5. ELDORADO: On-demand digitization platform service for library consortium to put back to market out-of-commerce works from the shelves of libraries

The poster presentation introduces a best practice new library service developed in the National Library of Hungary. ELDORADO aims to create a cultural eco-system of libraries, readers and publishers. The system was designed in line with the European Commission-facilitated Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Out-of-Commerce Books, signed in September 2011 by ten organisations representing stakeholders, including authors and publishers associations, and library organisations.

The platform was developed to serve as a registry for all works in libraries across Hungary, and to provide a one-stop-shop concept for readers to search for online and offline documents and ordering of on-demand digitization. Publishers and libraries can use the right clearance workflow to perform diligent search for rights owners and register rights information. ELDORADO is connected to the national Books in Prints and RRO databases to assist right clearance. Publishers are expected to take part in the service in growing number as ELDORADO offers a complementary business possibility not endangering the existing channels. Rights owners are entitled to set the circumstances how the document can be provided to different user groups, the way of access (download, loan, on-line reading, reading in library network), the number of parallel accesses, payment terms, periods.

From the user perspective, there is a great improvement compared to physical documents. Thus every digitized document is handled as a set sequence of scanned pages; it is possible to create customised e-documents, for example a unique document that consists of one novel, one article and one map from different original documents. Handling documents by pages makes it flexible to change, correct any mistake during digitization or even afterwards.

For libraries, the platform provides a set of tools for collaborative digitization process. Though on-demand user requests are given priority, it is also possible to organize mass digitization project with the cooperation of more libraries. The platform is based on a workflow engine, thus every step can be assigned to different actors in the whole process, or specific flow of tasks can be automatized. The system sends notification about every task, and all activities are logged and traceable with sophisticated statistics.

The poster will give information on the organisational issues that occurred and are still occurring during the implementation and augmentation phase of the project that will end by the summer of 2016. The authors will also collect a list of practical advices based on experiences and share it during the poster session.