Library and Historical Archives

Library

(Supervisor Fiorella Liotto)

The most appropriate term better synthesizing the activity of the Library in the last two years could be ‘cooperation’.

Under this flag new features and projects have been developing, sharing human efforts and resources with other Institutions working on common goals. Due to the relationships held with other Institutions and thanks to this spirit of cooperation, important implementations in the Library, the Historical Archives and in the Special Service for Information Retrieval and Document Supply have been successfully achieved in a short time.

In 1999 the Stazione Zoologica has become member of the ICAU (International Consortium of Aleph Users), has recently signed as a founder the constitutional act of the ITALE Association (Italian Aleph Users Group), and has joined to the CILEA-CDL Consortium. These events, together with the participation to the activities and workgroups of these Associations, show the trend of the Library to co-operate and to have a pre-eminent role in the international scenario.

This growth has been in part reflected on the Web Pages maintained and updated by the Library Facilities. Even if much more has to be done, the available statistical data recording the connections to the Library Web Pages show clearly that searching in our catalogues and retrieving the available information has been increasing in a meaningful way. Besides Italy, connections from the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, The Netherlands, Norway, Greece, the United States, Australia, Japan, and other Countries are surely a great stimulus to keep on updating and maintaining all the resources and the features available on the Web of the Library (http://www.szn.it:4001/ALEPH).

In order to be accessible whatever user agent people are using (mobile phone, voice browser and others), the Library is planning to follow the W3C Recommendations, at least to get a validation for the basic level of accessibility.

Since 1995, when a LAN (Local Area Network) was created at the Stazione Zoologica, the development of new computerized procedures within the Library has never stopped.

Starting with the cataloguing of bibliographic current acquisitions in 1996, nowadays most of the work in the Library is done thanks to the implementation of new features and modules.

During the last biennium, a great work has been done to further develop the Acquisition module, especially as far as it concerns the Invoice Registrations, the treatment of the data, and the Inventory Records, according to the rules of the Italian Legislation. All these changes has proceeded at the same rate with a constant training of the librarian staff.

While following the projects and the experiences of the international community first switching to Aleph500, a new patch of Aleph330 has been installed to prevent the so called ‘millennium bug’. Any project concerning the retro-conversion of the old card catalogues have been postponed after the installation of Aleph500 and the use of MARC bibliographic standards.

In the field of electronic publications, since last year the Library has become a current subscriber to a wide range of specialized electronic journals. Through the Web of the Library final users are authorized to access these online resources, taking advantages of all the new available features offered by online publishers, in addition to the speedy delivery of new issues.

In spite of all these benefits, the libraries still have a great work to do to manage this new market, still very much under development. Mainly due to economic matters, e-journals are in most cases still the online versions of their printed editions, including sometime additional electronic materials and few multimedia features. This is often compromising the natural development of electronic publications towards the multimedia. Probably in a few years scientific online publications will be far from being linked to the actual concepts of issues, printed editions, and subscriptions. In any case, libraries will have a relevant role in managing these new kind of products for their users.

In this context, one of the main goals of the Library in the last years consisted in facing this market that is continuously changing, foreseeing the following trends, and offering to the final users the access to the electronic collections without crashing them by the weight of all the work hidden behind a click of the mouse.

In the Library Web catalogues new features linking bibliographic cards to electronic journals are now available, together with new features implemented in the catalogue of a series of scientific drawings of the Historical Archives, where the integration of text and digital images has successfully been achieved.

On June 1999 these items were discussed during the ITALE seminar held at the Stazione Zoologica, that was also the occasion to introduce virtual and long-distance participations of speakers.

The analysis and application of features and specific standards for electronic and historical documents, the experimentation of a digital signature, and other issues related to this database, have attracted the attention of many Institutions.

The results of this work were in fact already presented upon invitation to the International Community of Aleph users at the 9th ICAU Meeting in Warsaw, 14-15 September 1998.

