Δομές κεντρικής διαχείρισης και αυτοματοποιημένες διαδικασίες για τις βιβλιοθήκες του Πανεπιστημίου Αθηνών

In this paper we will describe the structures established by the Libraries Computer Center (LCC) of the University of Athens in order to facilitate centralized management, and also ensure the more effective, flexible and safe communication between all the participating parties (namely the LCC personnel, the libraries' staff, and the Academic community that utilizes the libraries and their material). After a reference to the University Libraries as a whole and their individual peculiarities, the plans for an originally virtual and later on physical unification towards Central Libraries will be presented alongside the methods that were introduced in order to achieve this goal. In this respect, a more detailed view will be given not only on the various information deployment procedures targeting the libraries staff, but also on the application environment offered as a service to the libraries by the LCC personnel. In the light of the aforementioned, the library-oriented office automation environment that is being used will be described offering the use of secure, accessible and feature-rich electronic mail facilities (including server-wise and local address books, groups and user classification per library), as well as the support for auxiliary workflow applications that can be securely updated and accessed by the libraries staff (at an editor's access level). They can be either of internal use (such as the on-line help for cataloguing, the help-desk application where hardware and software problems, addressed to the LCC personnel, are recorded, and the automated procedure for ordering journal articles) or even become published on the web via the libraries' web pages that are hosted on the LCC's web site (such applications include information and access to electronic journal subscriptions, update of information and announcements per library). Moreover, a series of personalized-perlibrary location statistic reports will be presented, that are made of dynamically created web pages, accessible by each library that wants to receive administrative information on such issues as library catalog (number of records per collection, record titles, authors, etc.), circulation (items out, items overdue, circulation receipts), subjects, inventory and retrospective cataloguing, that are not likely to be produced by the library automation software that is being used. Finally, and after stressing the interactive process of deriving specifications and developing the aforementioned applications, conclusions will be mentioned based upon the managerial experiences of the LCC, and future plans will be given for further improvement and enrichment of the applications and procedures offered.