Intranet in Aarhus Municipal Libraries

Zveza bibliotekarskih društev Slovenije - Library Association of Slovenia
Sekcija za splošnoizobraževalne knjižnice - Section of Public Libraries
Posvetovanje splošnoizobraževalnih knjižnic Slovenije
Conference of Slovene Public Libraries
INTERNO KOMUNICIRANJE
INTERNAL COMMUNICATION
Gozd Martuljek, September 25/26, 2000
Intranet in Aarhus Municipal Libraries
Lisbeth Christensen, Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker, Danska (Denmark)
I will now say a little about one of the other fields which I have worked with in Aarhus
Municipal Libraries - namely establishing an intranet for the library.
It has been a long and at times - confusing - proces, and we have had small homemade
solutions, half solutions, and now we are about to establish a whole - and more professional -
intranet.
Background
To understand the background for the intranet I will say something about the organisational
and technological conditions at Aarhus Municipal Libraries:
About 330 employees: Main Library, 19 local libraries, 2 mobile libraries, 1 administration
and 1 development department.
10 % of the staff have a high degree of administrative work
20 % of the staff have a medium degree of administrative work
50 % of the staff have a minimum of administrative work
20 % of the staff have no administrative work at all.
The 2 first groups are the so-called SETTLERS (30 %) and they have a table, a chair and a pc
of their own. They work in the administration (pay office, accounts, leaders), and they have a
fully equipped office system “Lotus Notes” with connection to the other administrative
working places in the municipality (the Townhall etc.).
The 2 last groups are the so-called NOMADES (70 %) and they have no pc of their own, they
share with other employees, they work in the lending desk, at the information points, maybe
at two various branch libraries, in the canteen, in the mobile libraries etc.
In short: they move from place to place, and they have a mail system based upon a browser or
a diskette.

That means that everyone in the libraries do not have the same platform, or the same version
of the same browser. If everyone should have the same system, it would mean extra expenses
for the library of about 1 mio Danish kroner each year (about 150.000 Euros).
The nomades have only little time - less than ˝ hour in all (10 minutes each time) during a
working day to check the intranet (mails, calendar, news), therefore it is important that the
services are designed precisely towards the users’ needs.
All this might seem as barriers for an effective intranet solution, but even greater barriers are
other factors. In “Delphi Source of Knowledge Managements” there has been an overview of
the most important barriers for success for an intranet, and as you see it seems that the cultural
barriers are far more important than the technical:
Barriers for success for an intranet:
53 % culture
20 % insufficient technology
15 % insufficient content
9 % costs
3% no need
When studying various sources for guidelines for building usable intranet sites you find that
some or all of these guidelines are provided if you want success:
1. Know your audience.
2. Deliver work productivity.
3. Emphasize breadth over depth.
4. Minimize the graphics.
And now I am going to say something about the basic principles for the intranet in Aarhus on
these conditions, and I will present some of the facilities.
Basic principles:
“It must be faster to look for the required information at the intranet than not to look for it”
The best technical and organizational solution we could find was creating a combination of an
“Information-portal” with a proactive “Mail-notification System” - both accessible from the a
browser no matter where in the library you are.
“Through a personalized point-of-view the focus is moved from “Inform” to “Act”

