etLab is the Research and Development Department at Lund University Library. The department primarily runs developmental projects focusing on digital library and netbased information discovery and retrieval, mainly in Internet/WWW environments.

etLab grew out of the project ``Lund University Electronic Library'' which started during the spring 1992. It was among the first digital libraries in the world using WAIS databases and later Gopher and WWW. The goal was to build a comprehensive and organized collection of electronic resources and services which are offered to researchers, students and teachers at Lund University as well as the rest of the Internet community.

The objectives for etLab are:

• to run projects involving networked information with special applications to library tasks and to raise the common level of competence;
• to promote an increased level of knowledge about networked information services and techniques;
• to follow and contribute to the technical and methodological development within information science and information retrieval.

A central concern is the application of methods from library and information science to make the enormous amount of unstructured information on the Internet easily accessible, and to provide users with good retrieval tools.

etLab supports the use of networked information within Lund University and its libraries and offers know-how for information structuring, database publishing and computer technique. The blend of special competence in these areas (half computer scientists/programmers, half librarians/information scientists) forms a unique resource.

etLab runs or participates in a number of projects together with other departments and organizations from the Nordic Countries, Europe and USA:

DESIRE, the Development of a European Service for Information on Research and Education, is one of the largest projects in the European Union Telematics For Research Sector of the Fourth Framework Program. In a two-year project started in January 1996, DESIRE is attempting to develop an information infrastructure for the European academic community by providing methods, tools and demonstrator services.
NetLab is part of the resource discovery and indexing work package and contributes to the development of a general model of quality subject services (incl. quality and selection methods, production of metadata, information structuring). Our primary concern is the development of a robot-based European Web Index. Steps will be taken to integrate quality subject services and the Web Index into a coherent discovery and retrieval environment.

NWI, Nordic Web Index, is a project within the NNC aimed at the establishment of a distributed service that continuously and automatically finds and indexes all information available on the World Wide Web in the Nordic countries.

Nordic Metadata Project supported by NORDINFO, intends to create a Nordic Metadata production, indexing and retrieval environment. The goal is to enhance end-user services by making digital documents more easily searchable and deliverable over the Net. We cooperate with the international metadata community, especially regarding the Dublin Core specification. We will create a user environment and support service and develop conversion software from Dublin Core to Nordic MARC formats and vice versa. NetLab's main task is to improve the discovery and retrieval of Nordic Internet documents through a metadata aware search service (an extension of our Nordic Web Index).

Nordic Net Center for Libraries, is a NORDINFO-financed competence centre run in collaboration with the Technical Knowledge Center & Library of Denmark (DTV). The purpose is to support and inspire the application of information and network technology in libraries and other knowledge centres. NNC also promotes increased cooperation between libraries and networking sectors and supports Nordic development activities in the area.

EELS , Engineering Electronic Library, Sweden, is an information system for quality-assessed Internet resources in the technical sciences. It is a cooperation between the Swedish Universities of Technology Libraries and it is arranged according to the subject classification scheme from Engineering Information Inc., USA.

Länkskafferiet, ``The Link Treasury'', is a project funded by the National Agency for Education. It is a database with quality-assessed Internet resources which have been organized after SAB, the traditional public library classification index in Sweden. The Link Treasury is meant to be an educational aid for students and teachers in their search for useful information on the Internet. The service is in Swedish.

EUROLUND is a database with structured and annotated links to national and inernational EU resources.

On behalf of the Council for the Renewal of Undergraduate Education in Sweden, NetLab is running the University Library Environmental Information Support project. This is a project supporting all projects in the Integrated Environmental Education Studies Programme. Its work consists in the management of an electronic conference, database services and technical assistance, as well as educational visits, introductory courses, seminars on databases in environmental sciences and advice to the participating university colleges and their libraries.

Lund University Dissertation Abstracts is a database with theses presented at Lund University's Medical School, Lund Institute of Technology and the natural science faculty. The abstracts are available and searchable on the Internet. The service started 1 January 1996.

ISAAC is an electronic personal assistant for the differently abled developed at the Center of Rehabilitation Engineering (CERTEC). In near cooperation with NetLab, it is about to be extended and made accessible on the World Wide Web. This will be done through an implementation of the ISAAC functions in the programming language JAVA. Thus ISAAC will be available for people connected to the World Wide Web.

The library catalogue at the Center for Women's studies at Lund University, a bibliographic database based on Filmaker Pro that has been made accessible and searchable through World Wide Web.

The Internet Public Library (IPL) demonstrates how librarians in public libraries can use the Internet to provide different kind of services. It is hosted by the School of Information at University of Michigan, and the site is mirrored at NetLab since August 1997.

The people who work at etLab:

Different ways to contact etLab:

Last updated: 14 November 1997
Anna Brümmer