Library Service Platform)
Abstract
Founded in 2017 by 15 higher education institutions and libraries in Switzerland, the Swiss Library Service Platform (SLSP) aims to unify the data sets of the country’s six previously existing library consortia. Its mission involves operating a centrally managed library system and providing centrally managed services for libraries. Currently, SLSP plays a pivotal role in transforming information accessibility in Switzerland, with approximately 500 libraries within its network, organized into 31 institution zones. This network encompasses not only traditional academic libraries but also unique cases like patrimonial libraries, such as cantonal libraries.
Some of Switzerland’s cultural data is made available through repositories, and a significant amount is already accessible via the common discovery platform, swisscovery. The platform swisscovery includes diverse cultural data, such as digital objects (exceeding 1 TB) stored in the Cloud Library System Alma and content from external sources searchable through Primo VE. In total, swisscovery offers access to over 2 million records from more than 60 institutional repositories within a collection totalling around 40 million records of library holdings. There were several adaptations made in Primo VE/ swisscovery to take this cultural heritage data into account.
Within the libraries of Switzerland, the Swiss National Library (SNL) occupies a prominent position, as its legal mandate places high demands and requirements. Due to these special circumstances, the library is not yet integrated into the SLSP network. The library’s collections include a vast array of materials, covering a wide range of subjects, which are reflecting the cultural, historical, and academic diversity of Switzerland. Since the end of 2023, the first incorporating steps has been taken and the holdings of over 500 academic libraries from swisscovery and the Swiss National Library have been searchable in a new search portal. The SNLs data is harvested into SLSPs Network Zone and available in a separate view “Recherche Patrimoniale” (recherche-patrimoniale.ch) where the users are re-directed from the titles to the search portals swisscovery and SNLs Helveticat. This is done in the way of SLSPs service “SLSPBibliographies” which allows to create special Primo views providing bibliographic information only. In a second step, it will be investigated, under which circumstances SNL can be further integrated into the Network Zone of SLSP for better valorisation, which raises questions of, for example, the preservation and immutability of metadata on a technical and organizational level.
This contribution seeks to offer an overview of the data accessible through swisscovery and its administration by SLSP. Additionally, it is intended to provide insights into the current state of the case study involving the Swiss National Library.