Service for Information Retrieval and Document Supply

The increase of the number of users on the Net all over the world is without any doubt a sign that getting information in all the fields is a common need. Most of the available data are easily accessible even to beginners and non-expert users, thanks to the diffusion of user-friendly interfaces and intuitive search tools. This great amount of information and of free resources, however, is often matter of a deep misunderstanding and misuse, so that the initial common feeling that everything is accessible for everyone in a couple of clicks, suddenly vanishes when results are non-pertinent and coming from non trusted sources. The risk of running into the so-called ‘infoglut’, that is an overload of information, is in most cases nearly unavoidable.

On this background, expertise, skill and a deep knowledge of the Information Market is as much as ever essential. After several years of activity, the Special Service for Information Retrieval and Document Supply kept on analyzing and monitoring the Global Information Market and the new connected technologies. Locating high-quality information, selecting relevant items and authoritative sources, and finally supplying pertinent documentation is essential for supporting the scientific research.

For further extending the powerful and the resources of the Special Service, the Stazione Zoologica has joined to the CILEA-CDL Consortium, working to sign customized License Agreements for accessing online scientific resources.

The Historical Archives

(Curator Christiane Groeben)

The Historical Archives of the Stazione Zoologica [ASZN] set up as a physical structure in 1969, collect documents related to the institution (foundation, administration and scientific activity), the correspondence with guest investigators, ministries and institutions as well as contracts, manuscripts, diplomas, photographs, and scientific drawings. The holdings include a few instruments and a series of 22 films on the Stazione Zoologica and the Aquarium. All the material has been reorganized in its original filing order.

The following finding aids are available: general guide, chronological and numerical indexes for each series or file, alphabetical author’s catalogue (1868-1948), experimental OPAC for the scientific drawings (http://www.szn.it:4001/ALEPH).

Efforts to increase the holdings of the ASZN and to make them available for consultation are constantly moving in three directions:

(1) Administrative folders, files, registers and single documents regarding the activity of the SZN continue to be processed and indexed. Recent accesses include manuscripts and numerous drawings by Paolo Enriques that were intended for a monograph on Radiolaria; salaries and insurance records of personal and staff (1955-63); general expenses (1960-61) as well as a historically extremely valuable collection of old dyes and chemicals, some of them dating from the very first years of the SZN’s activity.

(2) Efforts to increase local holdings consist also in the localization and addition of copies or written or visual information on holdings from other archives and private collections that integrate and complement the ASZN. Among these the following deserve notice: the fifth edition in Italian (1905) of the guide (gift from Marisa Salvatore, Naples); the sixth edition in English (1913) of the guide to the Aquarium (gift from Eric Denton, Plymouth); four files of correspondence of Alberto Monroy, Peter Dohrn, Gaetano Salvatore, and Eizo Nakano (gift from Eizo Nakano, Japan).

(3) Lastly the ASZN appreciates donations and encourages deposits of documents regarding persons or events somehow related to the SZN, such as a portrait by Luigi Califano (gift from Marisa Salvatore); 20 letters from Richard Hertwig, Richard Goldschmidt, A. Baranowski, H. Solima, Reinhard Gast and Sergei and Alexis Kuschakewitch to Paul Buchner (gift from Giorgio Buchner, Ischia); 16 photographs of Russian guest researchers (gift from Larissa Choumeiko, Kassel, Germany); memories (typescript) by Elizabeth Mason, Edinburgh, of her visit to Naples in 1937; portraits by Eizo Nakano and Umberto Pierantoni; tape of an interview with Albert Szent-György (gift from Christiane Groeben); memories of Albert Fraenkel of Anton Dohrn (1934; gift from Ernst Mayr, USA).

Normal maintenance included the cleaning and transfer into new boxes of parts of the records in order to avoid damage from humidity as well as the updating of the OPAC of the recently implemented database for the series of scientific drawings.