The intranet in Aarhus Municipal Libraries consists of a number of facilities, and all of them
have search functions. They are indexed with keywords, and can also be found through free
text search.
1) General information (names, telephone, mail adresses for the staff) - always up-to-date
and searchable. A database of labels for all cooperation partners of the library (1330 adresses
on about 40 groups). Danish and foreign libraries.
2) Internal newsagent (via subscription) arrangements for the staff (vision proces etc.)
3) Internal “newspaper” (news every month plus discussion, buying-selling etc.). It stopped
via paper 1 month ago.
The ending of the printed version was a very great change for the staff - indeed much more
than most of the rest of the intranet - the internal newspaper had been printed on paper every
month since 1934, and people have been used to read it in the bus when they og home from
their job. All the staff were offered a printed version, but all except 10 persons have now
chosen the netbased version.
4) Documents (library staff politics, administrative practice: rules about holidays, leaves,
dismissals etc.)
5) Mail
6) Calender
7) Internal discussions in relation to agendas to meetings, visions, goals etc.
8) Workflow (IT HelpDesk, participation in internal or external courses etc.)
9) FAQ’s and list-servers for smaller or larger groups
Most information has been structured so that the members of the staff subscribe to certain
types of documents or news through a subscription database or through listservers. It means
that if you are working with information technology, you can subscribe to a listserver where
new projects are presented and discussed. If you work with licenses for electronic full-text
documents, you can enter a group with persons within the library with the same working
fields. The same with many other specialist areas: library service for fugitives and immigrants
a.s.o.
For some sort of information you are automatically a subscriber. That could be decisionreports
from meetings, for instance in the leadergroup for the whole library. All the
department leaders can not unsubscribe. The communication system is based upon the fact
that all leaders are informed and develop their department towards mutual decisions.
But it is always the responsibility of each employee to keep informed about mutual decisions
in the institution and act after that. The process of informing from chief librarians to
department leaders to the staff has in this way been minimized.

An extranet between Aarhus Municipal Libraries and the libraries in the county is established
as pure Internet-based with login procedures to more sensitive information. In the future this
function will partly integrated with the library intranet.
“Knowledge versus skill is moving from “How” to “Why and when”
The intranet is structured so that you can always search for a certain topic in the databases, for
example in the “Meeting Base”: you can make free-text searchs and all the documents have
added some index data or metadata. If you want to see the workflow of a case - Opening
hours on Sundays - you can follow it through the various meetings and see the actual status,
who is responsible for leading it on, what is the deadline, and - if the case is not closed - you
can debate it with the responsible persons in an open forum for all the staff.
In the “IT HelpDesk” you can see the status on your computer problem: who is responsible
for repairing it, what is the deadline, are there others in the library who have had the same
problem, and could it be possible that they had solved the problem on their own, without the
help from specialists.
You can find the names of all superusers in the systems and the total documentation for the
cataloguing format and the library automation system, including “known” errors. It means
that if you f.ex. find a mistake in the interlending library loan system, you can immediately
see, if there is being worked on solving it, or if you are the first to find out.
In the “Library DataWarehouse” you can see all statistical information about for instance the
library automation system: lendings, stocks, visits, arrangements, borrowers categories e.g.
and you are able to combine it in whatever way you might want to. The data are presented in a
non-personal way (anonymous) and the combination possibilities are numerous.
“As little information as possible, but all the relevant information”
It is important that all relevant information is present and that you are able to find it quickly.
All papers used in the daily life at the library should be available, and it is our intention to
digitize all formulas, so that the staff can print it out or send it electronically on-demand.
We have started the proces, but it has implications concerning digital signatures. If you send
an electronic formula it is required that the receiver can be absolutely sure, that it comes from
you and nobody else.
That could be holiday formulas, illness reports, but also less sensitive information as the
service of requiring posters and signs to your library etc.
A mutual calendar is a great wish among the staff, but we have found no proper technical
solution on that point because of our various platforms. If we ever get such a tool it would
make it easy to get an overview of the status at any time: who are in the information desk,
who are at the offices, who are on holiday and who are sick etc.
“The cumulated specialist knowledge among the staff (the knowledge capital) belongs to the
library and can thereby be shared by the other employees”

With more and more information available through this portal, the library begins to appreciate
the magnitude of its knowledge capital and the value of being able to search across its entire
information base instantly.
You also see this tendencies very strongly in private enterprises. One of the chiefs in Hewlett-
Packard says: "If we knew what we knew, we would be 30 % more profitable.”
Through an intranet, a growing variety of structured and unstructured data and documents and
a growing array of simple services are available.
The full development of the intranet’s information-sharing potential requires confidence and
trust among the staff and among staff and leaders concerning “The intellectual capital of the
library”.