The National Library of Australia affirmed its commitment to the national sharing of library resources when announcing on 19 January 1998, the awarding of a contract for the implementation of Australia's new bibliographic system to IBM Australia and IBM GSA. The new networked library services (which the Library has named 'Kinetica') will use the AMICUS integrated library management system.

Kinetica will replace the highly successful Australian Bibliographic Network (ABN) service. The Library's establishment of the ABN network in 1981 created a ground-breaking, cooperative computer network which gave the library community a new model for accomplishing national tasks. Kinetica will become the backbone of the National Library's capacity to provide, well into the 21st century, immediate access to the knowledge stored in Australian libraries.

Librarians will use Kinetica to search, create, retrieve, manage and share bibliographic information on the massive volume and wide range of materials held by the libraries of Australia. This material includes books, magazines, pictures, maps, CDs, newspapers, sound recordings, oral histories and computer files. Collectively known as the National Bibliographic Database (NBD) and currently operated through the ABN service, this invaluable national asset contains over 13 million bibliographic records and 27 million holding statements showing locations of this material in Australian libraries.

When fully implemented the networked service will offer:

• Ability to support up to 1000 concurrent users and to handle up to 15 m authority and bibliographic records. (It is a measure of its flexibility that the British Library implementation will support twice that number of users and records.)
• Online searching across a single integrated database with options to search specific subset/catalogue files.
• World Wide Web search interfaces.
• Z39.50 search and retrieve access to/from external database hosts for copy cataloguing. High level of compliance to version 3 of the Z39.50 standard, including use of Extended Services for product extraction and delivery.
• Full screen editing incorporating full Windows text-editing features in the Kinetica cataloguing client software.
• Index updating fully available by the start of the next working day at the latest, with some indexes updated as data is created.
• Superior capabilities for duplicate record detection and resolution.

Kinetica will provide modern interfaces to the national database, and a wide range of options to customer libraries in how they wish to use or contribute to the national system. Because the new system is based on international standards it will facilitate the transition to an open and distributed library system in the future.

The Kinetica Inter-Library Loans Utility will use Fretwell-Downing's OLIB VDX ILL software. The Utility will support the creation of requests, selection of suppliers, tracking and management of requests and the ILL payments scheme. It will feature:

• World Wide Web access
• Integration with Kinetica - this will give National ILL Utility users the ability to search the National Bibliographic Database via Z39.50 and automatically include bibliographic and location data in ILL requests.
• Integration with the ILRS directory - giving National ILL Utility users the ability to use data about suppliers.
• Integration with the Ariel transmission system
• Support for multiple message protocols:
• ISO ILL Protocol
• Centralised message services (as in the current ABN ILL system)
• Configurable e-mail messaging.

Further information can be obtained from the Kinetica Implementation Team (nsp@nla.gov.au).
 

Anna Booth
National Initiatives & Collaboration Branch
National Library of Australia

All Rights reserved. Copyright (c) National Library of Australia, 1998.