Strengthening Modern Greek Collections

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National Library of Greece: History, Present Status and Plans for the Future

Joanna Demopoulos, MLS
Deputy Director, National Library of Greece

The foundation of the National Library of Greece came late, compared to other European countries. Greece was under the Turkish domination for 400 years. The revolution which broke out on 1821, led to the independence of Greece as late as 1823. The first Governor of the independent Greek nation, Ioannis Kapodistrias, founded in the first capital of Greece, Aegina, a large orphanage in 1829. This orphanage included a Central School, a Museum and a "Deposit of Books". In 1832, the library became an independent institution, Public Library, and was transported to the new capital, Nafplion. Its first catalogue (1832) included 777 titles and 1866 volumes. In 1834, the library was moved to Athens. In 1838, one year after the foundation of the National University of Athens, its library was founded and enriched by gifts of Greeks and Grecophiles. In 1842, the two libraries, the public and the university, joined together administratively and were installed to the new building of the University. In 1866, the two libraries were merged in a single library, the National Library of Greece. The National Library was host to the University of Athens from 1842 to 1903. In 1903, the National Library of Greece was moved to a new building in which it is still located.

The building of the National Library of Greece, built entirely of marble, was designed by the Danish architect Th. Hansen, who was  75 years old at the time. He delegated the supervision of the work to the architect Ernst Ziller. The creation of this marvelous building was the result of a donation from the very rich Greek brothers Andreas, Panagis and Maris Vallianos. The buildings housing the National Library of Greece,  the National University of Athens, and the Academy of Athens constitute, according to the expression of their architect Th. Hansen, constitute an "Athenian Trilogy".

The National Library of Greece is organized, according to an old law of 1943, which is still valid, as follows:

• Department of Cataloging : Responsible for all the bibliographic process of the collections of the library. Part of this Department is the Office of the National Bibliography.
• Department of Acquisition : The major part of the acquisitions is coming from legal deposit. Part of this Department is the Office of ISBN, ISSN and ISMN.
• Department of Manuscripts : Responsible for the collections of manuscripts, documents and facsimiles.
• Department of Reading Rooms : Responsible for the protection of the printed collections and their use by the public.
• Department of Secretariat : Responsible for the administrative and financial affairs of the library.
• Department of Automation and Documentation : Responsible for the support of all the automated works of the library. 

Apart from the above departments, a Laboratory of Conservation and Microfilming has been established.

The user of the National Library of Greece, in order to locate the material he/she needs, has to examine two separate public catalogues. The old catalogue, in which the cards are hand written, includes material entered in the library until 1977. The new one, includes material entered since 1978 and the cards are typed. The new catalogue allows access by author, title, series and subject heading. Both catalogues, the old and the new one, are divided by greek and latin alphabet. There is also an OPAC for books entered after 1988. The National Library of Greece is not fully automated. We have an automated system, ADLIB, since 1992, but it never worked completely. The Cataloging Department has its own system for the production of the Greek National Bibliography. Right now, we are in the process of the installation of a new version of the ADLIB system for windows NT and, by the end of the year, we will be fully automated.

As the National Library of Greece is now running a census, we do not know the exact number of our holdings. It is estimated that we possess about 1.000.000 titles and almost 2.000.000 volumes of books, newspapers, serials, maps etc. Among the collections of the National Library of Greece, there are 149 incunabula and this is the biggest collection of incunabula in Greece. To the above number must be added a rich collection of 4.500 manuscripts codices from the 9th to 19th century, a variety of historical documents, archives of personalities, the Archive of the Greek Fighters, who participated to the Revolution of 1821, etc. There is also a collection of microfilms of books, newspapers and manuscripts.

The collections of the National Library of Greece are classified according to an old classification scheme, Hallische System. It is a rather inflexible scheme, but we cannot change it because of lack of space and staff. The bibliographic description was based on the above system, but, since 1978, we adopted the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd ed. We are using greek subject headings based on the LC Subject Headings. UNIMARC is used as an internal and exchange bibliographic and authorities format. For the needs of the Greek National Bibliography is used Dewey Decimal Classification.

The National Library of Greece has three major problems : lack of space, lack of staff and a very limited budget.

The main building (2.500 sm.) is not enough for the needs of a national library. We have rent two other buildings in the suburbs, one in Ag. Paraskevi (1.500 sm.) in which are located some of the services (Cataloging Department, Laboratory of Conservation, Service of Binding) and an other in Halkidona (1.500 sm.), only for storage purposes. Even with this "extension" the library is out of space. The need for a new building is urgent. Lately, we receive many promises on that matter and I tend to believe it, as there is no other solution.

As far as the budget is really very limited. We try the run the library with a budget of 155.000.000 drachmas.

The number of staff is very limited, because of the greek legislation. Only 73 persons cover all the range, from the director to the clerical staff. Because of the lack of staff, we are behind in the production of the Greek National Bibliography. The bibliography of the year 1994, in hard copy, was published by the National Book Center as late as 1998. In 1999, again with the cooperation of the National BookCenter, we produced a CD-ROM including the Greek National Bibliography of the years 1989 to 1994 and the authorities of Personal Names and Subject Headings. By the end of the year, will be available the Greek National Bibliography of 1995 and 1996, both in hard copy and in CD-ROM.

During the last ten years, the National Library of Greece has been involved in several research projects:

1.  LIBACT1/GR. It was a project sponsored by the program "Libraries" of the European Commission, for the implementation of the format UNIMARC and the automated conversion of the existing data base of the library in UNIMARC.

2.  FACIT (Fast Automated Conversion with Integrated Tools) . It was a project sponsored by the program "Libraries" of the European Commission, for the conversion of typed cards in electronic format with the use of an OCR.

3.  UNIVERSE. It is a project sponsored by the program "Libraries" of the European Commission. UNIVERSE aims to deliver and utilize a "logical union catalogue" to deliver a number of advanced library services for both the end-user and the librarian.

4.  STRIDE. It was a project sponsored by the European Commission and the Greek government for the creation of data base with the contents of old and rare magazines, using an OCR.

5.  KORAES. It is an extension of the preceding project, sponsored by the European Commission and the Greek government for the dissemination of the cultural archives of the National Library of Greece.

6.  CASA. It is a project sponsored by the program "Libraries" of the European Commission for the creation of a european data base of periodicals.

7.  MODERNIZATION OF THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF GREECE. This project is sponsored by the European Commission, which aims at a radical solution of the problems of the library, as a Fully Automated System for the library, Digitization of the Greek collection, Retrospective Cataloging, Integration of the census etc. It is a project we just started working with and the hole work must be done by the end of the year.

It is obvious that this conference came in a very convenient time for the National Library of Greece, as it is in a stage of reorganization, moving from its present status to the electronic one and it is ready to participate in any cooperative project.