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The
Digital conversion of the historical catalogue
The history of the Montserrat Library catalogues
can be traced back to the creation of a number
of handwritten index cards. Until 1943, readers
only had a catalogue of authors at their disposal.
Work was then started on the manual creation
of catalogues listing authors as well as subjects,
on typed cards. These files now form the basis
for the current process of catalogue computerisation
at the Montserrat Library, which was started
in October 1998 as the result of an agreement
reached between the Telefónica Foundation
and the Abadia de Montserrat 2025 Foundation.
The company Ifigenia Plus has been acting
as coordinator for the conversion process being
carried out by Verba Logica, a research group
from the Department of Logic at the UCM (Complutense
University of Madrid), specialising in the automated
analysis of documents.
Given the volume of the entries to be computerised,
we favoured an automated approach to converting
the catalogues. The work process can be summarised
in the following way:
- Automatic reading and capture of the entries.
- Analysis of the captured information with
translation by means of uniform notation.
- Transformation to target format (MARC21) for
integration into the Library’s management system.
This process has successfully extracted and
converted some 250,000 entries from the catalogue
of the Abbey of Montserrat Library, relating
to monographs, manuscripts, incunabula, catalogues
from the XVI century, cartography, engravings
and periodical publications.
Furthermore, in this same Library 75,000 records
have also been added to the computer files
since 1990.
It should be pointed out that the catalogue
is constantly being updated, as the files
it contains are based on an historical catalogue.
On balance, our preference is to be able to
offer this essential information, sufficient
to determine whether the Library contains
a given work. Subject references are in Latin
for older works and in Catalan for inclusions
that are more recent.
We also have to thank their support to the Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca,
the Centre de Supercomputació de Catalunya (CESCA)
and Hewlett-Packard Spain,
with their aid they have made possible the development of this project. |