Experiences with this relatively restricted and uniform series of archival documents are extremely useful for the online cataloguing of other document types such as letters, manuscripts, printed texts and photographs.

Publications, conferences, seminars and exhibits continue to bring the ASZN and its collections of precious sources for the history of science to the attention of a wider public. Essential is, in this regard, the information available from the ASZN web page as a first approach that often leads to requests and research visits.

The ASZN can house 2-3 guests at a time. The immediate access to the Library with its outstanding bibliographic resources are highly appreciated by historians of science who never fail to find in the Library publications mentioned in the documents they have consulted in the Historical Archives.

During the period 1998-1999 75 electronic and snail mail requests for information and documents have been received; they often require extensive research from the part of the archivist and sometimes also lead to projects of intense collaboration such as the study on the impact that the SZN has had on Italian Zoology recently started in collaboration with Michael Ghiselin, California Academy of Science, San Francisco. 45 short-term-visitors and 8 long-term-visitors (more than 3 days) - 2 of whom intent on preparing their doctoral dissertation in architecture and museology respectively - have consulted the collections housed in the ASZN. Research topics have ranged from biographical information (Richard Demoll, Alfred Krupp, Salvatore Lo Bianco, Evelyn Hutchinson, Charles Darwin) to portraits (Fritz Müller, Carl Vogt, Anton Dohrn), scientific illustrations (for an exhibit on fish at the Musée océanographique, Monaco) and bibliographies (on the period between the two World Wars, for example).

In recognition of the importance that the SZN has had since its beginning for the development of biological sciences and of the extremely valuable source material available in the ASZN the curator has been invited to take part in international committees and projects such as the International Commission for the History of Oceanography or a research project on the history of marine stations.

Selected Papers:

Liotto, F., 1998. Sperimentazione di un database per l’Archivio Storico della Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn di Napoli: il progetto ‘Archivio in linea’. Archivi & Computer, 3: 217-224

Gargiulo, G., 1998. Dal documento originale all’immagine digitale nel progetto ‘Archivi in linea’ della Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn di Napoli, Archivi & Computer, 3: 225-228

Groeben, C., 1998. ‘Le précurseur du plan’. La contribution de Carl Vogt à la fondation des stations marines. In: Science, philosophie et politique. Carl Vogt (1817-1895). (J.-C. Pont, D. Bui, F. Dubosson, & J. Lacki eds), 287-312, Chêne-Bourg, Georg,

Groeben, C., 1999. The Foundation of the Stazione Zoologica at Naples. In: A history of japanese scientists. (E. Nakano, H. Mizoguchi, & Y. Yokota eds), 3-22, Tokai University Press

Workshop

Electronic journals and management of images in Aleph.

Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn, Fresco Room, Naples 10-11 June 1999

Session 1: Electronic Journals

Alessandra Bezzi (Università Commerciale Bocconi, Milano , Italia)

ITALE’s web: state of the art and future plans

Francesco Brugaletta (TAR Sicilia, Italia - Director of the e-journal Diritto & Diritti)

Guidelines on the management of an electronic journal

Talk recorded on cd-rom, followed by an e-chat via Iphone

Round Table Discussion: ITALE activities in 1999-2000 and work programs for an ITALE electronic journal

Coordinator: Alessandra Bezzi (Università Commerciale Bocconi, Milano, Italia)

Session 2: Integration of text and images in the Historical Archives database

Online Archives with management of images

Fiorella Liotto (Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn)

The Index of Christian Art

Colum Hourihane (Index of Christian Art, Princeton University)

The Historical Archives of the Stazione Zoologica ‘Anton Dohrn’ and the digitized fonds of scientific drawings

Christiane Groeben (Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn)

The database of SZN Historical Archives

Fiorella Liotto (Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn)

Text and images in Aleph300

Fiorella Liotto (Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn)

From the original document to the digitized image

Giuseppe Gargiulo (Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn)

Round Table on integration of text and images in Aleph