The National Library of the Czech Republic

OCLC, SAZTEC – 1991

In the early nineties, the NL developed microfiche versions of some of its catalogues. At the same time, various approaches to retrospective conversion were analyzed, including the possibility of downloading records from external sources and/or completely contracting the retrospective conversion of the catalogues out to some external company. The first round of negotiations with the OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) took place in 1991. The tests made on foreign literature contained in the general catalogue of the universal library holdings showed a low number of hits in the OLUC (Online Union Catalog known today as WorldCat). Another stumbling block for making use of the records was the high per-record price that the NL would have to pay in full because in the early nineties it had no records of its own to offer to the OCLC as compensation. The price of records would be even higher because the adjustments to records would be very expensive. It was not only a question of language adjustments. At that time, standardization (format, cataloguing rules for both bibliographic description and subject cataloguing) had not been developed sufficiently in this country to allow taking the records over with some minimum adjustments only.

Negotiations were also underway with representatives of the <a href="https://www.saztec.com">SAZTEC Company</a>. Their method (tag and key) was more appropriate for the conversion of NL records than the use of external records from the OCLC, but the per-record price was substantially higher.

Vodní stavby Tábor Comp. - 1992-1994

The NL did not have enough money to pay for the services of a renowned foreign supplier, and neither did it have enough staff that could be allocated to these activities. Consequently, the library decided to use the services of a domestic supplier, and between 1992 and 1994, it cooperated with the Vodní stavby Tábor Comp. The advantage was low price, the disadvantage a poor quality of final records, large amounts of preparatory and finishing work the NL staff had to do, and long periods when live sections of the catalogue were unavailable for NL clients. In 1994, the NL decided to abandon this type of retrospective conversion and it again faced the problem of deciding which way to take in the future.

OCLC, SAZTEC – 1994

In 1994, another round of tests and negotiations with the two foreign companies took place. The background situation for negotiations was, however, significantly different than in 1991. Thanks to the CASLIN (Czech and Slovak Library Information Network) project, international standards (UNIMARC, AACR2R, and, gradually, also LCSH) were successfully implemented in the NL and a number of other Czech and Slovak libraries. The NL was therefore able to offer its records for the OCLC union catalogue, and get the credit to use as a compensation for OCLC records. In spite of that, the result of the analysis was again negative. New tests again showed a low number of hits, and the final price balance was very unfavourable. In the case of the SAZTEC Company, the price again proved to be the main prohibitive factor.