What are these documentary networks that are mentioned so often? Are they still useful today? How are they managed? Can you talk about them without forgetting one of their many aspects? It is a concept to be reinvented according to the functions performed, the organizations adopted and the types of architecture envisaged.
Network Functions
Description: They are the main bibliographic networks. Their purpose is to disseminate or share bibliographic data.
More generally, it allows libraries and documentary services to avoid this tedious job of cataloging or generating metadata alike. Any data source performs this bibliographic function.
Overcoming: Their minimum function is co-management using a shared BMIS. Additional targets, although desirable, exist in different ways. It includes the free movement of users, the circulation of documents by shuttles, the coordination of documentary policies.
In terms of digital technology, the problems of users roaming and documents converge in the form of remote access allowed to users of member services of the network.
Sharing documentary networks: They are deprived of the goal of co-management by choice or by default. They unite different entities on a disciplinary or regional basis.
They allow mutual knowledge of funds. We can see similar additional goals: free movement of users, shuttle circulation of documents, coordination of documentary policies, etc.
Network consortia or their substitutes: Their purpose is to conduct or facilitate negotiations with business and data suppliers in the digital space.
Dedicated networks service: They bring together document assets on a single purpose and often share a common IT tool.
The future: This typology, of course, tends to determine more functions of the networks themselves as the diversification of a large part of the networks develops. The case of bibliographic networks is the most obvious.
On the one hand, any network management organization may tend to consolidate itself by replicating its services. On the other hand, any collaboration framework can prompt interested partners to share an increasing number of themes and activities.
Network Organizations
Let us now look at the organizational and legal form of networks from which very different possibilities for governance emerge.
Internal Networks. They consist of service points belonging to the same legal entity. This ranges from municipal library networks, including cities, to those of the CNRS.
The network is then either one of the functions or the overall organizational form of the entity. The administration of the network is nothing but the administration of the asset.
Hierarchical Networks. Although they are not part of the same legal entity, they are structured according to various methods from a network head that plays a dominant role, either legally or de facto. While this vision may be challenged, reading networks in particular can be thought of and organized in a hierarchical way.
Custom Built Networks. These networks bring together a number of partners. However, there is a structure specifically dedicated to organizing or managing the network. This may be smaller on a very large country scale. It can also be a simple service such as the CNRS service group that manages the RNBM.
Distributed Networks. They unite a certain number of partners on an equal footing. This does not preclude a possible division of roles and advisory steering bodies.
Technical Architecture. Network architecture is a classic in computer science literature. We will not consider technical tools here, preferring to consider them as tools at the service of organizational and human networks.
Here, let's look at the client-server model that preserves the central unit and a hint of hierarchy. Each machine can be both a client and a server at the same time. This should not make us forget that repositories require serious storage servers.
This is true to the point where the web browser, if any, client software has become almost a generalized user platform.
Complexity of Networks. It requires escalation of shared standards and interoperability of systems. Networks running on special systems can be hidden.
Distribution Mode. If a network's mode of distribution is spatial, it is easier to design if the rationale is to propose a network that does not deprive any area of the region from a service point.
But this network is not a physical space it serves as such. They are people, each with their own modes of travel, routes, radius of mobility.
Also, the regional network (city, countryside, campus, etc.) in a particular region should be analyzed in relation to other networks (public transport, shops, educational or entertainment venues, etc.).
The term mesh is misleading because it implies equality of points. Often, units deployed in the region have different sizes and functions.
It takes advantage of equipment that performs basic functions but is attractive in terms of acceptance possibilities in the field, but the importance, variety or specialization of tender documents.
Intellectual Architecture. Disciplinary networks have always had a non-spatial logic, or rather the distribution of their members has no strictly regional significance. This logic of non-territoriality is clearly generalized to the digital.
Dr.Yaşam Ayavefe
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